Ford’s Auto Show Press Reveal at Chicago’s McCormick Place Deemed A Creative Success

While today’s automotive press reveals aren’t the lavish spectacles they once were, this year’s presentations were still heavy on creativity. Creative Studios’ Producers Bob Iverson and Bud Price, working with Scene Designer Terry McClellan, enlisted Chicago Scenic’s help on the Ford Motor press reveal in Chicago this year.

McClellan designed a multi-layered, 100-foot long, 12 ½-foot tall wall finished with a contiguous graphic that served as the colorful backdrop for Ford cars, speakers and press presentations. Chicago Scenic lead carpenter Chris Burman, working under the direction of Ross Hamilton, senior project manager, and Alyce Iversen, project coordinator built the backing wall from ¼-inch MDF and pine. While the wall was being built at Chicago Scenic, Andres Imaging & Graphics printed the graphic files onto individual panels of wallpaper which were subsequently
applied to the wall panels.

“The challenge,” said Hamilton, “was that the walls were ‘stepped’ so the wallpaper alignment had to be constantly monitored by the printer and the team applying the graphics. The secondary challenge,” Hamilton added, “was that although the walls were assembled in Chicago Scenic’s shop so the wallpaper could be applied, the finished piece had to be cut apart in order to be shipped and transported to McCormick Place. Once on site, the wall was then installed with minimal visible seams”.

The entire project was built, printed, wallpapered, disassembled, shipped and then reassembled at McCormick Place in under a week.