My former boss and dear friend, Tom Marquardt, was nominated to be the honoree at the 2017 IIDA Leaders Breakfast in Chicago. This is considered a lifetime achievement award, and he was expected to give a 10-minute acceptance speech with a visual presentation to a room of hundreds of his contemporaries. The honorees that preceded him simply showed a collection of their work over their extensive careers, but that didn’t seem appropriate to Tom. He recognized that he (or anyone) has never been 100% responsible for any project. As he was explaining how uncomfortable he was with the traditional approach and that all work is the result of collaboration, the presentation I needed to design became very clear.
We started on a sepia-toned image of Tom at five years old playing in his sandbox next to his dog, as he starts his speech with the memory of inviting all the neighborhood kids to his sandbox to construct a city, with each child bringing their own elements to add. This sandbox city was a group effort, and was better for it.
About ten seconds into the speech, a collection of images that are small, square and black and white start to populate over the sandbox image in a random pattern.
Each of these small pixels contained a photo from one of Tom’s projects over the 30 years of his career or a portrait of someone he’s worked with during that time. Over the course of his ten-minute speech, more and more of the 7000 pixel images of projects and portraits came in and started to form a mosaic of current-day Tom.
A literal representation that he is a collection of every other person he’s worked alongside and that he wouldn’t be where he is today without their support and influences.
I had the privilege of being in the room during this presentation, and the most satisfying moment for me was when, somewhere near the end when the final result became apparent, there was an audible gasp in the crowd. The slow, patient reveal and hours of work was worth it!