Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce

Citizen of the Year Event

Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce vertical logo

Custom Event Centerpiece Design & Build

We were excited to be asked to design and build the centerpieces for the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce’s Citizen of the Year event for 2018. This year we wanted to focus on clearing the clutter from the table so that the whole table had a more cohesive design. We incorporated the table number into the centerpiece and made a complimentary piece for the Main Course sponsor.

Design Concepts and Prototypes

We wanted to do something that incorporated wood and acrylic, curves and angles, light and dark, so after Spectrum Marketing had designed the initial invitation and had it approved with the fractured background and the graphic mountain range, we used that as a jumping off point.

The S curve that’s incorporated into the final design in a few places was pulled from the waves at the bottom of the Chamber’s logo. In our first meeting, we decided we were going to use it to the make the base and sketched out a few variations, the final base shape from that meeting was the shape that carried through the whole project.

Assembly and Final Product

After having settled on the main design we quickly got to work on building the centerpieces out of wood and acrylic using our laser machine to cut the pieces. One of the newest pieces of equipment in the shop is our Epilog Fusion M2 40 120 watt laser. Early on in this project, we decided to produce everything using just this one machine. The Epilog certainly got a workout in the weeks leading up to the Chamber event – this whole project took over 80 hours of machine time to etch and cut!

Using a custom jig to hold all the pieces in place and in the proper shape, the base was assembled using hot glue. A lot of our employees that don’t normally work in production helped on this step – we couldn’t have made it happen without our full team!

LED light strips were then attached underneath the top piece to illuminate the acrylic mountain pieces.

The bases and their tops (with LEDs in place) and the centerpiece sponsor tower with the table numbers were all assembled and packed to be delivered for final set-up the morning of the event. It was decided that it would be impractical (and nearly impossible!) to place the acrylic “mountains” into position before moving all 80 centerpieces. Now all that was left was to set up the tables for the event.

Setting Up the Event

You can see from recent years that there was little cohesion between the centerpiece and all of the other pieces on rest of the table (see photo on left). Past years tables have also either ended up being a bit too crowded with all the different elements the plates, glasses, and utensils; or the custom work that was done was lost amongst all the other elements.

Setting up the tables was an involved task that involved a lot of little pieces and required the help of a large number of volunteers. The time-lapse certainly makes it look a lot less time-consuming than it was!

Additional Signs and Graphics

Print New Hampshire, in conjunction with Spectrum Marketing, was also asked to design, print, and set up the event signage, which, is shown in the pics below. Spectrum Marketing did the initial designs and then Print New Hampshire printed all of the signage for the event.

Overall the table pieces and signage helped to create a cohesive experience from entrance to dinner.

We were honored to have been a part of 2018’s Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year event. If you would like to get signage for your event then please contact us.

Recommended Posts
Signage Visuals for Print NH Signage Outside Featured imageWayfinding Signage