Science fiction, fantasy, & horror - web design, graphic design, interactive media development by greententacles
2024-04-19 GMT
Science fiction, fantasy, & horror - web design, graphic design, interactive media development by greententacles
2024-04-19 GMT
A wide range of services was provided to Planet Xpo for their convention “Beam Me Up Scotty... one last time” The James Doohan Farewell Star Trek Convention and Tribute. Planet Xpo relied on us to design signs, tickets, the website, web banners, and to provide support for the website and shopping cart.
Services that we provided included:
Sky and Tracy were easy to work with, so there isn't much that we did that was out of the ordinary. But there were a few surprises along the way.
Second in a series of conventions run by Planet Xpo that we've provided graphic design and web support for (the first one being the Great Bird of the Galaxy show to honor Gene Roddenberry) Beam Me Up Scotty... one last time actually evolved over time to accommodate the changing needs of the show and the users.
Since this was a convention site there were several things that had to be done to keep the site running and to continue to build interest in the show.
Much of the graphic design work was designed around artwork provided by Michael David Ward who was an incredible resource for this show. He provided backgrounds, starscapes, skyscapes, and even painting and images of James Doohan. My personal favorite being the image that became the title image for the website.
Part of these duties required coordinating with Paramount and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to make sure that designs obtained approvals and had the proper trademarks, copyrights, and other legal info attached.
This banner appeared on several sites promoting the convention.
That's James Doohan in the left photo (center) and Leonard Nimoy (left) and William Shatner (right) in the right photo. Behind them are the banners and signs that I designed.
It was eight days before the convention and the program book still hadn't been designed. We were called on at the last minute to layout the 16 page (plus color cover) program book. Eight days to lay it out? usually is not a problem... but we only had three days to get it to the printer!
That problem was solved in a rather unique way: we laid out the color cover first, and sent it to the printer, which gave us the needed time (including a weekend) to pull together the guts of the program book.
Again the artwork for the cover was provided by Michael David Ward, and we provided the graphic design work around the main image and inserted the additional images. Marc B. Lee, the show's Master of Ceremonies, also pitched in and provided the schedule for the show.
The Guest Star bios in the program book were written by Ruby Moon-Houldson (also author of James Doohan “Scotty”: A Tribute). Content was sent to us from Planet Xpo in the form of text and graphics, while we were relied upon to produce additional graphics and track down additional images for use in the program. Most of the ads were received from Celebrity Entertainment.
Additional ads were created at the last minute for specific advertisers.
Everything came together in the end, and the James Doohan Tribute got a beautiful looking program book. We were very proud of the program book, which came out well-designed, despite the limited time that we were given to develop it.
It was a great show and exceeded all of our expectations. Did we provide more than someone who's simply a webmaster? Of course, but we enjoyed every minute of it.
Sky Douglas Conway, CEO of Planet Xpo, sums it up like this, “You were very reassuring and helpful every step of the way. You provided excellent support for the convention and were worth every penny. You even came through in the clutch - when other people couldn't deliver, you guys did! And you really nailed it. Everything that you did was just right on."
“You actually made running the event somewhat easier, by taking the responsibility for making sure that everything was running smoothly with the production of the signs, tickets and banners, when I was swamped and couldn't do it myself. You followed through in every aspect.”