Design Director Tells All (about design stuff)

Kaci here! You may have seen some posts in the past about how I’m working as the Director of Design for the Hideout Theatre. Roy often posts about my set design work in real time (I send him iPhone pictures as I’m working on it). Today I’m going to talk a little bit about what of my job entails.

When we started out taking over the theater in April, I was doing things like picking out lighting sconces, ikea cabinets, curtain fabrics and fixing up the interior of the space. I spent a few weeks in May working on a huge hallway mural. It was only the beginning.
There are still lots of plans for improving the space, but we can only tackle a few things at a time. We want to fix up the theater (we have a theater, classroom, bathroom, office, and tech booth in our part of the building, upstairs) and stage even more. A new front curtain design for the stage, vintage wood planks for the stage floor, new aisle railings, installed lighting sconces, and more and more and more. Downstairs in the coffee shop (not run by us) we’ve been given permission to add lots of additional signage for our upstairs business. We have a box office down there that needs to be spruced up. Umm. That’s my upcoming project!

As for regular, monthly work, besides designing and painting sets for the theater, I also make the posters, postcards, advertisements and other marketing materials for upcoming shows and events. I make everything in a program called Inkscape (it’s free!) and I have an online photo-editing account on Picnik (it costs a small amount) where I upload and edit photos.

Here is the suite of marketing materials I’ve made in the past few weeks including Charles Dickens Unleashed! and Wafflefest promotions:

And then I have a flickr photo account where I store everything (in addition to my macbook).

Every time I work with the program I figure out something else. I’ve only starting using it this year. It’s a nice program, Inkscape, considering the cost, but it does have some flaws. Someday it would be nice to work with the adobe suite on large monitor/separate computer. For now, adobe programs are too expensive and I don’t want to use an illegal copy (you know, for a real business that makes money). Still, limitations can be a good thing sometimes.

My artistic background is more in the traditional fine arts, not graphic design, but it’s a necessary skill these days so I’m creating and learning as I go. I like making art that has a purpose and I really believe in the shows going on at the Hideout, so it’s a win-win situation.

So yeah, this is one of the many things I do with my time. You can also catch me performing onstage every weekend in several of our fabulous shows!