Rental company Bandit Lites UK supplied 240 Chroma-Q™ Color Blocks to LD Nick Jevons and his company Electric Fly Productions for the main stage at this year's Radio 1 Big Weekend event in Sunderland.

The free music event, which played to 30,000 people and broadcast on Radio 1 throughout the weekend, featured two days of live music from a host of top international artists and world class DJs.

Artists performing on the Main Stage included Gwen Stefani, Foo Fighters, Chemical Brothers, Black Eyed Peas, Basement Jaxx, Kasabian, Athlete, Natalie Imbruglia, Rooster, Jamiroquai, Kaiser Chiefs, Lemar and The Bravery.

For this year's festival, long-time event collaborator Nick wanted to integrate video-style effects as a light source into his overall design and chose the Chroma-Q™ Color Block LED fixture due to its high output but very compact design.

The fixtures were configured in star-like clusters and flown from back and mid trusses as a continuous backdrop of lights behind performers.

By running video through a DMX controlled media server, Nick created several visually innovative effects described by onlookers as similar to mutating bacterial cells, a twinkling starfield and snow crystals.

Commenting on the Color Blocks, LD Nick Jevons said: "Being a neat, modular product, Color Blocks allowed me the freedom to create a customised design with minimal restraint. They gave me the 'never to be repeated' factor which defines Electric Fly design. The only disadvantage was that the design possibilities were too endless and I had trouble whittling my ideas down to one! Their great impact on Radio 1's Big Weekend was an inspirational glimpse into the future of LED technology and I can't wait to get designing with Color Blocks again."

Mark Powell, Director of Bandit Lites, also commented: "The Color Block is a great fixture, the combination of amazing brightness, modularity and choice of HSI or RGB colour mixing is a real winner."