Inside Eventique’s best lighting moments
Before you dive into this article, do yourself a favor: look around the room you’re in and switch on your favorite light. Maybe it’s a lamp with an amber glow that you love, or a quirky overhead fixture. Either way, odds are you enjoy it because it sets the perfect mood in your office or living room.
“As event producers, lighting tends to be one of the last items we work through, because we need the rest of the environment to fall into place. But it’s far from an afterthought; it’s one of the most vital aspects of production,” says Eric Wielander, Eventique’s vice president of creative and strategy. “We lean on our designers to be constantly thinking about the outcome that they will never see until the event day, and then our lighting team brings in the polish within hours.”
Our Best Creative Lighting Examples
Over the last 10-plus years, Eventique has produced a thick portfolio of creative lighting designs. Sometimes they’re subtle – like the grid of old-fashioned bulbs glowing at the Carolina Herrera Good Girl Launch in New York City, or the flickering fireplace at Philosophy’s House of Philosophy event — and other times, they’re the life of the party. The Humane Society of the United States’ To the Rescue! New York event, for example, wouldn’t have been the same without the animals silhouetted in neon at every dinner table — a choice that reinforced their beauty, fleetingness, and importance.
Asked about their all-time favorite lighting designs, Eventique’s team pointed to the walkway made of triangular LED frames at IPsoft’s 20th Anniversary Celebration; the gorgeous green accented NFT displays and cage of dramatic spotlights at Metapurse’s Dreamverse event; the colorful beer pong tables lit from the inside at Taboola’s Holiday Party; and the elegant green-and-black disco theme at Spotify’s City of Love. To stage these events, Eventique’s team used everything at their disposal, from spotlights, neon, and strobes, to screens and real fire.
“This has always been one of my favorite examples of how to incorporate a brand’s signature color into an event through lighting and design,” Wielander says, recalling the 2018 Spotify
event. “The second we walked into the room and noticed the three lines of railing along the balcony — mirroring the three sound bars of the Spotify mark — that was it, that anchored everything else.”
The team lit the railings up bright green and scattered candles on black-draped tables, bringing both cool and warm light into the space.
Virtual Glow: Lighting a Virtual Event
Creative and strategic lighting is always key, even in virtual environments like TikTok’s 2021 virtual End of Year Celebration, Sephora’s SEPHORiA: Virtual House of Beauty event, and Eventique’s design for Apple TV+. The latter included the glowering rendering of a tree surrounded by a band of what appears to be bushes flickering with string lights. It’s a warm, mysterious, inviting scene that draws the viewer forward. “This render would be completely different if the lighting was cold or if we [added] more light to it,” explains Eventique 3D Designer Melanie Alvarez.
How Lighting Can Make a Functional Difference
Fantastic lighting takes trial and error to achieve, but when the pieces come together, it puts the guests at ease and produces compelling, high-quality photos and videos. Martin Jenoff, Eventique’s technical director, discovered that himself while directing shows. He found that bright, overhead lights were giving performers “dry eyes and headaches” and turning out poor videos.
“Turning off the overheads and adding some subtle colored back lights, LED desk lights, and small lamps helped the team all around. No more headaches [or] dry eyes, and we had a better and more accurate view of the video feeds,” he says.
Ultimately, light is one of the most important tools in a creative’s arsenal. Just as your favorite lamp can set the mood at home, a well-placed fire, strobe, or screen can transform an event.
