Design Night LIVE Recap

Catch up (or relive!) what you missed at Design Night LIVE, our biggest virtual community event and fundraise, ever!

By Sara Magalio

The CoDesign Collaborative community celebrated our biggest fundraising event of the year, Design Night LIVE, on Saturday. Three hundred people, including CoDesign Collaborative staff,  board members, colleagues, students, and friends gathered virtually for a night centered around the most important topics in design, how the museum is facilitating development in these areas, and also included some more lighthearted events to all have fun together. To kick off the event, Amy O’Neil, professional mixologist and Chief of Staff at Host Events, Inc., led a mixology demonstration, showing guests how to make the perfect “Torched Not So Old Fashioned.” Amy even taught us the perfect way to brûlée oranges.

Amy O’Neil toasts to CoDesign, with her signature Torched Not-So-Old Fashioned cocktail.

Guests were then separated into a variety of breakout events including a demonstration by Chef Angela-Michelle, Founder and CEO of Culinary Kisses, on how to make “24-Karat Diamond Kimbap,” Korean sushi with a touch of edible glitter flair. Guests were also treated to live sketch demonstrations with Spencer Nugent, Founder of Sketch-A-Day, and Derek Cascio, Department Chair at the Wentworth Institute of Technology, and a creative connecting workshop with George White, Chief Innovation Officer at Cantina, David Lemus, Founder and Owner of David Lemus Consulting, Leila Mitchell, Creative Director and Founder of LLM Design, and Diana Navarrete-Rackauckas, Director of Learning and Interpretation at CoDesign Collaborative.

At the height of the evening, Production Designer Jessica Kender and Writer/Co-Executive Producer Raamla Mohamed shared their experiences working on the Hulu original series “Little Fires Everywhere,” starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon, which explores motherhood through the lenses of race, class, and sexuality. Raamla introduced the pair’s work on the show and noted the importance of not just character development, but the design of the environment that the characters exist in, in creating a compelling and believable story. “Besides creating a plot to support the story and what the characters are going through, we also depended on their spaces to reflect not only who they are, but also the conflict that was evolving during the series,” Raamla said. Jessica continued on to explain in greater detail all of the nuance and specificity that goes into crafting the perfect set that tells the story of a show, and she also addressed the need for more women in television production design to tell a more diverse range of stories effectively.

Jessica Kender walked us through the design of a set and how those design choices have real implications when working on a show about race, class, and sexuality.

While engaging with these intriguing demonstrations, activities, and presentations, Design Night LIVE attendees were able to participate in a silent auction and bid on an array of exciting prizes, including an iRobot Roomba s9+, a Bose Portable Smart Speaker, and numerous top-of-the-line Steelcase office chairs. At the end of the evening we were thrilled to exceed our goal of raising $30,000 through our silent auction and donations. Even more importantly, though, we were elated to be able to connect with our CoDesign Collaborative community from around the country and the world, and we look forward to the day that we can celebrate in person together again.