The City of Hope’s Spirit of Life Award Gala, which was produced by Namevents, featured decor inspired by a sunset with blue, yellow, and pink tones. The logo was brought to life by a ceiling treatment, which used oversized panels hung in the shape of rays. The event took place in November at the Barker Hangar in Los Angeles.
The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute held its “Monkey Business Gala” in September in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard in Washington. The evening featured food stations from Africa, North America, Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Asia, highlighting the regions in which the organization works to save species.
At the Basser Center for BRCA’s “Jean Bash” benefit—which raises funds for the BRCA gene-related cancer research center—David Stark riffed on the “genes” theme in the event’s decor. For example, folded denim jeans in a variety of shades were used to create a wall that was a backdrop for the event's photo booth. Jeans also were used to created a three-dimensional number five. The benefit took place in November at Cipriani Wall Street in New York.
In October, Events By Fabulous produced the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles "Once Upon a Time" gala, complete with whimsical storybook tablescapes and decor. More than 1,200 philanthropists, local dignitaries, and supporters gathered at the Event Deck at L.A. Live to raise $4 million in support of the hospital. The main stage featured a beanstalk-wrapped proscenium and larger-than-life props from fairy tales such as Peter Pan and Cinderella, while the cocktail area included theme performers and a Mad Hatter acrobat troupe.
In October, Meridian International Center hosted the 48th annual Meridian Ball. Following dinners at venues around Washington, guests, including high-level officials, ambassadors, business leaders, and media, gathered in the Meridian House’s gardens, as well as inside a tent on the venue’s lawn for dessert and dancing. The event’s inspiration was the Orient Express, featuring elements such as hanging faux gas lamps, luggage accessories, leather furniture, and a travel-theme dinner menu. In addition, the dance tent was transformed into the Moulin Rouge (since Paris was a popular spot on the Express) with marquee letters and fiery red accents.
The nonprofit arts organization Performa celebrated its 10th anniversary with a Renaissance-theme gala in Brooklyn on November 4. "Death of the Rubber Chicken," conceived by artist Jennifer Rubell, served as the opening act for the interactive dinner. Guests were encouraged to swat the suspended rubber chickens, which were filled with smoked paprika, in order to dust the table lined with deviled eggs below.
Tasting Table’s Lobster Rumble took place June 7 at the Brooklyn Expo Center. Attendees could vote for their favorite lobster roll by placing poker chips in a wall that displayed the names of each vendor.
Gwyneth Paltrow hosted the third edition of Goop’s wellness summit June 9 at 3Labs in Culver City. The event’s step-and-repeat featured the name of the event in white cursive letters against a backdrop of leaves and fruit including oranges, grapefruits, kiwis, and grapes. Floral company Bloom & Plume created the welcome wall, and the event’s overall design was handled by Agenc.
The 20th anniversary of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery’s fund-raiser took place May 31 in Toronto. The event, which had a risqué traveling circus theme, featured a "Vegan Huntress Club" station where guests could shoot a crossbow into a line of unsuspecting fruits and vegetables.
On Web Summit’s Pitch stages—site of the event’s start-up competitions—organizers used upcycled chairs made from chipboard.
Games including ping-pong, oversize Jenga, ring toss, and cornhole—all rendered in the event’s color palette—were available to guests.
Held at Fontainebleau Miami Beach, the event included activities for guests including the "Wine Wall." For a $100 donation, guests could choose a numbered wine bottle on the wall that corresponded to a food- or wine-theme prize.
Furniture from FormDecor and rentals from Town and Country added an appropriately pink touch to the outdoor event.
In May, Kim Crawford Wines hosted a “Sip Into Summer” rosé soiree at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. An elegant gold and black step-and-repeat was adorned with bottles of rosé and a variety of pink flowers.
When Toronto-based Eatertainment Special Events & Catering relocated its offices in July 2017, the company threw a summer bash with a rosé-theme room. In addition to featuring five varieties of the wine, all from Provence, France, the space offered a variety of pink macarons and a chandelier made of roses from Bloom Plus.
For its annual conference, which took place in March, MillerCoors partnered with AgencyEA to create an exhibit for 22 beer brands at the Austin Convention Center. The Crispin Rosé hard cider bar displayed bottles of the new cider against a backdrop of greenery with oversize hot pink letters that read "Rosé all day." A pink bar was situated under a giant teepee with pink florals.
Menus doubled as keepsakes at the Best New Chefs Dinner featuring all of the participating chefs' signatures in silver paint markers.
The luxury car brand also hosted its annual Oscar celebration on Thursday night at Chateau Marmont, drawing a crowd of celebrities including Allison Janney, Tiffany Haddish, and Sarah Silverman. Event Eleven handled production and design.
Names scrawled on leaves marked seats.
For the 22nd year, meals were prepared by chef Joachim Splichal and the team at Patina Catering. The culinary group partnered for the first time with L.A. Kitchen, a nonprofit that focuses on using healthy food that would otherwise be discarded to feed the local community. The organization also helps unemployed men and women seek jobs, and gave members the chance to assist with food preparation at the Emmys events.
The massive dinners required more than 200 chefs, including 20 executive chefs, and 600 servers. Dinners included three courses: The first course, dubbed Last of the Heirlooms, featured local heirloom tomatoes, dinosaur plum, red quinoa, charred leek vinaigrette, balsamic jelly, basils, and sea salt. For the main course, guests dined on pan-roasted filet mignon with mission figs, asparagus, purple marble potatoes, roasted red flame grapes, creamy horseradish purée, and whole-grain mustard sauce. And for dessert, there was an alunga brownie bar with dulce de leche, roasted cherries, and cherry gel.
Kicking off award season on August 16, The Hollywood Reporter teamed up with the Beverly Center to host a panel discussion dubbed Candidly Costumes. The event took place in the newly renovated, soon-to-be Michael Mina food hall of the center, and featured a discussion with Emmy-nominated costume designers. Stoelt Productions handled production and decor, creating photo galleries for each show that was nominated and filling the space with sleek, white furniture and white flowers. The stage featured a greenery backdrop branded with the hosts’ logos.
TD Bank's employee recognition dinner in 2009 was meant to feel not at all like a typical dinner and presentations, as it had in previous incarnations. The guest list shrank from 2,000 to 100, and attendees dined at and presented from a single, organically shaped table, designed by Tribbles Home & Garden. (Blooms in varying colors on the place settings helped attendees locate their seats at the unconventional structure.) Clear glass vessels filled with orchid blooms hovered over diners. Also absent from the proceedings was a stage. Instead, speakers—seated next to the employees they were lauding—stood at the table to make the presentations. Additional personal touches included the use of magnetic name tags (emblazoned with hand calligraphy) in place of less refined plastic pin-on badges, a hall of fame displaying photos of the evening's winners, and an after-party decorated with white lounge furniture in casual configurations.
The BET Awards took over the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live this summer, and although the show garnered critical praise, the biggest story to come out of the annual hoopla wasn't on the big night's main stage. Instead, the most noted development was that BET remade its annual telecast this year into a weekend-long event known as the BET Experience, a festival that drew thousands of fans downtown for music, yes—but also for panels, films, seminars, and more. In the BET “We Got You” pavilion, produced by Events by Fabulous, fans could check out BET shows in the programming lounge and listen to music at the gospel listening station. Crowds also gathered for meet and greets with cast members from BET shows. Activities included a green-screen music video booth and a so-called “photo bomb” station to crash snapshots with popular BET celebs.
Bring in a striking visual artist for an eye-catching new approach to a stale stage show. New York artist Charlene Lanzel creates images in sand on a light table. As she works, a camera projects her progress onto a screen so the audience can watch. Her standard performance is a 25-minute set of original designs, but clients can also request logos and other custom images. Fees range from $1,200 to $5,000.
After a radical format change, which in 2011 replaced the traditional seated dinner with a reception followed by dessert and the presentation ceremony, the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International once again reworked its Adrian Awards gala in New York last year. The event implemented some new ideas that would allow the 800 industry professionals in attendance more time and space to socialize with their peers and view the winning work. Central to the revamp was maintaining a comfortable environment for the hospitality execs to network. That meant tweaking the layout of the dinner reception's stations, bars, and seating to provide more room for guests to maneuver, plus offering a more reception-friendly menu. The organizers also added extra time between the end of the reception in the hotel's eighth-floor Broadway Lounge and the start of the award presentation on the sixth floor, giving attendees more time to get settled at their tables.
Looking for more audience engagement to rev up the energy? Get the crowd going with color-changing, motion-sensitive Zygote balls from Crowd Activation, a newly launched division of Canadian creative studio Tangible Interaction devoted to the company’s physical interactive products. An updated take on the crowd-surfing beach balls often spotted at rock concerts, the lightweight, seven-foot-wide helium-inflated balloons respond to human touch with random or pre-programmed colored light displays. Customized interactions—like letting guests influence the music or video-screen graphics when they touch the Zygotes—are also possible. Made from fireproof material and containing wireless LED lights, the rechargeable balls have a one-hour operating life. Custom vinyl stickers or logos can be applied to the Zygotes.
For a dramatic award show, take a cue from live music acts and punch up your stage set with wild visuals. "Reflection mapping” is an innovation from V Squared Labs that uses mirrors, light, and sculptural form to dramatic effect—and it's just debuting on the live event scene this month. The visual arts studio teamed up with electronic dance music group Krewella to create the visual technology as a stage set for the band's tour. Dubbed “the Volcano,” the set comprises mapped crystal structures, with crystals made out of one- and two-way mirrored acrylic plastic outfitted with reflective backing to create an interior mapping effect. Each crystal is also equipped with either LED, video LED tape, or both, inside, creating complex reflection effects that appear visually to change the structure from within. V Squared Labs founder Vello Virkhaus and lead designer Amanda Hamilton collaborated with fabricator and technical engineer Stefano Novelli to bring the vision of ”'reflection mapping” from pencil sketches and creative reference point into the real world. Want to try something similar for an award show? Hamilton said there are future applications for the concept: “The effect of contained infinite reflections is a technique we'd love to explore further, as controlling chaos is an exciting challenge.”
Mix things up every year for an event that people will want to keep attending. From a dinner onstage at a historic theater to a family-style feast inspired by a royal banquet, Clarks's annual award dinner gets a lush, distinctive setting and look every year. For this year's event at Boston's Royale Nightclub in June, the footwear company's senior director of corporate events and community relations, Jane Feigenson, drew inspiration from two very disparate sources: street art and the opera. “The nightclub was originally an opera house and has a cool vibe,” Feigensen said. “I played off the opulence of opera and mixed in splashes of graffiti and grunge.” The look was both glam and grunge—and very cohesive.
Take a cue for a successful night from one of the biggest televised award shows. When we polled planners after last year's National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' 54th Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, we found their favorite components of the event was the stage set. Javier Velarde said the best part was: “The set design. It was clean, modern, high-tech, and worthy of 'music’s biggest night.' Throughout the night it changed colors, but never more than one color at a time, which goes to prove less is more. I also liked the lighting. Lighting designer Bob Dickinson is in a class of his own—is there anything he doesn’t do? The color palette. They used ‘black and gold’ throughout the night, the Grammy colors, which looked classy and sophisticated. Great branding and the golden amber lighting gave it warmth. There was great use of technology too. LED set, LED lighting, LED screens, LED stages, LED backdrops."
Keep guests' eyes on the stage and off the smartphones in their laps with a dramatic visual presentation, like this one: Inspired by an explosion, illuminated acrylic structures expanded out from the center of the main stage at the Much Music Video Awards in Toronto last year.
If guests can't clearly see what's happening on stage, you've lost them from the word go. Use multiple screens to keep the program accessible, and incorporate them in a way that grabs the eye. Like this: ESPN's big annual ESPY award show took over the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, where multiple screens and illuminated panels created a vibrant and dynamic stage set that continually changed its look throughout the program.
The Public Art Fund hosted its spring benefit in April at Metropolitan West in New York, honoring the artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei. The ribbon-adorned space, which was created by 360 Design Events, included table settings with clock face placements designed by Los Angeles-based artist Amanda Ross-Ho.
Held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington in March, the Leukemia Ball, which was designed by Hargrove, featured the event theme of “Illuminate: Shining the Light on Progress.” This idea was translated through the use of light throughout the design, including the stage and stage chandelier. The event raised $3 million.
For the American Cancer Society’s 12th annual Discovery Ball, which took place in April at the Swissȏtel Chicago and featured the theme of “Impact From Every Angle,” HMR Designs extended miles of ribbons from 125 points on the ceiling. As guests moved around the room, the angles intersected to create dynamic visuals.
The Beverly Center and The Advocate magazine kicked off Pride month in Los Angeles on June 1 with an event that celebrated the L.G.B.T.Q. community and the magazine's four "Champions of Pride" honorees. Event decor, which was handled by ESE Lifestyle, included a tree with rainbow origami leaves. PMK-BNC produced the event.
The 36th annual Food & Wine Classic in Aspen took place June 15 to 17. At the Grand Tasting, cork muralist Scott Gunderson worked on a live art installation for #SGPAmEx.
Perrier celebrated the launch of a fruit juice beverage on June 19 at the Bisha Hotel in Toronto. Synchronized swimmers wearing Perrier-branded swim caps posed with branded sun umbrellas in front of a wall of fruit and greenery. The event was produced by Community and A&C.
The pop-up has an oxygen bar with flavors such as lavender, grapefruit, and lemongrass.
The aura-reading box produced polaroids, which were hung outside the installation for guests to take home.
The brand provided a fresh take on water refill stations, with three that resembled outdoor showers. The space also featured a custom mural with colorful, cartoon illustrations depicting New York.
Tim Hortons hosted a pajama party and movie screening for media and influencers on August 2 at the screening room at Thompson Toronto hotel. Guests were given branded robes to wear, while they indulged in the Canadian fast food company’s breakfast offerings and custom coffee cocktails served in Tim Hortons cups. The event was planned and executed by NKPR and the custom robes were designed by Plan-It Promotions.
For part of its new marketing campaign, confectionary brand Black Forest activated a giant fabricated tree that rained gummy bears. Woven baskets were filled with gummy bears, and brand ambassadors were on site to shake more from the tree. The activation, which took place August 2 and 3 on the High Line in New York, was produced by Mission.
