Throwback Thursday: Retro Audio / Visual Equipment
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
Here s one for the A/V nerds we dug through some of the web s best collections of historic photographs and found five awesome vintage A/V images. Enjoy!
Hang the DJ
Early DJs? The fabulous historical photo archives on Shorpy.com features this 1931 picture taken in Washington DC of Man with portable radio receiver and phonograph. The caption goes on to remark that he seems to be using the amplifier to play a record into a microphone. Note handy Radio Spectrum chart. Credit: Harris & Ewing glass negative.
Vintage Microphones
Wow, here s one for the history books: this photo shows Emile Berliner, one of the inventors of the microphone, in 1929, before receiving the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia s highest award, the Franklin Gold Medal.
PA System
One from the more recent past: The left hand speaker assemblage at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music 1970 This P.A. System was supplied by Watkins Electic Music (WEM) and also shows their red parabolic reflector tweeter atop the supporting framework. Behind are rows of slave amps. It was at that date, the highest wattage used at any British venue. The projection screen can be seen behind it and to the left.
Edison loudspeakers
Large loudspeaker horns and crated Edison radios from 1929 are stored in a side room on the third floor. Thomas A. Edison Laboratories, Building No. 5, West Orange, Essex County, NJ
Making Loudspeaker Bells
In this 1925 photo, a laborer operates a shaping machine for loudspeaker bells.
[Heads up] UK s Event Organizers Summit is Coming Sept 7 & 8
EVENT INDUSTRY
The UK isn t our typical stomping grounds, but the upcoming Event Organizer s Summit, produced by Forum Events and scheduled to be held at the Hilton London Wembley, caught our eye. What s different about about this industry pow-wow? No-BS decision-making, that s what.
The Event Organisers Summit brings together reputable suppliers and Corporate Event Organisers who want to find inspirational and innovative ideas for their future events. The Summit is the ultimate hassle-free, no-time wasting platform for executives, managers, directors and buyers who are directly responsible for the purchase of their organisation s event organizing products and services to create new business relationships with key suppliers for the event industry.
A get- er-done get-together where attendees are screened for their ability to sign that contract? Yes, please.
Hey, we love multi-day, everyone s-invited, three-speaker-tracks event industry conferences, we do. It s a nice way to get energized and keep a toe in the wider stream. But a high-impact, business-focused environment where every minute is maximized is a very welcome counterpoint if you re short on time (aren t we all?) and looking to expand your supplier list.
Plus, tickets are free for delegates. If you re in the UK, do follow these guys on Twitter and reserve your place.
Best Event Branding & Collateral: a June Roundup
EVENT COLLATERAL
First impressions are kind of a big deal, and event branding counts as a first impression. The beauty and usefulness of programs, maps, badges all the pieces of detritus that attendees are handed the minute they walk in the door constitute a collective statement of purpose and intention by the organizers. We love ogling killer examples of event branding, because we know we re not just looking at pretty artwork, we re looking at a dedication to detail. Here s a tip of the hat to four events and designers that really nailed it.
Now Happenings Festival
Designed by Rocio Fernandez, the Argentinian NOW Happenings festival collateral tacks down the tone of the event instantly: avant and highly artistic, an event for creatives and thinkers.
Launch Tradeshow
The Launch Tradeshow collateral set by San Diego s Wedge and Lever, say Organizers of an all-new, California-based lifestyle apparel Trade show contracted us to create a complete identity that would give the Launch Trade show a refined look and feel for its debut. And that they did, with a fresh, beachy theme.
Yay Festival
The Yay Festival is all about the thrum of raw creativity, an energy reflected in the primordial riot of jungle colors and driving brush strokes of their palette and font. Created by Snask from Stockholm, Sweden.
British Independent Film Festival
From the creator, Sam Lane: the idea was to create something innovative that would grab attention and connect with the British Public instantly in order to promote the Festival and Independent Film in Great Britain. This was achieved through the use of a bold colour scheme along with a copy-led campaign that has a very tounge-in-cheek British approach to it.
Heads Up and a Quick Review: Show Themes Specializes in Event Themes for WordPress
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
On what s turned into an essentially endless quest to catalog good event themes for WordPress, we stumbled across Showthemes.com, a WordPress theme development provider whose work is targeted at the event industry.
Before we dive into the detalis, perhaps a peek at their promo video:
Thank freakin goodness and hats off to Show Themes it s about time a development shop sat down to tackle this, and a good event industry theme catalog is very needed. Show Themes currently offers a catalog of 5 theme options, some of which are geared towards conferences, some toward expos, some towards managing multiple events. The basic features are all there: speaker management, Eventbrite / Etouches integration, schedule listing, countdown clocks, ticketing levels, and tiered sponsor management good stuff.
Now, a small critique: I know that Show Themes is just really kicking off and is bound to evolve quickly, so take this with a grain of salt, but I m not 100{04d9822e7d95da125d508d8e1efbcf2edc79acd8aec1f0bbdcbd6a6f684f9bb3} sold on the front-end and I think the themes still seem a tad clunky on the visual design side. Tyler Theme, for example, could benefit from some work on the typography (Vertoh Theme fares better in this regard).
Where Show Themes really shines in terms of evaluation is that they provide access to the WordPress back end prior to purchase many theme developers don t offer the same courtesy. A look at the Vertoh administration panel:
The back end is off to a good start, utilizing WordPress custom post types features to create event-specific input categories in WordPress upon theme install, but benefit from some tweaking and extras. For example, it would be nice if we could see each session s time and location on the session listing page, then drag-and-drop to reorder sessions, as opposed to having to enter each event and manually re-set the time and date in case the event schedule changes (which of course, it will).
Speakers & Exhibitors
Nice one: session administration pages list all speakers present in the system, and allow event managers to associate speakers with sessions. This is crucial, because it means that you can easily edit session content in a couple of clicks without a ton of fiddling around with code.
At the moment, speakers and exhibitors must be entered manually by the site administrator, meaning that application submissions must happen via a different system. It d be nice if future themes offered a custom registration that automatically created an unpublished draft speaker / exhibitor entry in the system for the administrator to review.
The verdict
While in its infancy, Show Themes should be on your must-watch list. We very much hope they continue to develop the concept and their list of theme offerings this is a much needed niche that we re excited to see filled.
Three Ways to Leave Conference Speaker Selection in the Hands of your Audience
EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
In the age of social-everything, there s no need to take the close-your-eyes-and-pray method to choosing conference speakers.
Survey Last Year s Attendees
Your attendees from last year are one of your best resources for constructive feedback. It s best if you can collate feedback collected right after last year s event was over, but if you don t have access to that data (it was never collected, or maybe the organizer from last year s conference is unavailable), jump onto last year s mailing list and send out a survey. Whose speech did attendees most enjoy? What do they best remember about the previous year? What topics would they be most interested in hearing about this year? Anyone they d particularly like to hear from?
Use Klout
Professional event speakers are typically very active on social media, and they should have a significant following. The more followers and the more reach their posts get, the more support they have from the community, and the more likely they are to put on a good show. Klout is a free web app that measures the impact of experts by topic, using their social media oomph as a measurement. Search for any topic, and Klout will return a series of experts in that field, ranked by their social impact.
Use Speakerrate
Speakerrate, a sandbox project by the innovation lab at Viget, is a cool social startup that benefits event organizers, speakers and attendees, allowing planners to find the perfect speakers for your event based on real audience ratings and recommendations. You can view past talks, and see how attendees rated these speakers in the past.
It s Still Awesome: Five More Videos of Outdoor Facade Mapping
FACADE MAPPING
One of these days, we ll get over how awesome facade mapping is, but that day is not today.
Getty Museum, Los Angeles
For the launch of Pacific Standard Time at the Getty Center, Megavision Arts was tasked by producer Ben Bourgeois with designing a multi-media immersive experience that was projection-mapped onto five of the buildings. Incorporating artists works from over seventy Southern California institutions, the visual experience, synchronized with music and narration, illustrated the History of Art in LA: 1945 to 1980.
Grand Palais, Paris
Holy artspeak, Batman. Created by the abstract minds at teamLeab, The waterfall video art work is created in 3D space and uses what we consider to be the logic structure of spatial recognition of our Japanese Ancestors.
Parr Hall, UK
Made by the emerging technology gurus at Draw & Code, this projection mapping project featured Parr Hall, Warrington s top venue nestled in its historic quarter. With the help of local students, who provided the themes for the animation and its soundtrack too, we took the audience on a journey from Warrington s Roman roots through the literature of Lewis Carroll through the world wars and onto today.
Lakeview East, Chicago
Created by DCBolt Productions for the Lakeview East Festival of the Arts, this work was projected onto the Lakeview Athletic Club building facade to commemmorate the festival s 10th anniversary.
NOVAK
This one s kind of a mish-mash: the motion design guys over at NOVAK have put together a showreel of their recent projection mapping work, and it s worth a serious gander.
Decibel Vendor Profile: CGS Premier
EVENT INDUSTRY
CGS Premier, one of Decibel s vendors, has been around since 1993 producing awesome fabrications, specifically creating large-scale vehicle wraps for mobile media (trucks, trailors, vans, etc.), but also for custom trade show booths and displays, pop-up shops, and other set-it-up, break-it-down portable experiences. Fabrication is one of those things the public sees everywhere, but rarely questions where it came from: graphics and logos printed on semi trucks, advertisements on radio station mobile rigs, movie posters on the sides of city buses, branding on the outside of tour vans. We sat down with Bill Kurinsky, CGS s Director of Business Development, to talk shop.
Can you give us a quick intro to what you guys do?
CGS is a fabricator for the experiential marketing agency. We build everything from a 53 trailers to kiosks. The assets we build are used in marketing campaigns typically that provide a unique experience for the consumer. Some recent examples include: a mobile pro shop for the NFL, a pop-up retail station for the Gap store, and demos of mobile devices and high speed internet connections in a trailer for several telecommunication providers.
Can you give us a little rundown on when and how CGS got started and what was the inspiration or background behind the company?
We ve been in business for 20 years, and we started as a large format digital printer. In the mid 90 s, we starting building small marketing items for our print clients, such as unique trophies and other little things. We quickly grew into fabricating one-off trailers, and then in the 2000 s, our business really picked up and started to include larger fabs, such as SUV s, shipping containers, RVs etc
Your vehicle wraps are super cool. For those people out there who ve never done a project like that, can you tell us a little bit about how they re done (and how to get them off!)?
Wraps are a fun part of the business and truly give the projects we work on the special character everyone remembers about them. First, CGS creates a template to scale for our clients. The client s designers then use that template to create the custom wraps, and we provide insight about how to achieve the best wrap possible. We might call out areas that would effect the wrap negatively, or we might install the wrap in several layers to avoid seams in the vehicle or handles.
You guys print on a whole lot of unique surfaces what was one of your most challenging jobs?
This one s tough. We ve printed on concrete, I think would be the most unique.
For those readers that have never done a fabbing project, one burning question: what s the deal with photo resolution and printing at ginormous sizes? Can you get a quality print from a 300dpi image?
Actually, we like to see 400 DPI at 1/4 scale, but DPI isn t the only consideration in terms of quality you ve also go to think about how good the printing equipment is and how much the experience the installation team has with similar projects. Our printers take more passes across the wrap surface, which creates a prettier, more vibrant image, and our staff is very good at getting the digital color to match the actual printed product. You ve also got to be extremely well-versed in installing the final prints on a whole host of surfaces, expertly removing sideview mirrors and lights so that the vinyl can be tucked and flattened properly.
Boring business question: what sets you apart from your competitors?
Not boring at all, and that s simple: our people set us apart. We take all of our projects to heart, so much so that all of our staff can recall small details on projects they did years ago. Personally, I take great pride in two things: one, when clients come to the shop to see their finished project and they say Wow, I can t believe it, it looks just like the drawings we provided! At that point I know we hit a home run. Two, when a client tells us they plan to use something for a single-year summer tour, but three years later they come back and they ve been using our product the whole time. That s real craftsmanship.
Holy Creativity, Batman: Seven Incredible Event Invitation Designs
EVENT COLLATERAL
We scoured the web for the best event invitation design around.
Teepee Invitation
Every element of this letterpress wedding invitation, designed by Device Creative, is killer: the copy, the idea, the whole thing. Event planner Lisa Vorce wanted a custom invitation that would create conversation and excitement about her clients upcoming Native American-inspired wedding in the desert of Arizona. Drawing from those influences, we designed the form and function of a small teepee, complete with skewers as support beams.
Woodland Lettering Invitation
Created by Portland designer Ian Collins, this beautiful laser cut invitation is designed to mimic a rough-hewn naturalist field guide.
Paper-Vinyl Invitation
The Distillery is an Australian creative studio that hosts live music and art events on premises after hours. An event backed by a design team? No wonder.
Foldable 3D Invitation
This pop-open 3D invitation designed by Florida s Xavier Correa ships flat, but folds out into a four-sided cube. Very fitting for an event named The Art of Transformation .
There s only one thing to say about Italian design studio Happycentro s approach to creating invitations for the opening of a Louis Vitton store in Japan: Nailed it! We ve been asked to design and produce the invitation card for LV store opening in Osaka. The starting idea was a paper object designed by us; its shape, expression of perpetual precision and pureness of the origami world, we wanted to meet with our intimate passion for special printing techniques.
Stitched Invitation
This invitation for the GOMA welcome party succeeds where so much collateral fails: by making it warm, welcoming and above all, personal.
Artsy-pants Invitation
If I can t read it, it doesn t exist . Nice. UK design student Jurate Gacionyte says, Interactive invitation for a Gagosian group show exhibiting artists who work with words as their main medium. The invitation exists both in print and digital form. Completed at School of Visual Arts under the teaching of Luke Hayman and John Fulbrook III.
10 Jaw-Dropping #lightingdesign Instagrams
EVENT DESIGN
In real estate, we all know the magic mantra location, location, location. In stage design and event production? It s lighting, lighting, lighting. Lighting is a totally transformative art. Need proof? Check out these ten jaw-dropping #lightingdesign Instagrams from the last two months.
This stunning cloudscape:
This melancholy reminder that Less is More:
This Studio boardpr0n shot:
This very celebrated couple:
This explosion of lasers:
This extraterrestrial club experience:
This trailer transformed into high art:
This rehearsal:
This spotlight rainbow:
This bridge to nowhere:
Six Examples of Brands Using Augmented Reality in Experiential Marketing
BRAND ACTIVATIONS & MARKETING, EVENT PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
It s been all over the brand activation net since the release of the Oculus Rift: brands are diving into cutting-edge marketing via virtual reality headsets. Here are a few kick-arse (and in some cases, very experimental) example videos showcasing the new headset s potential uses in marketing scenarios.
British Airways
Brilliant: British Airways hit the streets in cities around Europe to get potential travelers excited about visiting the USA in a try before you buy kind of campaign via virtual reality America tours of the airline s US destinations.
SIEMENS
Electronics heavy-hitters SIEMENS called on virtual reality art and development team Masters of Pie to to produce a fully immersive virtual reality experience for the Euroblech tradeshow in Hannover, Germany . They go on to explain:
We had the task of explaining complex, invisible processes of Siemens Metal Forming Engineering products, so we took some inspiration from Tony Stark style holography to better showcase the products. We also attached a buttkicker vibration device to make the chair vibrate and add to the experience of presence and immersion.
Sleepy Hollow
Created by Secret Location created an experience to promote FOX s supernatural show, Sleepy Hollow.
Using the Oculus Rift VR technology combined with a 3D shoot, top quality CGI graphics, 360 sound, and a compelling story, Secret Location transported users to the world of Sleepy Hollow, giving them a truly unique and memorable Live experience.
Merrell
One way to make sure people remember you? Scare the living daylights of them. The adventure clothing and gear merchants at Merrell created an edgy augmented reality experience called Merrell TrailScape in which hikers took their chances walking on dangerous trails.
Mountain Dew
The guys over at agency firstborn created a VR experience for Mountain Dew, allowing fans to skateboard with their favorite extreme sports idols.
Lexus
Why even get in a car to test drive one? Using the very latest DK2 OR headsets, consumers are able to virtually experience the car via an immersive and interactive car configurator, allowing users to create their own NX by selecting from a range of features.
