Stage set up

It's happeningggg. This was a full weekend of work... and then some.

Production time

Pins and packaging! (The packaging made all the difference)

Finally, everything is getting printed and ready to be cut and prepped for the conference. I am currently running on a 24 hour schedule (which is ridiculous, I know) It goes something like this: 

"Wake up" prep most files for printing

10am get temple, print files, prep for volunteers

1030am, meet volunteers and delegate work/give instruction and watch

12n, eat lunch

1pm Head back to the office to do some design work to print, so people can help put things together

4pm Check up on volunteers, print more items, give new instructions

6pm dinner

7pm-1030pm update meeting

11pm - ??am finish designs on items for next day's production end of workflow 

luggage name and room tags

Did you Know?

This is a series of posters titled, Did you know? containing interesting facts about Buddhism or BLIA or YAD. The idea was initiated by the fact that the dining hall has Chinese calligraphy paintings on the walls and many of the participants cannot read Chinese, so we were to make an English replacement for the walls that would be equally interesting for them to read.

The difficulty here was finding a font that would be appropriate and easy to read. The poster is placed fairly high up and the text varies in length.

In the end, due to the fact that the English language takes up 2x the space that Chinese characters do, we doubled the width of the posters and added some colour to make it look less serious and more fun.

IBLYARC Stage

A stage decoration was asked for two events during the conference, the Welcoming Dinner and the Buddha's Light Night. They wanted something that said, "Hey, look, we (Toronto) are your hosts, but we are happy you (any other city, Canadian or American) are here too with us." without looking nationalistic (via hanging a big flag) and looking like a political campaign. 

So I set to create a cityscape that held icons from each participating city in the conference. From left to right: Dallas (Tower), Orlando (Disney), Edmonton (City hall), New York (Liberty), Toronto (CN tower), Montreal (Biodome), Vancouver (Totem pole), Fremont (City hall), and Los Angeles (Hollywood).

Construction first draft

Construction took a while to figure out. We wanted something that wouldn't take up too much stage space and wouldn't fall over when people are dancing on stage. In the end we built everything out of foamcore and supported it with wooden posts and bags of rice as weights. A light ran between the skyline and the buildings to create extra depth and shadows.

IBLYARC signage

Signs! These things are everywhere, helping direct traffic, helping lost participants find their workshops, helping registrants locate their items, etc. With such a large committee organizing different things there was no way we would be able to guess what everybody would need from our team for certain planned events. We sent out a notice for each department to register (by a certain date) for any signage ("service") they needed from us for their event/sessions and our team would make them, print them, and leave it in a box for pick-up. This communication worked out super well because it saved us from wasting work and time. Woohoo!

go team!

Man this is going to be a rough month.

Luggage tags

The accommodation team needed something that would allow us to identify and separate luggage from different cities so when they transport them from airport to hotel so it doesn't get confused in the shuffle. I made the luggage tag only under the instruction of "make me a luggage tag" so I drafted one up quickly. Meanwhile another team felt that the tags were not suited to their needs, so we made a second type that was 17" long and had each individual's last name written on it. Later we also colour coordinated the tags with a coloured ribbon for easy sorting. A specific colour for each city.

drafts

meow

I think you would.

Steve Hon prints shirts

This guy prints my shirts. He's really super!