Shared by Interior Designer, Angela Dabbs
You might think that the above photo was completely staged. You might even think that it took a lot of planning and coordination, but the truth is actually much simpler.
On May 5th, 2016, we hosted an Open House at our beautiful new Bay City office. It was a long day of setup and preparation, eating and drinking, and entertaining and touring clients throughout the showroom!
Just as it was beginning to get dark outside, a big familiar blue truck unexpectedly pulls into our parking lot. Without missing a beat, everyone yells, “Tim (our warehouse manager), a Steelcase truck is here for you, go out back and unload it!” Never mind that it’s 8:30PM at night!! Three people from NBS immediately ran outside to greet the Steelcase driver and offer him something to eat. A minute later, I decided to go out too.
As I was walking to the truck, I noticed that something looked a little “off”. The three people from NBS were standing underneath the rainbow-colored Steelcase logo, but the color of the shirts that they were wearing didn’t match the color of the letters in the logo. As an interior designer, I can’t help but notice things like this. It’s in my blood!
An idea began to swirl around in my head and then I instantly realized, “I need to get everyone outside RIGHT NOW for a picture before it gets too dark!”
Because our Open House was Cinco de Mayo-themed, we all agreed to wear bright colored shirts. It didn’t matter what color, it just had to be bright! So now, with everyone outside, I could finally see whether or not my idea could come to fruition. I thought, “We just might have enough of the right colored shirts to pull this off!” Because the party was now going on outside, it was a struggle to keep everyone together and hold their attention. So instead of trying to explain to them what I wanted to do, I just started grabbing people and moving them into position. And by sheer luck, a classic photo opportunity was born!