Photo by Icon Presentations
The following is a guest blog article by Richard De Santis of Event Management Productions originally posted on the Sound n’ Sight blog.
Far too often, clients are led astray by their “designers” or “decorators” for a special event such as a social gala. Frequently the bad advice for design is well-intentioned but uninformed.
Tip #1: Focus their attention
In order to best utilize available resources for an event design, it is critical to understand the issue of sight lines visual floor-to-ceiling space and focused attention. Typically the design is centered around local visual elements such as tabletop and tabletop related decor. In understanding conceptual space design that approach is like pouring water through the wrong end of the funnel.
An informed understanding of design begins with understanding the total visual space involved. In order to do that it’s critical to have an understanding of how many cubic feet of space you are working in.
If you’re working in a ballroom space that was 100 feet deep by 150 feet wide by 18 feet tall it makes more sense to visualize it as 279,000 ft.³ of visual space. Keeping that in mind a 3 foot tall 6 foot banquet round table represents less than 110 ft.² of the 279,000 ft. cubic feet of visual space or looking at it another way this represents less than 3, ten thousandths of visual space in the room.
Tip #2: Reduce the visual space
If that’s where you stop your evaluation, it would seem like an impossible task to make any headway in a room that size, but that’s only the beginning of the calculation. That realization should lead us to looking at the other end of the funnel, the wide end. Our goal is not to decorate the volume of space available but reduce the visual space so that the resources we do wind up incorporating become more meaningful in the remaining space.
There are several tools available to us that can seemingly reduce visual space and concentrate the field of focus on a seemingly smaller area. Probably the most cost-effective is lighting. Intelligent use of lighting can produce a very large look no matter what size space it is. If the lighting design is well thought out it can focus our attention where we want it.
Tip #3: Force their perspective with lighting
In short the goal that lighting seeks to achieve is something loosely called forced perspective. We direct our audience’s attention where we want them to look and remove their attention from where we don’t want them to look. A well-designed lighting setup can make a big space seem little and a small space seem very large.
With this realization we can see that designing small and large spaces has to begin by working through the large end of the funnel to concentrate what flows out the small end. By shadowing the ceiling and the perimeters of the space we can add gravitas to the smaller details such as tabletop design.
An additional and very effective use of lighting is to pin spot all the tables. This further forces our perspective into a smaller space and provides rich detail accents for floral or other types of centerpiece decor. Obviously use of lighting is budget driven but as I noted earlier it is one of the most cost-effective ways to make a big statement on a modest budget and to bring other selected elements of decor into better use and focus.
To read the rest of this post, please click http://icon-presentations.com/blog/bid/28930/4-tips-and-one-myth-about-special-event-design-Hint-use-video Posted with the permission of Jenise Fryatt and Richard De Santis.
(Photo by Icon Presentations)
