The Aleit Group Online Magazine Edition 31 | Page 21

With carte blanche as to what the look and thematic assembly of
the event would be, I started by doing a little research into famous
talk shows - Saturday Night Live and Jimmy Kimmel springing to
mind instantly. The general look and feel seemed to lean towards
an old-world-charm-meets-modern-innovation. I phoned up two dear
colleagues of mine – Kelsie from aMedia and Jeanne-Loïs from
Granny The Wolf, décor consultant for A Place. Between the three
of us we decided that a designer look with strong architectural lines
and beautiful wooden elements would be the perfect look to warm up
the mammoth Sandton Convention Centre. Frozen flowers and clear
Perspex was decided on as a good starting point, and so we headed
off and started designing in our perspective fields of expertise.
Now, naturally, the theatrical in me was very keen to incorporate
a live set in the conference. This idea was shortly after approved
and so the design process started. Hours of sketching, measuring
and conceptualizing led to a design that I was finally happy with.
However, when I briefed the final designs in to our set construction
company it just so happened that they were already consumed by
a large workload and were unable to construct my set in time! So I
jumped in and 12 hours later my drawings were becoming a reality in
the buzzing city of Midrand under the careful watch of the fantastic
team at Stageworks. So, crisis averted, I moved my attention back
to décor.
At this point we had a look at décor once more – stunning designer
furniture pieces including the iconic white Charles Eames chairs were
lined up, the exclusive furniture from A Place’s marvelous catalogue
was loaded and exquisite new custom made lampshades, throws
and vases were packed. On the stationery front, Kelsie had created
incredible Perspex menus, blue Perspex cut-out inspirational words
and clear Perspex shuttle signage, complete with oak finished stands.
So the team took on the long journey to Johannesburg, prepared to
sail into unchartered waters and create something that we’ve never
seen before…

EVENTS // 21