Recently our team had a woman ask us where we acquired our stage design from. The assumption was we had used an outside vendor to decorate our stage. That is quite the compliment considering the dirty truth. The truth is that our team makes everything from scratch. And not only is it all made in-house, it's made economically (i.e. cheap). Here are a few quick tips and ideas about stage design.
The major things to consider for staging:
Budget
Do you have a champagne vision on a beer budget? No problem. Let your creativity extend past the vision stage into the implementation stage. Find materials that fit both the design and the design budget.
Length of Use
As a rule of thumb, the longer the time period a design will be on display the greater the argument to spend a few extra bucks on your look. If your look will be on display for a long time, figure out proper ways you can build as you go. Perhaps you can add subtle elements through out the design's shelf-life to keep it fresh.
Re-Use
Any chance the display (or the materials within the display) can be re-used? The best designs our team has stumbled upon have this element of re-use built into them.
Man Hours
Estimate ahead of time the hours involved in building a display and then add some additional hours for the unforeseen. Don't forget the hours involved specific to clean up. Also, don't forget every good build needs a scheduled tear down as well.
Seasons
To be relevant make sure to take into account the various seasons your design will be displayed. Seasons can include spring, summer, fall, and winter. Seasons additionally can be cultural contexts such as Back-to-School, a Sex in the City 2 release, or the Super Bowl.
Genesis - Book of Beginnings
Calvary Church recently launched a teaching series studying the first book of the Bible, "Genesis." We allowed our printed branding to inform our stage design. In this case we took the trees out of our printed design and placed them on stage. This helps tie the feeling of Genesis (creation) with the summer months (outdoors). We printed the trees on a banner printer and stuck them to foam core boards. The boards then had to be cut out and placed in hand-made frames. Tech then took some time to up-light the trees to help them stand out from the rest of the elements on stage. In total it required more than 10 willing participants (staff and volunteers) in various areas to make this simple design come together. Happy designing!
