Overview
For Homecoming every year, my high school ran a competition between grades to see who could build the best parade float. In my senior year, however, the competition was changed from floats to campus decorations (G’floats).
I was the Class of 2020 G’float team lead, so it was my responsibility to lead the design, construction, and logistics of completely new structures that no one had built before.
Our main goal was to build something so amazing in G’floats first incarnation that future classes would think “We should try and do what the Class of 2020 did”
Recently, I received a text from a Class of 2022 student asking how we built a certain part of our display. I’d say we succeeded.
We were given 4 themes to work with: the color red, the USA, the army, and Grease. In previous years, teams always picked one theme and centered their entire float around it.
Now, however, because we were doing campus decorations instead of parade floats, we had the ability to build multiple installations- one for each theme.
As the lead designer, it was my job to pick what those designs would look like.
For the color red, I drew up a simple modern MMXX (2020 in roman numerals) pattern that we could then build as a freestanding mural.
I had a similar idea for the USA/Statue of Liberty design.
For the army theme, I knew immediately that I wanted to build some sort of sculpture of the iconic photo at Iwo Jima. We eventually decided to do a wood, chicken wire, and tissue paper 2d sculpture of the soldiers with a real American flag hanging behind them.
For Grease, we also had to a lot of thinking to figure out just how we could capture the spirit of the film in a freestanding display. We ended up deciding on building a section of a diner. The showpiece? A 10-foot-tall working jukebox.