Sound Division lights up with Diesel
Since February this year, Sound Division has been designing and supplying lighting effects to upmarket urban street and sportswear chain Diesel to light their display windows in their flagship stores in the King's Road and Covent Garden.
Sound Division's Chris Baxter who runs the company's hire and events division for whom Diesel is an extremely long-standing client, explained that this particular contract formed part of a campaign for a new style line for Diesel. Every three weeks Chris is given a brief for the look and feel of the display, and he is required to design and implement the appropriate lighting scheme.
"Our most recent design was definitely among my favourites," he said. "and I have to say I'm particularly proud of what we achieved. We were asked to create an effect which gave the impression of being under water looking up to the surface and being close enough to the surface to see the light diffusing through from above." In order to achieve this effect Chris used two Anytronic 10-amp dimmers and twenty-four chrome Par 64 500W floods (two per window) with aqua gels to wash the window. However, the piéce de resistance was a new light from Martin from their Martin Mania series. Appropriately enough, the light that Chris opted for was the Martin Mania Aqua, of which he used twelve in total across the two stores.
"The biggest problem we face in work of this kind is the fact that we are constantly battling against white light or, in other words, daylight," explained Chris. "It's very difficult to create spectacular effects against the full glare of daylight, but on this occasion we achieved a great look that worked well both day and night."
Diesel's Angela Strickland-Eales confirmed that Sound Division had done a particularly good job on this occasion. "We're always very pleased with their work, hence the reason we've chosen to work with them for nearly a decade, but on this occasion, Chris surpassed himself. In fact, we were so pleased that we chose to enter this window into our own internal Best Window competition that is held within the group on an international basis. We'll be up against submissions from the US, Germany and Italy, so it's pretty tough competition! But I think we stand a great chance, so I'm looking forward to the results which will be judged at the end of the season."
June 2004