Events

A picnic lunch Wednesday offered picnic baskets for groups of seven—so each person had to meet six new folks with whom to chat and chow.

Marketing agency SapientNitro’s official March 10 launch party during SXSW's interactive conference featured DJ music at Parish Austin alongside an immersive experience that included a "storyscape" chalkboard where guests could write notes to each other and play an oversize version of magnetic poetry.

Helium-filled Zygote balls, which were printed with sponsors’ names, changed color when touched at a retail conference.

As the green-colored M&M, Ms. Green, is billed as having star quality and a fabulous, flirty demeanor, the green room included eye-popping wallpaper, framed pictures of the character's fake magazine covers, and a green vanity with green makeup.

Relate is a new conference series from software company Zendesk that is focused on exploring relationships and customer service. To tie to that theme, organizers offered a thank-you note station at the May event in San Francisco. The company’s in-house creative team designed witty cards and invited attendees to personalize them with a hand-written note expressing their appreciation to their colleagues. More than 300 cards were stamped and then mailed by Zendesk staff, and attendees took home an additional 1,000 cards and envelopes.

A picnic combines an alternative to traditional meal service with a networking activity. And when held indoors, a picnic can take place year-round. Organizers of the TED Conference, which was held in Vancouver in February, provided blankets and baskets filled with food for six people and invited attendees to find others to share it inside the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Badge decorating is an activity that allows attendees to show their individuality and creativity—and creates an easy topic of conversation among strangers. At the 2015 Summer Brand Camp Conference in Dallas, organizers invited guests to decorate their badges with colored beads, in a nod to the event’s children’s-camp vibe.

Saveur hosted its Summer BBQ in New York in 2014. To get attendees excited about what would greet them within the outdoor culinary event, the words "cocktails," "sweets," "photo booth," "music” and others decorated a staircase.

At Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs event in 2014, organizers eschewed a traditional red carpet in favor of stairs leading to the event space emblazoned with a custom typography message bearing the name of the occasion.

In 2013, New York’s famous Costume Institute gala had a punk-inspired theme. Nodding to the genre’s British and American origins, designers dressed the museum’s staircase with American and British flags made entirely of 150,000 red, white, and blue roses.

At the Corcoran Gallery of Art gala in Washington in 2012, a baroque-style gobo decked out the museum’s grand staircase, which is lined with marble statues and busts.

In its first year in Canada, 2014, the TED conference decked Vancouver Convention Center's stairs with color-blocked sections printed with the conference's tagline, "The next chapter starts here.”

Each year, E3 takes over multiple halls in the Los Angeles Convention Center, as well as its lobby areas and on the plazas outside. The show and its vendors take over stairs for marketing and branding, as in this example from 2013, which used both the stairs and surrounding columns.

Cole Haan took to New York in 2012 to introduce its Chelsea Pump, marketed as a shoe that can be worn late into the night. As part of the brand’s “Don’t Go Home” campaign, it hosted dance parties at a venue where the stairs bore messages announcing reasons to stay out late.

Event designer David Beahm used votive candles in a snaking pattern down the the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s stairs for a private corporate event.

In a more straightforward take on the look, a display of 1,200 votive candles lined the stairs in the Great Hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at the opening-night party for Bullets Over Broadway in New York in 2014, greeting the 900 guests as they arrived from the St. James Theatre.

Sabra Dipping Company set up a pop-up dining experience called Hummus House in Washington in 2014. Within the space, stairs leading to the second floor were decorated with pots containing dried vegetables meant to represent various flavors of the brand’s hummus.

Moët & Chandon was the official champagne partner for Sex and the City 2, and as such, the brand worked with Warner Brothers to host an advance screening of the sequel at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago in 2010. The brand decorated the stairs at the venue with branded stars reminiscent of the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame.

Engadget hosted a meet-up for its readers in New York in 2011. Not missing an opportunity to brand the venue for 1,400 guests walking the stairs, the AOL-owned tech blog used them as surfaces on which to plaster its logo.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in the Southern California desert of Indio has a massive footprint, so guests need clear instructions back to their cars and bikes in remote lots. Guests at this year's event in April found their way back by following long pathways that they could easily identify and remember by color.

At Target’s 2015 launch event in New York for its Lilly Pulitzer collaboration, guests entering the event space found directional signage promoting the #LillyforTarget hashtag—as well as providing directions to offerings such as a juice stand.

The Bata Shoe Museum celebrated its 20th anniversary in Toronto last year. To encourage guests to explore various spaces within the museum, organizers used a maze theme: At the entrance, guests were given “clue cards” that encouraged them to find the answers to puzzles by entering different galleries. Maze-like markings in hot pink on the floor served as directional signage that led guests into various parts of the venue.

More than 320,000 people packed the streets of downtown Jacksonville, Florida, last year for One Spark, the world’s largest crowdfunding festival. Organizers overhauled the festival signage to emphasize interaction—with big results: At the end of the six-day event, attendees contributed more than $93,000 to creator projects, a 75 percent increase over the previous year.

The Golden Globe awards are known to bring a crush of parties all under the roof of the Beverly Hilton on one night. Directional signage on flatscreen monitors in the lobby during the 2014 events directed guests to the various parties, minimizing confusion and delays as well as the necessity for staff intervention.

At the inaugural Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas in 2013—and at every incarnation since—the goal has been to facilitate a sense of inclusivity and positivity among festivalgoers. To that end, staffers held signs to show they were available to answer any questions, including directing guests to their destinations within the event that spanned 15 city blocks.

At the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in Los Angeles in 2014, even directional signage leading guests to seating got an arty, rustic look in keeping with the rest of the event's chic decor.

Ford Motor Company’s display at the 2011 Model Central Florida International Auto Show in 2010 featured directional signage resembling road signs bearing the names of actual highways around Orlando.

Keep Memory Alive’s 16th annual “Power of Love Gala” took to MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas in 2012, celebrating Muhammad Ali’s 70th birthday and raising money for the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health and the Muhammad Ali Center. Models dressed like ring girls held signage that directed guests to various areas of the expansive silent auction.

The Taste the Orange event celebrated 75 years of the Orange Bowl and the Bowl Championship Series national championship coming to Miami in 2009. There, directional signs bearing regional names helped guest navigate the event space, which measured in at a whopping 30,000 square feet.

Open to the public from March 22 to 25, Freeform’s Mermaid Museum explored the mermaid folklore that’s featured in the Disney-owned network’s new series.

The museum’s main attraction was a 50,000-pound tank containing a live mermaid. The 4,800 gallons of water were donated to TreePeople to be used to water the facility’s landscape at the end of the exhibition’s run.

In addition to donating the tank water, Freeform also donated to Heal the Bay to help keep Los Angeles’ coastal waters and watersheds clean.

A 360-degree animated underwater projection room with a ball pit and soundscape submerged visitors into underwater life.

A photo-op included an underwater garden complete with seaweed, anemones, and a column of air bubbles. When shared on social media, the image was turned sideways so attendees looked as if they were swimming with mermaids.

Guests could send out a “message in a bottle” at this display.

At the Bristol Cove Mermaid Shop activation, which featured authentic props from the show’s set, actors debated with visitors over whether mermaids are real, and shared rumored sightings and local gossip. Before entering the museum, guests were asked if they were skeptics or true believers.

An oversize oyster shell with a giant pearl offered guests a place to pose.

The restrooms featured custom signs for “mermaids” and “mermen.”

Specialty cocktails included the purple-hued “Oceanic Haze,” which featured a mini decorative bottle garnish.

Colorful fish tank-style gravel and a starfish adorned the catering trays.

On-theme donuts from Spudnuts were decorated with shiny, candy-colored pearls, seashells, and fish tails.