Turning the Tables

There are two words that corporate meeting and event planners use to describe what’s hot in tabletop design: clean and sophisticated. In most cases, however, this look isn’t achieved with a plain white tablecloth. To support the goals of a meeting or event, the tabletop design must include colors, textures, and accents that will encourage guests to relax, listen, and network.

The little details on a tabletop may not seem important, but the design can promote networking, provide clear sight lines, or otherwise engage people in the meeting or event. Meeting and event planners can also help make the most of a tight event budget with high-impact table design. Nancy Jacobs, president of Minneapolis-based Design Group, an event design and production company, says that clients are “putting a lot of their costs into unique settings.”

Since many meetings and events require your guests to spend a lot of time at a table, they will thank you for providing a table that’s pleasing to the eye, has plenty of elbow room, and maybe even features a conversation-starting centerpiece.

Trend Spotting

“When I create an event, I create an event that tells a story. Tabletop design is an integral component to that storytelling,” says Ryan Hanson, creative director at Menttium, a provider of corporate mentoring programs based in Minneapolis. At an event that marked the beginning of a year-long mentoring relationship between women business leaders and senior executives from Fortune 500 companies, Hanson used a streamlined table design with custom lamps to communicate the meeting message.

A two-minute animated video introduced the program and its theme, “The power of the network,” as the table lamps lit up one by one, in synchronization with the video, signifying the importance of each individual in the network. Each lamp is six-and-a-half feet tall, has an acrylic stem, and doesn’t block the sight lines to the stage. “Table decor served to communicate the message of the meeting,” Hanson says. Besides impressing meeting attendees, Hanson was thinking about his budget: The lamps will be reused for other launch events.

At the “Red Hot Gala” event held in Las Vegas for Carlson Companies, Jacobs and a Las Vegas–based Design Group team used family-style rectangular dinner tables to encourage conversation among several people, not just the people sitting next to one another. The tables were covered in red and orange bichon linen, tangerine bichon napkins, and glasses, each with a glowing orange ice cube (made with an LED light encased in plastic), which were key to getting attendees fired up. Bichon, a type of crinkled sateen fashion linen, “is extremely popular right now,” Jacobs says.