When we discussed it, I truly thought it was ok...
I was seduced by the sparkle and jewel-like quality that the sweets produced. I thought we had hit on a winner – Fox’s glacier mints masquerading as crystal. Filling long polycarbonate tubes clustered together to make up a mighty unusual chandelier as a feature piece on our Euroshop stand design for Xicato. Lit by their LED module, aren’t we clever I thought?
Dave Hollingsbee at Mike Stoane Lighting helped us evolve the idea and between them and Martin (not sure he will be allowed out on his own again), hit upon the idea that 72 of the tubes were necessary. While thinking it was perhaps too many, I still thought it was a good idea and looked forward to the end result.
Then came D-day – or mint day as it will henceforth be known. We arrived in Dusseldorf, icy cold, snowy and very much open to the elements trade show hall. We unwrapped the Mike Stoane box and took out tube after tube after tube. We unpacked the sweets palate and located a million kilos of Foxe’s glacier mints. Then it dawned on me the full impact of how much time it was going to take to fill the tubes. The first tube took two of us about 15 minutes – to unwrap sweets and fill to the top. Seventy-two tubes multiplied by 15 minutes!
After nine hours of unwrapping the mints, fingers frozen and bleeding and not one sweet eaten we, with the help of other unwrappers, completed the damn thing.
Why the **** couldn’t they sell them to us unwrapped? Health and safety apparently. Would we do it again? Too bloody right we would, it looked stunning. In the homogeneous trade show world, anything not identikit stands out a mile. That’s the mission of Light Collective – to stand out from the masses. But I write this just so you all know how much we suffer for our art…
A review of the rest of Euroshop will follow.
Share
Have your say
You must sign in to make a comment.