CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-3141 - REDACTED

XXXXXXX X XX X XXXX​

The project at XXXXXXXX XXXX had stalled before it ever got off the ground. Momentum was gone, the client was losing patience, and the design was going nowhere. Taking over creative direction at that point meant walking into a room where trust had already been damaged, and the first job wasn't design at all, it was rebuilding confidence that the work could actually get finished.

The turning point came from being handed a 3-day design charette with the client and a partner company. Planning and leading those sessions became the mechanism for getting the project back on track, a compressed, high-stakes push to get everyone in the room realigned on a direction they could actually rally behind. That charette built the foundation the rest of the project stood on, and it's what led to the successful delivery of the project concept package that followed.

​

From that foundation, leading a team of 19 designers meant dividing the concept package across specialties, architecture, interiors, and graphics all moving at once, while keeping a single unified vision holding the pieces together. At that scale, the real work was as much about direction and communication as it was about the design itself: making sure nineteen people pulling in different directions still landed on one coherent story for the client to see.

​

The result was a presentation strong enough to win the client back over and put the project on solid footing again, one of the largest teams led to date on a single engagement. It became proof that a stalled project isn't a dead one, and that the right reset at the right moment, in this case a single charette, can turn a losing situation into an approved one.

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-0304

UNIVERSAL EPIC UNIVERSE

Epic Universe is one of the largest theme park investments in Universal's history, and the work on it stretched well beyond any single land. Serving as liaison for the park's Executive Creative Director meant sitting in on meetings and representing his priorities during key development phases when he couldn't be there. Producing the sizzle reel gave the project a way to sell its own vision internally, distilling years of work into something a room full of stakeholders could feel in a few minutes. And with contributions spanning multiple lands, the role became a kind of cross-land knowledge source, someone who understood how the pieces were meant to fit together across the park rather than just within one corner of it. 

​

SEE GALLERY HERE

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-0904

SUPER NINTENDO WORLD

UNIVERSAL EPIC UNIVERSE

By the time the Color Model role began, most of the major decisions on color and material had already been made. The job was translating that design direction to the model shop team and making sure the physical model accurately reflected the land as intended quality control and communication rather than color and material selection itself.

Concept work extended into Yoshi's Adventure Queue, where the design called for a dropped ceiling and larger columns at the ride track's load station. The original plan treated those columns as clouds. Since part of the queue's story was set in a forest, the columns became tree trunks instead, and the lower ceiling became a canopy stretching across the space. The show set elements built for the cloud concept were easily repainted to work as foliage, which meant the change added story and purpose to the structure without adding cost or rework.

Additional concept work touched several corners of the land: shrouds for the Coke Freestyle units, interior concepts for the Yoshi's Island Snack Stand, the Princess Peach Crest design inside the castle, general graphic design concepts throughout, and light fixture and light shroud designs for the land.

The land's exit originally meandered around a series of columns. Working with the facility team, a straighter route became possible by adjusting some of the back-of-house uses nearby, and the result is a more direct, better guest experience on the way out of the land.

Presentations were also built to share land designs and progress with the Nintendo company, including its director and executive Shigeru Miyamoto, keeping the design work aligned with the source material at the highest level of review.

In the Donkey Kong Country portion of the land, a river stone retaining wall was originally planned to be fully sculpted by a specialized theming vendor. After seeing a white model mockup of a similar wall built for Super Nintendo World Japan, an alternate approach became clear: a standard construction contractor could build the wall's form, with scenic painting applied afterward to match the design intent. That shift saved over $1 million without compromising the final look.

​

SEE GALLERY HERE

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-7913

FAMILY FOREVER

FAST & FURIOUS SUPERCHARGED

The Family Forever logo was designed for Universal's Fast & Furious Supercharged, built to carry the franchise's core theme of loyalty and chosen family into a mark riders could take home with them. It found its way onto retail merchandise, and it stayed there. Years later, long after the attraction itself has run its course, the logo is still on shelves and still selling, a small piece of design that ended up outliving the ride it was made for.

​

SEE GALLERY HERE

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-5123 - REDACTED

XXXX XXXX XXXXXXX 

The first concept for XXXXXX XXX XXXXXX XXXXX XX did not survive client review. It was rejected outright, which meant going back to the drawing board with the clock already running. Rather than trying to salvage the original direction, the move was to develop an entirely alternate themed concept, one built around a different read on the brand and the space. That version won approval and became the direction the XXXXXXX was actually developed around, turning a rejection into the project's defining idea.

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-8062 - REDACTED

XXXX XXX XXXXXXX X X 

With XXXXXXXXXX preparing to launch its series XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX XXXX XXXXXXX, the work called for concepting and 3D modeling a range of assets built for the activations leading up to release. Promotional work on a property this well known comes with its own kind of pressure: the source material already lives in millions of people's heads, and any interpretation of it has to feel instantly recognizable while still working within the physical and production limits of an activation.

One of the bigger challenges was landing on a reduced, iconic interpretation of XXX XXXXXXXX XX X XXXXX, distilling a building into something that could read clearly at activation scale. That work extended to producing multiple-sized versions of the activation elements, each built to hold up under its own production constraints, whether that meant a piece needed to travel, fit a specific footprint, or meet a particular budget or fabrication method. On top of that, every design had to work for worldwide implementation, which meant thinking past a single location and accounting for how the same piece would hold up across different markets, fabrication capabilities, and site conditions rather than solving the problem once and calling it done.

The files themselves were modeled watertight and prepared for 3D printing, clean enough to hand off to fabricators for execution. Getting a file to that level means every surface closes properly, and every piece is checked for printability before it ever leaves the desk- work that's invisible in the final result but determines whether a fabricator can actually run with it or has to send it back for fixes. Final fabrication readiness on the production side hasn't been confirmed, but the files themselves were built to be ready.

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-1225

CHRISTMAS VILLAGE

HEBER VALLEY RAILROAD

The original scope for Heber Valley Railroad's holiday installation was modest, a single seasonal design meant to dress up the historic line for the season. The client's response changed that. What started as one installation grew into a request to double the scope mid-project, a vote of confidence that meant reworking the plan on the fly while the timeline stayed exactly where it started.

The project was carried from initial concept all the way through installation. That meant hiring the scenic designers and leading that design team through shop drawings for every element in the village, then coordinating everyone else who had a hand in getting it built: construction managers, the scenic shop, graphics vendors, lighting designers, site preparation crews, operations staff, and the board of directors. Keeping all of those moving parts pointed at the same finished picture was as much the job as the design itself.

Final graphic files were prepped and printed on Cintra panels, then applied to the scenic frames that make up the village itself, the last step before the whole thing came together on site. The installation has run every year since 2022, holiday after holiday, proof that the design held up well past its first season.

​

SEE GALLERY HERE

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-0902

DARK UNIVERSE

UNIVERSAL EPIC UNIVERSE

Concept development on Frankenstein Manor's facade included more than 100 iterations done personally, working alongside other designers as the look evolved. Early in that process, a reference to Château de Noisy's central tower made its way into concept art, an idea nobody had incorporated into a design before that point. As the team was reshuffled, the work shifted to supporting the park overall, and development on the manor continued well beyond that point, with many more iterations added by other designers before the design seen today was finalized. Harlaxton Manor was the other major inspiration for the final look, and the Château de Noisy tower reference stayed part of its DNA throughout.

Work extended into the village of Darkmoor surrounding the manor, developing the stonework layout on the facades of several buildings there. That texture mattered as much as the manor itself, giving the surrounding village its own sense of age and history.

​

Earlier in the project, the work was part of the team master planning the land itself, and a handful of layout ideas introduced during that phase still shape the land's DNA today, including the moat in front of the castle and parts of how guests move through the space.

Contributions extended beyond any single building. Concept work touched multiple attraction ideas, including a couple of trackless dark rides and walkthrough experiences that never made it to construction, along with early signage concepts and mood boards built during blue sky exploration to capture the tone the land was reaching for.

​

SEE GALLERY HERE

CASE STUDY

PROJECT NO. CS-0901

CELESTIAL PARK

UNIVERSAL EPIC UNIVERSE

Portals became something of a throughline across the work on Celestial Park. The team developed detailed design concepts for the Chronos Portal early on, alongside early concept development for the Wizarding World Portal. That motif carried into the Iconic Portals silhouette graphic, created for use on commemorative tickets and temporary signage, and now a recurring piece of operational communication to guests during special events.

​

The portal tower marking the entrance to Super Nintendo World called for its own dedicated concept work, from the tower's shape to working with the broader team to land the right orientation and placement within the land. Getting that piece right meant balancing a standalone icon against everything happening around it.

​

Hospitality and dining across the park also picked up a range of concept work: facade concepts for the Helios Hotel, development work on the Celestiki Bar, graphic design concepts for several restaurants, and product concepts for a handful of bars.

​

On the retail side, I developed early concept sketches for the murals inside the Other Worlds Mercantile, seeking to capture the land's essence in the artwork.

​

SEE GALLERY HERE