Event + Physical experience design
Lighting the Path Ahead
As Creative Director for EY’s flagship Strategic Growth Forum, I led the development of a multi-day immersive brand experience for more than 3,000 CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders. From campaign development and environmental design to stage content, motion graphics, and experiential storytelling, every element was designed to bring the event theme to life.
Building the narrative
Centered around the theme “Lighting the Path Ahead,” the experience transformed a traditional conference into a multi-sensory journey exploring imagination, innovation, equity, and sustainability.
The creative platform invited attendees to “Join the Audacious” and imagine what comes next. The moon became a unifying symbol throughout the campaign, appearing across advertising, environmental graphics, digital experiences, and stage content as a beacon guiding the journey forward.
Watch the event highlights video here.
Campaign visuals
Every theme image was meticulously crafted through digital compositing, before AI tools existed, to support the larger story unfolding throughout the event. The moon served as a recurring visual motif, tying together all four creative executions.
Evolving the visual landscape
As the event approached, the visual language expanded beyond the original campaign. Vibrant auroras, shifting light, and floating spheres introduced a sense of wonder and possibility, creating a richer expression of the ideas being explored on stage.
The live event
Every touchpoint was designed as part of a single connected experience. Environmental graphics, lighting, motion, sound, architecture, and storytelling worked together to immerse attendees in a world built around possibility. The result was an experience that felt less like a conference and more like stepping inside the theme itself.
Designing the environment
From a custom faceted portal to immersive LED environments and interactive installations, every element of the venue was designed to reinforce the event narrative. Light became both a visual device and a storytelling tool, guiding attendees through spaces that continuously transformed throughout the week.
Dichroic filters
Dichroic film applied to windows and surfaces filtered and refracted light, bathing the venue in beautiful colors that transformed as the sun changed position.
The main foyer outside of the ballroom was staged as an immersive world of possible futures, new perspectives and new ideas.
Floor-to-ceiling LED walls with dynamic movement span the entire length of the event space offering information and live feeds. We created subtly moving animation to enhance the feeling of otherworldliness with texture, depth and constant transformation.
Main Stage
We transformed the ballroom into a fully immersive storytelling environment, combining 360° LED displays, custom animation, theatrical lighting, and spatial audio to create a dynamic backdrop for world-class speakers and thought leaders.
Thematic Videos
To unify five days of programming, we created a series of custom opening films that framed each day’s conversations and connected them back to the event narrative. The videos established mood, reinforced key themes, and helped transform individual sessions into a cohesive storytelling experience.
The 360 screens were a challenge for clients to visualize so we developed dynamic ways of storyboarding and prototyping. Shown here is a screen record of a 360 composite.
Watch the final video experience with the ballroom lighting effects from the audience point of view. Turn the volume up to experience all the sound effects.
Winner's Sculpture
Designed as both an art installation and a tribute, the illuminated sculpture celebrated Entrepreneur Of The Year winners through layers of light, reflection, and motion. The piece evolved throughout the event, culminating in a dramatic outdoor installation against the night sky.
At the end of the week, we brought the sculpture outside to light the path to the future and celebrate the unstoppable Entrepreneur Of The Year Award winners. It’s impact was even more striking against the night sky.
The Strategic Growth Forum demonstrated the power of immersive storytelling at scale. By aligning brand, environment, content, technology, and experience around a single creative vision, the event became more than a conference. It became a fully realized expression of possibility, innovation, and leadership.