Viva the Dimensional Set!

The faceted dimensional set from 2014 Event Marketing Summit. 

When Steve Jobs unveiled new Apple products at Macworld inevitably there was an inconspicuous dais at stage right and an enormous center screen. As in so many other things, Apple was a trendsetter and for many years the defining characteristic of general session sets has been a minimalist flat wall of screens.

Increasingly, however, companies are turning to more dimensional sets for their general sessions.

There’s no denying how impressive it is to walk into a general session room with more screen space than Times Square! And certainly Apple had good reason for favoring its huge screen approach, none the least of which was that Steve Jobs’ considerable charisma didn’t require augmentation. Moreover, Jobs was typically demonstrating products that could be held in his hands and they needed the magnification of huge screens to be visible from the stage.

Dimensional sets, or sets that exist on more than one plane, bring a number of advantages:

• They hold more visual interest for attendees

• They can accommodate more stage entrances, which also adds visual interest

• They offer lighting designers a more interesting canvas to paint on and a more interesting palette to paint with

• And, with today’s video-mapping techniques you don’t give up much projection space compared to sets with wall-to-wall screen.

• Dimensional screens can also be more involving for the general session attendee

That last one requires a little bit of explanation. Today, all general session attendees are accustomed to having screens in front of them. Their lives are filled with computer screens, mobile device screens, television screens, etc. In today’s world another set of screens in the general session just doesn’t have the punch that it once had.

And, in a general session, big stage screens are more like television which is passive, and less like mobile devices and computers, which are interactive. And interactivity is inherently more powerful than passivity.

So viva the dimensional set!