Tom Ryan
Design Manager

tryan@chicagoscenic.com

As design manager Tom works with clients who have design needs, and generates creative and visual concepts that tell the client’s story and meet their budget parameters. Tom also prepares and supervises preparation of design drawings, renderings, presentations and models as needed, and reviews projects as they progress through the shop.

As a long-time Chicago Scenic employee, Tom has initiated design for projects that have become beloved holiday destinations in Chicago. His original design concepts for Navy Pier, for example, laid the groundwork for the complex attraction that visitors now know as Winter Wonder Fest.

Tom also designed the two-story, interactive tree house popular among visitors to the “Hands-on Habitat” exhibit at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. And when agency, Arnold Worldwide wanted to showcase Ocean Spray’s cranberries on a nationwide tour, Tom designed a 1,500 square-foot, mobile cranberry bog that held 12,000 gallons of water and 2,000 pounds of fresh cranberries and delighted audiences from New York City to Los Angeles.

Many Chicago residents who enjoy seeing the various celebratory hats that periodically adorn the Picasso statue in Daley Plaza are enjoying Tom’s design expertise. And employees at advertising agency Leo Burnett who attend the company’s annual breakfast meeting each year have marveled at Tom’s stage designs which have ranged from a larger-than-life You Tube set to a recreation of the iconic “Brady Bunch” living room. Tom and CSSI senior project manager Gary Heitz have been working with Leo Burnett to produce these breakfasts since the mid-1980s.

Tom has an MFA in Design from Northwestern University and is an award-winning theatrical designer. His awards include Joseph Jefferson Citations and Award Nominations and an After Dark Award. Theater goers have seen his work at Chicago area theatres such as Drury Lane Oak Brook, Pegasus Players, Body Politic, Chicago Opera Theatre, Northlight Theatre, Northwestern University and the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, where he is the resident Scenery Designer. Tom’s 2008 set design for the NBC5 Chicago Studio 5 - HD Set was nominated for a Chicago/Midwest Emmy.