Stage Visuals: 90s Super Show90s Super Show

Problem

There were simply no great visuals for a show this big. The stage had a wide center wall, two IMAG screens and an LED DJ booth, but nothing on them that carried the atmosphere or tied the evening together. For a night built on nostalgia that was a real gap, because stage visuals shape how a show feels just as much as light and sound do. It had to be fixed.

The task

Christian Hattemer brought me in to create the complete visual world of the show. One look from doors open to the last song, for every screen on stage.

The goal

The show promises a trip back to the 90s, so the visuals had to deliver exactly that. We wanted to give the people who lived the 90s first hand their nostalgia back and make the feeling of that time come alive again. So the goal was one design world that runs through the whole show concept, a 90s world built from glossy foil, quilted fabric, chrome and pearls, with objects like Tamagotchis, cassettes and boomboxes.

The canvas

I got a huge canvas to go all out on. The 18 × 5 m center wall sits in the middle, flanked by two IMAG screens of 5 × 6 m each and the LED front of the DJ booth. Together they form one surface across the whole stage. It has to work as a single picture and as separate screens at the same time.

My first project at this scale

I had never worked at this size before, and it taught me a lot about designing for LED walls. How a design reads from the back of an arena, how much detail survives at that size and what to watch out for when one image is split across several screens.

Idea

The night opens with a giant Windows 98 desktop that welcomes everyone at the door. Christian brought his own ideas for the entrance, and we developed them together.

Why Windows 98

Windows 98 is a classic style device of the 90s. It was the decade of the first PCs and the first digital music, and everything was different from before. That is why we chose it.

Look closer

The desktop is full of small things people remember from back then. A Tamagotchi with the show logo, a round of Space Cadet pinball, Minesweeper, an Outlook Express mail with the new tour dates, a disco ball assistant that asks if you want to party and ICQ messages from the artists of the night. The longer you look, the more you find.

Live elements

Interactive live integrations were built into the desktop, and live cameras were always on the IMAGs, so the audience stayed right inside the picture.

Approach

Before I designed anything, I took time for every act on the bill and went through their full history. How many people are on stage and what do they look like? Which clothes, colors and accessories were they known for back then? What does their music sound like, which songs does everyone know and what do people connect with them straight away?

Outcome

These answers decided what goes into each frame. Every act gets objects and colors that belong to them, so each set feels personal and not like one template with a different name on it.

On stage

For every act, a transition builds their frame, the name appears in the center and the frame loops through the performance.

PGM visuals

Between the artists, interlude visuals take over the stage. Three arcade cabinets, a cozy 90s room with a lava lamp and an old TV, a wall of flickering TVs and a wall of subwoofers. Most of them have a screen built in. That is where the live PGM feed of the show or existing music videos play, just like on a player from back then.

Idea

The night ends the way a 90s PC does: credits roll on the center wall, and at the very end the DJ booth shuts down like an old computer, hourglass and all. Like the entrance, it grew out of Christian's ideas, which we developed together.

Format

The LANXESS arena has a fascia board, a narrow LED ribbon that runs 360° around the whole bowl. It is very narrow but extremely wide, so it works completely differently from a screen. Nobody ever sees it in one piece, and it has to read from every seat in the arena.

How I worked

It was my first time designing for this format. I built each design as one continuous strip, kept type and graphics bold and simple for that height and planned the motion around the ring so it flows all the way around the audience. For the media server I split the final renders into segments and packed them into a 4K frame.

Result

Two designs ran on the board during the show in Cologne, one typographic and one with the artist names travelling around the arena. Both worked on the first try in the arena.