For the third year of our raucous internal awards show, the Revvies(a la “Revolutionaries”), we decided to step things up for 2016. Because the office was undergoing substantial renovations, our small team of dedicated volunteers naturally gravitated towards the theme of “destroying what you like to create what you love.” Now, a standard brainstorm with a room full of creatives can be a festival of left-field ideas, so you can only imagine what ensued when the usual guardrails were lifted.
Many of us chose where and when to pitch in based on what needed to get done and what skillets were available. I assisted with numerous concepting phases through execution, delivering moodboards, animated GIFs, Snapchat filters, and something I love dearly but rarely have the opportunity to play with… signage. Now, teams of the past couple years hadn’t puled any punches and have produced an amazing variety of both hanging signs and posters employing spray paint, dimensional paper folding, and even 3D glasses—so doing something new was going to involve some of us getting uncomfortable. Hard materials. Layers. Destruction as part of the process. Active lighting.
It might not outwardly seem so based on the rest of this portfolio, but I vastly prefer getting my hands dirty in my free time over just about anything else. For the larger plywood/drywall corner installation, I combined my love of type and neon with the words “destroy” and “create” with sound-reactive signs made of electroluminescent wire over a metal framework. Additional Revvies lightning bolts were created in this manner for the smaller, freestanding signs.
The most time and skill intensive piece was the giant 3D Revvies “R” sign. Embodying the Create/Destroy theme, the nearly 4-foot by 6-inch deep logo hovers above a backing board divided diagonally between a space of pristine white melamine and torn fragments of misprinted or duplicate event posters. Edge-backlit by two different colors of flexible LEDs, the clean, chrome R seems to have been exposed by peeling away layers of welded scrap metal.
At least that’s what I was going for, I have no idea what I’m doing.
On the plus side, people liked it enough that it’s been semi-permanently affixed to one of the walls in the newly-renovated 9th floor space. It has yet to disintegrate or maim anyone.
