In Praise of Great Clients

So you are thinking ... in this economy, every client is a great client. Yes and no. It's great to have business, don't get me wrong. But it's not great to work with someone who makes the profession for which you have such passion become a chore. I don't know about you, but I want to wake up every day excited to work, to have work and to see my clients.

Admittedly, it's a relationship like any other and takes work and sometimes it's not always easy the first time around. Sometimes you don't get a second chance with a client, but on the corporate side of AOO's business, we have many repeat clients and many chances to hone those working relationships into something that runs smoothly and allows us to take our design to the next level.

A case in point is the Calibre Awards for the International Interior Designers Association of Southern California. This was the second year AOO Events has worked with them. And the experience this year is the inspiration for this blog post.

For many event professionals, the first time you work with a new client, there is a learning curve. They don't know you. You don't know them. Understandably, they want to be assured more often than necessary. This leads to micro-managing, five times more meetings than are necessary and five times the visual documentation before making a decision.

But once you produce a successful event for that client, all those fears, the multiple meetings, the micro managing, melts away. Now they are dealing with a known quantity. And so are you. You know their needs and tastes. They understand the process better and are confident with the quality of the product you bring to them.

Once they understand that your job is to make them look good they relax. And when they do, the process becomes fun. Now you are working with a friend and they are working with a professional that does what he or she has been hired to do.

Hilary Luckenbaugh

And that is what we had with Hilary Luckenbaugh and Roy Huebner, the co-chairs of the event. Hilary is Director of Business Development of the Environmental Contracting Corporation, and Roy is Executive Director of Wolcott Architecture/Interiors. We all looked forward to our meetings with them and the creative energy they brought to the table.

Roy Huebner

On this second time working together, we were able to get past those initial jitters everyone has on a first event and take our creativity to the next level. It might take a few events to get to that point, but if the tension still remains, I believe in walking away from clients who don't allow us to create a healthy working environment.

How can you have that experience I described above with a bride you are only going to work with once? Or a mother and father doing their first Bat Mitzvah? It's not an easy feat. It's important to find an immediate rapport of respect for the person with whom you are working. Yes, you will have to educate that client every step of the way, but then if you are professional, consistent and do what you say you will do, they will slowly build the trust that allows you to operate at your best. Show them through actions, demeanor and stance. And when at an impasse you might have to actually tell them once again of your professional qualities and experience and that they can trust in you.

I guess it's similar to any relationship. We all want to be sure the other person has our back regardless if it's a friend or a client. In a perfect world, that person is both!

Thank you Hilary and Roy for making this year's experience with the IIDA Calibre Awards as fun and lighthearted as this business should be every day!

When Design is Center Stage

This year for the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) awards ceremony, the client requested an awards stage design that reflected natural elements. And, considering this was for the interior design industry, they wanted it to be highly stylized.

I went with bamboo as I see it as the element that can be stylized yet retain the look and feel of what it is. But to create my look, I would need bamboo that was 15 feet tall and all of the same diameter. Such stylized uniformity just doesn't exist in nature. But, where there is a will (or a Home Depot), there is always a way. My team and I acquired PVC construction piping and painted it to look like bamboo. You can see the results best in the photo below.

The bamboo was arranged on the set in front of a white curtain and lighted individually with LEDs. This gave the set its depth and the curtain was a perfect canvas for our color scheme which changed during the night. With such a flexible design, it was easy to build the look we needed for the varying segments within the show.



Here is a close up of the stage. The backwall was fabricated from light-colored leather with an "alligator" pattern. It's bold patterns are great for the camera shots of people at the podium and on the stage. In this case it looked like a bamboo wall, which really tied into the 15-foot-tall bamboo on either side of it.


During the evening, the lighting changed during different segments. Again, the design was such that we had a lot of leeway in creating a new look and mood each time.

This is a client with which we've worked before and this second time around was so rewarding for everyone involved. Later this week, I'll be writing a post about this relationship and on working with corporate clients in general.

GUEST BLOG by Bart Kresa

A large-scale projection at the HBO event during the Golden Globe Awards

Note from Dave:

When I first saw Bart's large-scale projections, I was impressed with his artistic sensibility. This is more than just projecting an image; it's about sequencing, timing and style. These are one-of-a-kind art installations, in addition to being a sort of "enveloping" event decor. That's important. Because every time we can take our work outside what people expect at an event, and introduce them to something new and wonderful that creates an environmental experiment, we've succeeded in taking event design to the next level ... and the next ...

David Merrell

Thinking Big

The Art of Large-Scale Projections

By Bart Kresa

I have been working in the artistic medium of projections for about 20 years. For the first five I was working within a range of about couple feet. Then, in 1995 I was invited to take part in a multi-media festival as one of the artists and the work they were doing blew my mind. These projections were 150 feet wide and 50 feet tall.

Since then, all I do is large-scale projections. It’s become less of a rarity as it was when I first started, and the technology and equipment have improved. Yet even though my design team and I do about one or two projects a month, large-scale projections are still not used as much as they could be. There are just so many possibilities to explore.

Recently, I created a large-scale installation at the HBO party during the Golden Globes (above) and at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) runway show in Los Angeles. In both instances, the projections were used in a way that was unique and fresh; that added pattern and texture to the total environment.

FIDM DEBUT 2010 from Bart Kresa on Vimeo.

The FIDM show was especially interesting and complex. The space of the projection was 65 wide by 25 feet tall. The show itself would have 30 original background animations, each one changing with the introduction of a new designer and his or her line or theme.

We started by researching then choosing a system that would be flexible enough for all these changes and on-site editing. Ultimately, I found one that allowed us to build the show in layers, change the speed of the show and the color of the patterns on site. In all, we used 12 computers – three for displaying the show, three for backup and six others for graphic and video editing that would compress the video and resize it. An entire studio was set up on the site of the show at the Fashion Institute event location.

The show was built in sections on an endless loop so each could run endlessly if needed. We worked around the event rather than them making them work to our timing. In addition, I connected another mixer to change the colors in real time and add elements of design in real time that faded in. So it became more like a multi-media system.

So, with the tech side of it figured out, we then had to look at the design itself. This was a young audience. They want to be fashion designers. The show had to be flashy and energetic in order to communicate with them.

The challenge was that there really was no one theme to follow. Each designer was showing a different style inspired by factors such as Louis XIV or origami. My colleague, Peter Schroff, came up with the idea to make the entire look more pop culture, more Andy Warhol. That gave us a direction. As we designed and found images, we then altered the colors, making them brighter, adding more contrast and outlining the images with bright colors in Warhol’s style.

This medium can be high energy, as FIDM was, or it can be deep and emotional as it was for a holiday show we did in Japan. I love this medium because no matter what the emotion or look I am going for, the result will always – always – be massive.

BARTKRESA Design, www.bartkresa.com

Bart Kresa

Bart is the founding partner of BARTKRESA Design based in Los Angeles. He has more than 20 years of experience designing for distinguished companies worldwide. Bart brings a deep understanding and experience in projection design and installation management. He has collaborated with world renowned event planners, among them AOO Events and David Merrell. Recently he creating and taught a course in architectural projection design at the University of Arts in Philadelphia.