Top Ten Things To Know About Event Design: #10

Where did I find my inspiration for this?

To end the week on an inspirational note, every Friday for the next 10 weeks I am planning to post an item off my Top 10 list for event design.

This week -- Number 10:

Constantly be on the search for inspiration

I always say that a good designer studies other designers
but a GREAT designer studies EVERYTHING!

And by "study" I mean, be aware of the world around you
and how it can relate back to event design.
Some things to study:

Music

Culture -- Modern and Ancient

Broadway plays, TV and Film

Cuisine and Restaurant Design

Visual Merchandising

New Products


AN EXAMPLE

Here is the ad where I found the inspiration for the photo at the top of this post. Just browsing through a magazine I noticed that cool room divider and filed this away. A month later, the look was the perfect accent element for a booth AOO Events had at an industry tradeshow!

Here's to creating inspired events and living an inspired life!

Event Design Details

Color Splash!

When designing in a large space, nothing makes an impact more than color.

The theme, Celebrate, was perfect for this bold use of color. Warm colors like this are both sexy and energetic, plus they make everyone look really great! Gobos of bursts helped to really underline the message.


And just as broad strokes of painting with light are effective, the details are not to be ignored! These flowers used all the colors of the event in a totally unique, unexpected way. The architecture of this arrangement also could be said to be "bursting!"


Again, color makes a typical lounge environment go completely over-the-top. As this is the foyer, you can see we weren't kidding around. We wanted to make a huge impact right out of the box!


The strong colors continued in the stage design which shifted with each act.


Never be afraid to show your true colors. I promise the effect will be uplifting, energetic and dynamic!

The photos in the post were from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center fundraiser. You can find more on it in these recent posts:
Event Design Break Down: Design and Conception
Event Design Break Down: Entertainment.

GUEST BLOG by Debra Roth

SEVEN TRENDS FOR EVENTS FROM EUROSHOP
By Debra Roth

Last month I traveled to EuroShop in Düsseldorf, Germany. It’s a huge show that is held every three years and runs for five days. It focuses on exhibit design and build, retail display, lighting, fixtures and details (think halls and halls filled with mannequins)!

While it’s not exactly a direct fit with the events industry, there is a lot of forward-thinking design from which designers can learn. When Dave asked me to write a guest blog on it, I jumped at the chance to share some of the trends from this European marketplace.

Trend #1

Long, sheer curtains, and gin fringe (my name for string curtains. I called them this before I knew the real name because they reminded me of bordellos). They are great for dividing space in a very dramatic way.

Trend #2

Scrim in both white and black were out in full force for a peek-a-boo look. Many ceilings were created from mesh scrim.

Trend #3

Layers and layers. Flat forms were cut in succession to create a three-dimensional form like the one above. This concept was seen over and over again.

Trend #4

Color!! Though black and white is always super popular there was also a lot of green and orange being shown in monochromatic color schemes.

• Trend #5

Vertical tubes or shapes were used to create an environment. The effect is very similar to the long sheer curtains, string curtains and scrim.

Trend #6

Light Boxes, light boxes and more light boxes. I call them light boxes but a better (and longer) description would be graphics that are lighted from behind. The were all the rage.

You see this in tradeshows and retail all the time and lately we've seen more of it at events. Often the fabric is vinyl and the lighting is fluorescent but that is changing with LED. The best light boxes don't let the viewer see the bulbs or dots; they just give out an even, overall lighting.

Trend #7

In the lighting hall white LEDs ruled. LED has come in many colors for years but maybe you didn't realize that it's actually been difficult to achieve a true white light with them. At Euroshop this year there was a breakthrough in that area and many light fixture companies working with LED were showing it off. The photo above is an example of the cool white lights.

And this is an example of the warm white light from the new LEDs. Actually, this stand (in Europe they say stand, not booth) is showing the LED's capability for mixing BOTH warm and cool light tones.

Knowing that we are not stuck with the stark white light of fluorescent lights is important as we make the transition from incandescent light bulbs to LED in our every day lives. And in our professional event lives, we all know that a rosy glow is the most important element to making food -- and people -- look great!

Debra Roth

Debra Roth began her artistic expression as a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in the early 1980s. From sculpting in metal to performance-art movement, Roth combined postmodern dance production with abstract-shaped costumes made of stretch-fabric that she literally performed within. And to enhance the theatrical experience, she designed and sewed brightly colored, highly imaginative stretch-fabric stage elements — complete environments, all of which became the basis of her business, Pink Inc., almost 30 years ago.

Seeing a viable outlet for her work, Roth entered the special-event marketplace where her innovative stretch-fabric structures and unique costumes have become the most sought-after and long-standing decorative design products the industry has known. Attesting to the prominence and power of the Pink Inc. brand, the firm was recently acquired by Moss Inc. in order to provide Moss entry into the world of special events.

Pink Inc. Powered By Moss

Now We Are Three!

This month the DesignDawgs celebrates it's third anniversary. Since that's 21 in dawg years, we'd like to think we are all grown up, but you know we still frisky pups when it comes to the design and production of creative, cutting-edge events. Here's a look back at some of those throughout the years.

2008
In Santa Barbara at the Bacara Resort, we designed this stunning event for the Dream Foundation Fund-Raising Event featuring a fashion show by Valentino.

Later that year, in the same month we produced two huge events ... the opening of Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas ...

...and the Aqua Caliente Resort in Palm Springs

Then we were off to Miami to produce the launch of a new Gatorade product at the G2 Lounge during Super Bowl. The lounge featured a bowling alley and a live sports anchor desk where interviews with athletes took place.




And the dawgs began getting its pack of guest bloggers together. The very first was our own Tom Budas, Director of Marketing, (and this year's winner of the Spotlight Award for Marketing Professional of the Year).

Tom wrote about the Marriott Masters, a desert-themed event featuring this custom-designed Iguana Bar.

Later he was joined by other guest bloggers Rand Larson, Janet Elkins, and
Steve Kemble, America's Sassiest Lifestyle Guru!








2009

Picking up the pace with blogs and events in 2009, we won our first Event Profs Design blog Award for Best Eye Candy. To keep that inspiration rolling along we shared these pieces of eye candy...
The Heart Foundation fund-raiser honoring Wolfgang Puck held in Beverly Hills.

We created special stations for about a dozen celebrity chefs who participated in the event creating appetizers and the main meal.

And later in the year we produced a multiple-day corporate event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, using every unique venue that region has to offer -- from a restaurant on the top of a ski run to a nature preserve to one of the city's top watering holes.

And joining the dawg pack with their guest blogs this year were Debbie Meyers, Debbie Hawkins, Teri Rudin, King Dahl, Joella Hopkins, Andrea Michaels, Youngsong Martin, Pauline Parry and Michael Cerbelli.

2010

Designdawgs began the year with its second award by the Event Profs which meant upping the ante on the postings and on our amazing events!

Early in the year we welcomed 5,000 attendees of the American Society of Association Executives to Los Angeles with an event at LA Live. Melissa Etheridge performed a rousing number while a few days later, at the closing event we designed and produced, Cyndi Lauper bid them farewell.

And then we were off to Pittsburgh to produce the annual fund-raising event for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. This year it featured a wickedly great performance by Kristen Chenoweth.

Our transformation of the huge event space at the Monroeville Convention Centre was enhanced by lighting by Images by Lighting.

And during the summer we produced a Special Events magazine Gala-nominated wedding with Total Event Resources. We worked with Kathy Miller and team who brought a Chicago client to Laguna for a fun, multiple-day destination wedding.


The dawg pack grew larger with posts by Rick Turner, Lara McCulloch-Carter, Bart Kresa, Ryan Hanson, Brett Culp, Evan Carbotti, Audrey Gordon, Wendy Anderson, Brooke Bonder, Kathy Miller and Hillary Harris.

2011


We started this year with something different -- a mobile marketing event where the guests were people who followed the event (a bus that promoted Calgary skiing through the brand Stoked for Snow) through Twitter and Facebook around Los Angeles. Lucky winners walked away with plane tickets to Calgary along with lift tickets and hotel nights!

Guest blogger, and longtime friend and collaborator, Raymond Thompson, lighted up the blog post to start the year out right.

Thank you all for reading this blog every week. We've enjoyed sharing AOO Events and our work with you, bringing in guest bloggers, forming a design community around our work and theirs, and then taking it offline at our Designdawg seminars we've held every year at The Special Event and Event Solutions!

Got to sign off now, looks like the birthday cake has arrived!

See you next week! From Dave Merrell, Tom Budas, Jahon Pilichowski, Nick Gentile and all the other dawgs in the pack!