Hensel Phelps University

A construction company's holiday party, built as a college campus you could walk through. One venue, several rooms, each a different corner of the same invented university. A brick entrance gate, a dorm room, a dive bar off campus. My work was the graphics that made each room read as a real place.

ARCHWAY

Helped design the campus gate and every vinyl on it, including the brick simulation and the sign on top

DORM ROOM

Designed the photo booth as a dorm, with poster-covered wall vinyls and a dorm door

BANNERS

Backdrops and hanging banners for the hallway and the main ballroom

TABLE PRINT

Table runners, plus branded stickers on table pieces for guests to take home

BAR SIGNAGE

The beer and wine signs mounted above the bars

DIVE BAR

Backdrops, pillar vinyls, and many of the pennant flags in the dive bar room

The idea

Print doing the work of architecture

Much of what is seen in archways and pillars is fabricated from light wood builds with my vinyls to give the appearance of a sturdy brick pillar. We aimed for aged realism like a true college campus that would bring back nastalgia and memeroies.

HOTEL BALLROOM & HALLWAYS

→

A CAMPUS IN FOUR ROOMS

The gate

Brick-simulating vinyls wrapping the entrance, topped with the Hensel Phelps University sign. The threshold onto campus

Finished campus archway with brick vinyls, wreaths, and the Hensel Phelps University sign on top

Finished gate

The archway seen down the hallway, flanked by holiday trees

Approach

Hensel Phelps Way

Mid-install

Banners and backdrops

Crest banners down the concourse and stage backdrops in the main ballroom, carrying the university mark through every space

Crest banner

Concourse

Stage backdrop

The dining hall

Long communal tables running the length of the ballroom, dressed with printed runners and branded pieces guests could take home

Main ballroom set with long banquet tables, printed runners, and greenery

Table runners

Photo booth

The dorm room

A photo booth designed as a freshman dorm, with wall vinyls printed as layered band posters, a real-looking dorm door and a CRT television. Printed flat, installed as a room, then lit to finish the effect.

Artwork to room

The poster-wall vinyls as designed and printed, then the same panels standing on site

The dorm room wall vinyls laid out flat — panels of layered band posters with a wooden door panel

The artwork

The printed poster-wall panels standing on site mid-install, with the printed dorm door

Panels up

Lit for the night

Purple wash lighting turns the printed posters into a room guests walked into and photographed themselves in

Finished

The dorm door and television detail under purple lighting

Door detail

Off campus

Joe's Bar

The dive bar room, where the pillars are wrapped in vinyls printed as weathered brick and plaster, complete with a painted dartboard and tally marks, all under a canopy of college pennants.

Bar pillars wrapped in weathered brick and plaster vinyls with a painted dartboard, under strung pennant flags

Pillar vinyls

Pennants

Entrance

Joe's Bar

Wide view of the dive bar room with pennants and string lights

Room wide

distinct campus spaces (gate, concourse, dorm, dive bar) built almost entirely from print

The through-line is the crest. It's on the gate sign, the concourse banners, the ballroom backdrop, and the stickers guests peeled off the tables and took home. That's why four rooms with completely different textures still read as one campus.

What makes this build interesting to me is how little of it is construction. Weathered brick, aged plaster, a dorm wall thick with posters: all of it printed flat and applied to surfaces the venue already had. The craft is in making print carry that much illusion and still hold up when someone leans in for a photo.