Towards the end of January, Improv Asylum was gutted and renovated. 3 months later, this once unintentional mausoleum for dead rats has become this beautiful bright lounge looking thing. Where there were darkened areas to hide visual unpleasantness are now lit with bright LED spotlights and color changing mood lights. You will not be afraid to touch the walls or any other surfaces. It looks absolutely immaculate. The quality product on stage finally matches the Front Room. Oh another thing…It smells better….. INFINITELY times better than before renovations.
Now, why am I advertising this place so much? Besides the fact that I’m telling the truth? Well, I also designed the floor.
That’s right. The floor is plain ol’ concrete with a two color stain. My job was to A) make a design and B) Tape it off to be stained. I sent the corporate office 7 designs.
Design 1:
Corporate office decided on the colors. A brown and a darker color of that brown. Almost everyone pretty much agreed on using the Asylum’s triangular insignia (impy) in the design . For some reason I had a bio-hazard symbol stuck in my mind when I was designing this.
Design 2:
For the second design, I was going for some kind of floral look. I don’t know, I’m looking at it now and all I see is something I’d find on the back of a Karate uniform.
Design 3
I wasn’t entirely sure what the final Front House would look like when I was designing these. I just remembered the large steel beams holding up the place looked awesomely industrial. I guess that’s what I was thinking of when I made this.
Design 4
I went for simple with this one. The impy…plain with a circle around it.
Design 5
That design was too simple….let’s make it more engaging. Put them on four corners! I like it a lot. I crossed my fingers that corporate would choose this one.
Design 6
Just for good measure, I went even simpler and just used the impy.
Design 7
I copied design 5’s technique and used the Impy as a way to point out the two entrances to the theater, the entrance/exit to the lobby, and….uh….the Men’s bathroom…
So corporate had their little meetings and decided that design 7 was a safer bet than all the others. It wasn’t until I started the taping process that I was absolutely thankful for their decision. I mean I wouldn’t mind doing the others but I was given such a short amount of time to tape off this thing that I was afraid I wouldn’t finish before the second stain was applied.
But I finished and here is what it looks like:
Ooooohh....
Ahhhh.....
I know I know…they fucked up the darker color. The stainer guy assured me, “yeah the bucket of stain says ‘black’…but it’s not really black.” Guess what? It’s fucking black! Anyways, good thing the design stands on it’s own.
As a final touch I was also put in charge of designing the bathroom doors ( you can see a little bit of the men’s room design on picture 2 up there). I didn’t go for anything fancy…just something large and to the point.
If you are still confused....there's an alley behind the theater...
While I was doing all this…. I was also doing something for Improv Asylum’s “You’re a good man, Scott Brown.”
But I’ll talk about that on the next blog.
-Vic
Tags: designs