Corporate Event Designer | Production Designer

Meeting Tomorrow is a 20-year-old company with a growing team of 85 friendly employees. We’re headquartered in Chicago, with 80% percent of our team working remotely in cities all over the country. We produce in-person, hybrid, and virtual events and rent equipment that brings people together. Our clients range from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses, and we pride ourselves on providing the best customer experience in the events industry. We offer the greatest coworkers you’ll find anywhere, great benefits, and the opportunity to work in a dynamic, team-oriented, entrepreneurial environment. We can’t wait to meet you! 

The Opportunity:

Meeting Tomorrow is looking for an experienced Event Set Designer to bring creativity and beautiful aesthetics to our clients' events. The Event Set Designer will be responsible for crafting stunning event design solutions and developing the designs from concept to production. This role is dedicated to translating our clients' visions into cohesive stage and scenic designs, compelling decor, layouts, and impactful visual representations of their brand. The Event Set Designer collaborates closely with teams, from initial client pitch to final production, to craft innovative concepts, themes, and elements that elevate our clients' brands and bring their visions to life on stage and throughout their events. This role will leverage their expertise in 3D modeling, digital rendering, stage design, and graphic design to ensure our clients' brands shine across scenic, print, and digital deliverables. The ideal candidate has a complimentary range of skill sets that will allow them to thrive in this position. Meeting Tomorrow supports events for our clients of all types and sizes including conferences, internal meetings, sales and marketing events, and many others. These events can be in person, hybrid, or virtual and the customer needs can be event-specific or ongoing. 

Main Responsibilities include:

• Collaborate with our Creative, Sales, Production Teams and Clients to visualize, conceptualize, and design visually captivating, on-brand solutions for our clients' events. 

• Create 3D renderings of proposed scenic solutions to help clients visualize options.

• Meet with clients to listen to their event needs, requirements, and pitch ideas.

• Generate ideas for all aspects of the event from the main stage AV & scenic to furniture, floral, decor, and custom fabrication. 

• Understands the scale of stage set pieces and audiovisual equipment and what is possible from a technical perspective. 

• Match vision with reality by sourcing solutions from our vendor partners, and researching, identifying, and vetting new vendors as needed. 

• Must understand estimated costs of proposed solutions to ensure that what they are proposing meets the clients budget needs.

• Create event seating layouts and floor plans. 

• Support our clients and creative team by implementing the clients brand, content, and collateral through all relevant materials including but not limited to graphic design projects such as signage, event logos, and presentation slide templates.

• Responsible for moving along the design process and hitting all design deadlines. This includes renderings for proposal pages pre-sale and supporting our internal teams with finalizing deliverables post-sale.

• Supports our creative team by contributing to internal projects such as improvements to processes, developing sales materials, developing resources and asset libraries. 

• Researching and understanding industry and design trends to keep ideas fresh.

What we need: 

Creativity: As a creative event set designer, it's essential that you're able to think of innovative and exciting ways to visually communicate ideas. You will use creative thinking to understand our clients’ goals and needs, then translate these into meaningful, impactful, fresh, and modern solutions aligned with their project objectives and briefs.

Communication skills: Actively listening to client and team design goals, articulating creative ideas effectively, managing expectations, and adeptly conveying project visions. Additionally, skilled in presenting with a friendly demeanor and fostering collaborative teamwork.

Time management: Ability to manage several projects at the same time. It's important that this role takes ownership of their assigned events, keeps the designs moving, and the projects on track.

Software knowledge: Proficiency in 3D modeling and rendering software, mastery of tools necessary for producing deliverables, and the ability to conceptualize, illustrate, and generate graphics using industry-standard design software.

Production knowledge: Comprehensive fulfillment, sourcing, and production experience, coupled with the ability to cultivate and maintain strong vendor relationships.

Experience:

It’s Important that this person has created a variety of solutions in the corporate event space, a blend of creative abilities and technical knowledge.

• Strong presentation, organization, and communication skills.

• Project and timeline management experience.

• Must have a portfolio that demonstrates excellent concept development, design skills and capability, along with end-product, real world event documentation.

• Proficient in CAD and 3D rendering software. Sketchup Pro, Vray, and Vectorworks are required.

• Proficient in Adobe Creative Cloud design software, primarily Photoshop and Illustrator. Secondary experience in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects is a plus. 

• Ability to create technical drawings, floor plans, lighting and rigging plots for large scale events.

• Sourcing and production experience.

• Bachelor's degree in Design or equivalent job experience. 

• 3+ years of experience in a similar role.

The Impact

Within 1 month you’ll have: 

• Met all key stakeholders and team members that you will be working with

• An understanding of our service offering for decor, staging, furniture

• Reviewed all of our relevant processes to understand how things currently are working

• A deep knowledge of the Meeting Tomorrow brand A full understanding of the Event Production industry and top trends Reviewed our previous stage renderings and our top clients

In 3 months you’ll have: 

• At least 10 design consultations under your belt

• Familiar with all of our current scenic, furniture, floral vendors and have your own relationships with them

• Updated our Stage Design guide with new looks 

• Started building out new templates and processes for the creative process and deliverables 

• Shadowed sales calls and attended at least one live event

In 6 months you’ll have: 

• Full autonomy in your role

• Been a part of brainstorming, designing and pitching 5 winning event designs

• Expanded our vendor network to have new options for clients in all mid-tier and major markets 

• Helped build out new products and creative service offerings 

At Meeting Tomorrow, our mission is to foster a culture of respect and affection. We embrace our differences and are committed to having a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. We’re an Equal Opportunity Employer that believes in second chances and strongly encourage BIPOC, women, LGBTQIA, veterans, persons with disabilities, formerly incarcerated and all other individuals to apply.

Our benefits include: full medical coverage (health, vision, dental, short term disability and life insurance), PTO and 9 paid holidays, annual profit-sharing bonus, 100% charitable giving match, employer match 401k with subsidized brokerage fees, gym membership reimbursement, employee-led social action teams, fully paid parental leave, paid bereavement leave and fun social gatherings!

What makes Meeting Tomorrow’s culture so special is the people, and we look for candidates who are a match for our company’s core values: commitment, kindness and humility. If those words describe you and you see yourself in this posting, you’re ready to apply!