I Spy With My Designer Eye...

Recently I accompanied my husband on a business trip to San Diego for an Informix Conference. As an ex-IT professional it was fun to attend the evening events but the designer in me quickly emerged.   As talks about various software packages continued I found myself engaged with all the color, lighting and music  components engineered to make this a successful event.   And the food, of course.  Food, at any event, always matters.

It's fascinating what you can do in a commercial space that you can't really do in a residential environment.  It's the fact that the size of any space effects the scale and proportion of the elements that you can use within the space.  Let's look at the rug for instance.  The huge geometric figures and the pattern would be too busy in a residential living room but in a commercial space its whimsical and unbeat and fits quite well.



The lights are also very complimentary to the conference room.  The copper, mica and wood elements  bare the imprint of the Arts and Crafts Movement which so dominates the California architectural style.  Thanks to the Greene Brothers and the Pasadena influence some of the best examples of  the Arts and Crafts period in America such as the Gamble House can be found  in California. 

The young performer for the evening was +Trent Hancock.   Singing a variety of old tunes, plus a few of his original tunes he totally engaged many of the attendees with  his smooth and clear vocals as well as his easy style.  A sample of his style and  performance can be heard on this webpage: http://www.reverbnation.com/trenthancock#!/playlist/view_playlist/-4?page_object=artist_903652.

As with any business conference there are usually little gifts from the vendors.  My favorite was a tin of the famous London phone booth with about 20 English Breakfast teabags given to me by Mehdi Afshar of Querix Europe which is homebased in the UK.  My designer eye caught this tin from across the room.  That's why Sir Giles Scott designed it using the color red. Red is an attention getter.