Creative Ideas

As guests arrived, servers handed out cocktails called the "Magritte-Ahh." The drinks combined cotton-candy clouds with tequila, agave, and lime-kaffir salt.

The cocktail reception was held in the museum's Pritzker Garden. HMR Designs, which handled decor for the whole evening, brought in a round central bar with a huge centerpiece of bowler hats.

Trays of edible licorice pipes topped the bar, and guests could grab one with their cocktails. Some used them as a swizzle stick.

Chef Tony Mantuano and his team at Bon Appetit Catering, the museum's in-house firm, created a playful menu that nodded to Magritte's Belgian roots. At one station, guests could top their own baked pretzels with honey, cheese, and whole-grain mustard.

Referencing one of the Magritte works in the current exhibition, which features a painting of brie cheese on a domed glass plate, the cocktail-hour buffet held large chunks of the creamy cheese.

Other snacks included green apples filled with chicken-liver mousse. The inspiration? Green apples appear in some of Magritte's paintings.

In another nod to the artist's heritage, mixologist Adam Seger created Blanche de Brussels Belgian Ale sorbet. The beer-based treat was meant to pair with the pretzels.

Drawing from another emblem in Magritte's work, HMR Designs hung 45 floating clouds in the dinner space.

Frost handled the lighting and created cloud-filled projections to go with the floating clouds above the dinner tables.

Images of blue skies decked the tabletops, and green apples sat atop Lucite boxes that glowed after the sun set.

Tables were preset with a dish called "Landscape." It contained potato, beet, and kale chips and had spinach, saffron, and piquillo sauces in paint tubes.

Playing off the famous Magritte quotation "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (or, "This is not a pipe"), the first course came with a sign that read, "This is Not a Soup." The dish contained king crab, lobster tail, cauliflower, baby zucchini, squash blossom, sweet corn, and lobster essence.

The 80-foot screen hung on a curved truss in front of the columns in the National Building Museum’s Great Hall.

The “Land, Sea, and Sky” theme of the National Geographic flag inspired an array custom tables and toppers, including glacier ice sculptures. Syzygy Events International created the custom pieces for the event.

Select Lucite tables served as aquariums with water and plant life inside.

Lucite tables were filled with natural objects like sea shells.

Living plants served as centerpieces on select tables.

Iconic, high-definition National Geographic images and video clips were displayed on projection screens during the 125th anniversary gala dinner and program.

For the program’s finale, the 80-foot screen projecting high-definition National Geographic videos and still images flew up in a four-second reverse Kabuki drop, revealing the Society’s Explorers-in-Residence, photographers, 2013 Emerging Explorers, the Washington Symphonic brass, and six gala awardees: explorer and filmmaker James Cameron, National Geographic Bee moderator Alex Trebek, oceanographer Sylvia Earle, scientist and author Edward O. Wilson, philanthropist Howard G. Buffett, and BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner.

The inspiration for the massive screens originated from the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Black-out lids were used for the gala, which had never been done before at the National Building Museum.

Illuminated Lucite boxes etched with maps of the world hung over the bar in the reception area. The lower rim was outlined in iconic National Geographic yellow.

National Geographic fellow and chef Barton Seaver worked with Occasions Caterers for the gala’s three-course menu.

Syzygy covered the courtyard's pond with staging to provide more seating in the reception area.

Two standing frames with video projections at the entrance to the dinner area began the process of atmosphere conversion from outdoors to the underwater world of the dinner.

Green draping and coral-like flexi-forms decorated the dinner entryway.

Actor Chevy Chase was among the night's celebrity attendees.

Syzygy suspended curled sheer blue, green, and coral fabric from the ceiling of the dinner area to create a seaweed look.

Atmosphere Lighting used blue, green, pink, and purple lighting to add to the underwater atmosphere.

One of the various centerpiece designs used at the reception and dinner area consisted of seashells submerged in water and topped with floating candles.

Video projections of underwater activity covered three of the room's four walls.

Each of the dinner tables had wineglasses and chargers of a different glass design.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer served as M.C.

The program included a prerecorded message from the astronauts aboard the space station.

Director and explorer in residence James Cameron spoke about his work in underwater exploration and the importance of the work the explorers in attendance are doing.

Honoree Jack Johnson performed four songs at the end of the night.

Design Cuisine served panna cotta topped with fresh strawberries for dessert.

Waiters walked among the dinner tables serving candies after dinner in addition to the dessert course.

Guests received decks of National Geographic Explorers trading cards and a copy of Barton Seaver's cookbook before departing.

A video wall spanned an entire corner of the reception space, showing images from various networks' programming. Custom highboy tables were decorated with adjectives such as "style" and "imagination" that the networks used to describe their content.

"The room pops when the sun goes down," said Jeff Kaplan, vice president of global events and brand activation at Discovery Communications.

At a green-screen photo setup promoting the new show Naked and Afraid, guests' heads were superimposed on a male or female character from the show (with private parts pixelated). The photos were printed on site.

Guests could take photos in a set for Animal Planet's show Treehouse Masters. Props included hard hats, and the photos were shot from below to give the appearance of being high up in a tree.

A bar for Oprah Winfrey's OWN was fronted with purple paillettes and served Moscow Mule drinks in copper mugs bearing the network's logo. The mugs served as take-home gifts.

TLC had one of the largest areas with its own step-and-repeat and bar.

In the TLC section, cake-pop trees held confections from Georgetown Cupcake, the bakery featured on the network's show DC Cupcakes.

A Velocity network activation invited guests to time themselves while changing a tire. Two experts were on hand to demonstrate.

Organizers took advantage of the soaring ceilings at Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, drawing the eyes upward with custom chandeliers, video projections, and activations on every level of the tiered room.

The Discovery Channel had a three-sided bar, each with a different theme—fire, ice, and gold—to highlight different shows.

Tweets posted via iPads were immediately displayed on a Twitter wall; the area below the wall served as a step-and-repeat.

A Pop Art-style diorama at the United Way of Greater Los Angeles HomeWalk event showed a park with a 3-D bench, designed to represent a common plight of homeless veterans in town.

Another photo station featured a bedroom painted on a brick wall, meant to convey the seriousness of the problem for homeless families.

Mobile billboards told real stories of unique individuals.

United Way's goal was to provide deeper insight and learning—while raising funds—among its 14,00 participants.