Special Event Design

Stopwatch

Zach Harmon from Lima Community Church in Lima, OH brings us this kid-friendly design.

In 2014, they did a message series about families called “Playing For Keeps”. On several weekends during that series, they included the kids in the main service so they wanted to create a design that was kid-friendly. They had been wanting to try the pallet design for a while and decided this would be the time to make it happen. They also wanted to include an element to go with each message of the series.

The framework that held the pallets was built with 2x4s that are 24″ on center. There were 3 sections of framework, each being 16′ x 8′. Once the framework was in place, they basically started playing Tetris with the pallets. The goal was to make it look random without having any major gaps. Most of the pallets could be screwed to the framework from the front, giving it the strongest possible hold, but they had to put a couple screws in at an angle from the back. The goal was to not be able to see the framework through the pallets, so Zach just used black spray paint on the parts of framework that he could see. A more ideal solution would be to paint the entire framework flat black before the pallets go on.

The scrabble letters that spelled PLAYING FOR KEEPS were made from 1/4″ plywood. Each piece was about 24″x20″. The framework was made with 2x4s on their side (so you see the wide part of the 2×4) painted black. The letters were hand painted by some talented people at their church. Each panel was screwed onto the framework from the front using tan colored screws.

The lighting was what held everything together. They had 9 LED bars shining up on the pallets and 4 LED cans shining up at an angle. The Scrabble letters were being lit from ellisoidals on the sides of the room. Ellipsoidals are great for that kind of thing because you can define four sides of the light beam to make it fit whatever you want. In this case, the 4 sides of each beam was set perfectly to the edge of the letters.

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