Event Design · Brand · Experience
AfroFusion After Dark was a Serotone party built around hip hop, afrobeat, and amapiano with a glow-in-the-dark theme. I led the concept and experience design with one of the founders, working through everything from the glow execution, color direction, the drink menu, to how the room itself would feel walking in.
Arden, the founding DJ, started from the music: hip hop and afrobeats, which people on campus had been voicing a wanting for (and inability to find at campus bars), then amapiano folded in without leaning on the word itself, since some of our crowd wouldn't recognize it, and we didn't want the messaging to convey unfamiliar language before people even walked in.
For the look, the brief was keeping Serotone's deep, dark identity intact while letting in some of the warmer tones of the season, colors people could actually picture themselves going out in.
That's where the glow-in-the-dark thread came from. We talked about a black-light glow beverage station built into the kitchen, a neon and white dress code so complimentary body paint would actually read on people, and running the whole night under black light instead of normal room lighting. It gave us a theme that was visual first, easy to explain in one sentence, and cheap enough to actually build ourselves with a very limited budget.
Color and mood direction: keeping Serotone's dark base while letting warmer tones in.
The glow-reactive theme reference.
A lot of this section came out of personally experiencing everything that I saw as a pain point at the first Serotone party I went to, before I was designing for the club. AfroFusion After Dark was the first event where I got to build the fix for all of it into the plan from the start.
The music is the core of Serotone's brand, yet the DJ Booth lacked any spectacle and organization that exuded the energy that was coming out of the speakers, or identified Serotone as an organization in any of the photos.
I made sure that as soon as someone looked over to the booth, the visual of the booth was professional, clean, and let the attendee focus on the music and DJ rather than the state of the booth or un-covered components of the venue we couldn't change.
The walls before the house agreement's clean requirement kicked in.
A walkthrough of the same walls, before cleanup.
The same corner, still dirty, still undecorated.
A closer walkthrough of the same wall.
Walking in used to mean getting hit with floodlights and stepping almost directly into the DJ booth, since it sat at the same level as everything else with no visual or physical divider. It was overwhelming for guests, and it meant the DJ couldn't see the room and most of the room couldn't see the DJ.
I put risers under the DJ table and used a pallet to raise the whole booth up, then built a visual backdrop and added a tablecloth that reads as a physical wall once the booth is elevated, giving it a real boundary. I also swapped the floodlights for colored bulbs installed into the fixtures that used to just get switched off, so the entrance is lit without being blinding.
Floodlit and floor-level, no boundary between the crowd and the DJ.
Guests stepping almost directly into the booth on the way in.
Risers and a pallet raised the booth into a real, elevated stage.
The backdrop and tablecloth reading as a real boundary once elevated.
The entrance sightline into the old booth setup.
Every corner got lit and given a job, coat check, signage, instead of being left empty to collect dust.
A corner that used to sit empty, now lit and given a coat-check job.
Another once-empty corner, lit and put to work.
The lit corner as the room actually looked, full width.
A third corner, given signage instead of shadow.
Signage doubled as the light source in a corner that used to just collect dust.
The same treatment, from another angle.
Water got its own smaller cups, separate from the beverage supply, since a warmer night meant people actually needed it. Jug pours kept the line moving instead of stalling.
Lit the stairs down into the space so the entrance set the tone before anyone heard the music.
Walking down unlit, before the fix.
The same stairs, lit before anyone even hears the music.
Custom Serotone wristbands and directional cues so nobody was guessing where to go once they were in.
Printing out branded blank signs was also super helpful for putting up last-minute directions and notices, like when people were having trouble finding the trash cans.
The blank branded sign template, reused for last-minute notices.
The glow-in-the-dark black-light activation from the concept section doubled as a second thing to actually do besides dance.
The glow-in-the-dark bar activation, live.
The activation in motion, under black light.
A real coat check at the door replaced the random dark corner, and the room was planned to give people somewhere to actually spread out.
The coat check sign at the door.
The real coat check replacing the old dark-couch pile.
The rest of the venue work was logistics that supported all of it: getting the space set up and sound-checked the day before, keeping the bouncer model from the previous party (someone posted at the door for the first hour and a half so every person walking in got an actual welcome instead of just being waved through), and having the team bring their own black cotton shirts ahead of time so we could print Serotone tees for everyone working the event, not just attendees.
Rebuilt around fast, jug-poured beverages served with a light garnish, priced at four to five dollars, with real lighting on the station so nothing sat out long enough to spill or go dark. I also redesigned the menu itself so it actually held up under real conditions instead of turning into a soaked, unreadable mess by the second hour, and set up NFC tap-to-pay at the station so people could pay in one tap instead of fumbling with cash or a phone screen in a dark, crowded room.
The station before: sticky, unlit, unbranded.
The old menu, soaked and unreadable by the second hour.
No lighting on the station, so nothing sat out long enough to stay presentable.
The rebuilt station, lit and lined up under the Serotone branding.
The room mid-night, station visible in the background.
The crowd around the station once the fix landed.
Fast, jug-poured beverages keeping the line moving.
A closer look at the finished setup.
Jug pours in motion, keeping the line moving.
The redesigned menu, built to hold up under real conditions.
The NFC tap-to-pay setup at the station.
We planned content the same way we planned the room: ahead of time, not scrambled together after. Both DJ tour sets were recorded, a dedicated capture team shot photo and video across the whole night, and Dean cut transition clips in advance so the recap wouldn't just be a straight video dump. Working out who was free, who charged what, and who could shoot for the night was its own small negotiation. We landed on a mix of a connection from a local festival, a friend willing to shoot for free, and gear borrowed from teammates, since Serotone runs lean and a few hundred dollars for photo and video wasn't the move for an event this size.
Once the concept was locked, the rest was making sure six people could run a four-hour night without anyone guessing what they were supposed to be doing. I built the run of show around three DJ sets handed off in sequence, with the same people rotating through beverage station, door, and floater duty as the night moved, plus a named emergency protocol so if something did go wrong, everyone already knew the code and the response instead of figuring it out in the moment.
| Time | Music | Beverage Station | Door | Float / Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00–9:15 | — | Maddie | Dean | Gabby |
| 9:15–10:00 | Ritvik | Maddie | Dean | Gabby |
| 10:00–11:00 | Arden | Maddie + Gabby | Ritvik | Dean (ice/trash) |
| 11:00–11:30 | Dean | Maddie + Gabby | Ritvik / Arden | Arden |
| 11:30–12:00 | Dean | Maddie + Gabby | Arden | Arden |
| 12:00–1:00 | Dean (closing) | Maddie | Arden | Gabby (safety/trash) |
Every teammate touched at least two roles across the night, staggered so nobody was covering the same job for four straight hours.
