Podcast

Matters of Experience

“Matters of Experience” with Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan

Hosted by Abigail Honor, Lorem Ipsum’s Partner and Creative Director, and Brenda Cowan, professor and former Chairperson of Graduate Exhibition & Experience Design at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, “Matters of Experience” delves into the creativity, innovation, and psychology behind designed experiences and encounters. Each week, Abigail and Brenda explore the who, how, and why of exhibitions, branded experiences, events, and the extraordinary creations that designers and creatives are offering to an ever-curious audience.
The Architecture of Play

The Architecture of Play

06/04/25
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Spencer Luckey doesn’t just build playgrounds—he sculpts experiences that invite curiosity, joy, and exploration. In this episode of Matters of Experience, hosts Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with the artist, designer, and president of Luckey Climbers to talk about the intersection of play and public space. Spencer shares what it’s like to grow up inside a creative legacy and how he brings imagination, engineering, and poetic thinking to his large-scale climbing sculptures. He also opens up about the role of play in design, the creative tension between form and function, and how architecture can encourage not just movement, but wonder. For designers, educators, and anyone who believes space should spark emotion, this conversation is a reminder that play is a serious—and joyful—part of human experience.
Spencer Walker Luckey (born July 24, 1970) is an American artist and designer renowned for creating large-scale climbing structures known as Luckey Climbers. As the president of Luckey LLC, he continues the legacy of his father, Tom Luckey, who pioneered these innovative play sculptures. Raised in Short Beach, Connecticut, Spencer is the son of artist Tom Luckey and Elizabeth Mason. He attended the Foote School and Northfield Mount Hermon School, later earning degrees from Connecticut College and the Yale School of Architecture. Before embarking on his design career, Spencer held various jobs—including landscaper, waiter, painter, bike messenger, salesman, musician, mascot, carpenter, and convenience store clerk—experiences that enriched his creative perspective. In 2006, following an accident that left his father paralyzed, Spencer took over the operations of Luckey Climbers. Under his leadership, the company has expanded internationally, incorporating digital design techniques and structural analysis into the creation of climbers. Notable installations include projects at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, and the Spectrum Center in Irvine California. Spencer's designs aim to embody optimism, joy, and possibility, reflecting his belief in the power of art to bring people together. Outside of his professional endeavors, he enjoys swimming and is a dedicated musical hobbyist.

[00:00:00] Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, psychology, and innovation driving designed experiences. A big, hearty welcome to everyone listening. My name is Abigail Honor.
[00:00:17] Brenda Cowan: Hello everyone. This is Brenda Cowen.
[00:00:19] Abigail Honor: So today’s guest is Spencer Luckey, who leads Luckey Climbers and is a self-declared kid architect.
Luckey Climbers, for those who don’t know or who have seen one of over 80 that exist around the world, but don’t realize who made them, are those impressive climbing structures often in museums, but other locations too that are sort of suspended environments that hang and are intertwined spaces you can crawl through.
Um, Spencer’s work is a joyful rebellion against adult centric spaces turning architecture into a playground of exuberance, spontaneity, and connection. To quote him directly in his manifesto, he writes, climbers are kids built voice reminding us that design isn’t just about structure, it’s about soul movement and meeting.
So, uh, he builds not for power or prestige, but for celebration. For the questions kids ask and the delight we still carry. Spencer, a huge welcome to the show.
[00:01:21] Brenda Cowan: Welcome.
[00:01:22] Spencer Luckey: Thank you for that generous introduction. It’s just, um, you know, it’s a huge honor to come down here, to New York City to talk to really anyone but myself.
And, um, so I just, I think this is really incredibly, um, exotic and, and delightful as a sort of suburban mouse. I’m, I’m thrilled to be here.
[00:01:41] Abigail Honor: What’s it like, uh, working with kids, you know, and being surrounded in a kid’s world all the time?
[00:01:47] Spencer Luckey: One of the funny things about my business is I don’t actually work with kids.
I work almost exclusively with adults, and one of the things that I’m always constantly trying to eradicate is this sort of adult sensibility because it’s just. It just to sort of make way for kids to have their own imagination and have their own, um, you know, agendas. Uh, the big project of childhood is in a way, uh, trying to get more rights.
And so what they really want to do is have agency, you know, that’s like the end result of these rights. So. If you put them in a fake fire truck or something, which is, you know, could be cool if it was a real firetruck, right? Because then the kid would feel like they were, you know, acting out a, a, a real life fantasy or something.
But if you put them in a fake one, they’ll, they’ll play along with it for a little while, but they’ll pretty much not be firemen. Um, so that just goes out the window immediately and it really just becomes this thing that adults sold to other adults. And, you know, and they all kind of nodded along. Yeah, we’ll put the fire truck over here by the tree and, um, you know, and it’s, it’s well intended, but at the end of the day, kids are going to age out of that and they’re going to think to themselves, you know, I can’t go in that thing because it’s no longer compelling, um, use of my time and furthermore, it’s gonna like undermine my agenda, which is getting more rights.
[00:03:18] Abigail Honor: Yeah. So kids have taste and visual preferences. I mean, how they, they have preferences about everything as soon as they almost pop out, but they have, uh, they do have sort of aesthetic reactions to color and form quite early on. So how does their aesthetic sensibilities influence your work and, um, what materials do you use?
[00:03:39] Spencer Luckey: I have no idea how my sensibilities, um, influence kids or anything like that. I can only do what any other person in my situation, um, who’s honest about what they’re doing does. And that is just try to please myself. I’m not saying that I’m trying to make, you know, flat, black sort of chrome, weird battleship things with, uh, dazzled, but I’ve done a lot of thi, I mean, I’ve tried to make evil climbers. I really have, because I just think it’s funny, I, you know, would have an evil piece of playground equipment that people, as a matter of fact, we try to do this evil one out in, um, Normal, Illinois and unbeknownst to the engineers, I changed out these, you know, really critical, um, connection parts in the ceiling and to be, instead of these sort of dorky things, to be these really menacing claws very articulated and stuff. And, um, and you know, and then I confessed to him that these were, you know, new and better and evil and he edited them out. We had to.
[00:04:40] Brenda Cowan: No, we’d
[00:04:41] Spencer Luckey: hack them out. Yeah. People were, he was genuinely not on board with that as an agenda, you know, as a designer and art or artist or sculptor or whatever you wanna call me.
That’s my, the only thing I’m capable of really doing authentically is pleasing myself. So I have this simple rule where I just, you know, I, I try not to kid myself. I, I, I never finish something and then send it right out because I need to sleep on it a little.
[00:05:09] Brenda Cowan: Bit. Mm-hmm.
[00:05:10] Spencer Luckey: But then I never send it out unless I actually genuinely love it and I can think about all the reasons why I love it and you know, have a sort of rational response to my original sort of emotional action.
[00:05:23] Brenda Cowan: I think that there’s something about how open-ended your experiences are is probably why it appeals to kids. And well, and adults, but you know, kids, you know, beyond the age of four or five. Right. I think that they invite imagination and exploration and curiosity in a way that you get to, you get to decide what this is about and what it’s for and how to use it even.
[00:05:53] Spencer Luckey: Yeah. And at the end of the day, I mean, you know, the high sort of highest end I can think of is to have people come away feeling a little bit better about themselves and the world, and I don’t know if that, if it’s through an open-ended experience, I’ll take it.
[00:06:12] Brenda Cowan: There you go.
[00:06:13] Abigail Honor: I have a quick question about stakeholders. A lot of the museums we work on have many, many, many stakeholders. So we could have the local community, um, we could have, um, historians, curators, educators, people from the government, um, but we really make sure that we’re involving that community, who we are building the museum for. People who are going to use it.
You just mentioned that you are working directly with adults. Are you, when are you bringing the kids in? Are you prototyping with the kids? Do they have any involvement at all from the moment you’re awarded the job to the moment you open the experience?
[00:06:56] Spencer Luckey: To be perfectly honest, and you can put this in your podcast, I, I don’t.
I do my best in the early interviews to make it clear that I, I would much prefer to, to work alone in my office and then make suggestions and then they make decisions. You know, if they want to go and show it to a bunch of kids after I’ve done it, that’s fine. But I don’t wanna end up with a look, a kind of a brownness to, um, or grayness to sort of collaborative artwork.
You know, it’s hard enough, you know, somebody gives you a couple of bucks and you, you’ve gotta produce something that you think is compelling. In the early days, when I first got into this business, that I would fly out to wherever with the model and I would show them the model. And that was this, you know, had a lot of sort of emotional gravity to it in this, you know, nice set of drawings and all of that.
And, and they would, you know, we could converse and there would be a sort of substantive conversation. But these days, you know, I’m lucky if I can get my counterpart on the phone. So I’m often in this situation where I’m like, well, I’ll just, I, I mean, I, I wanna know what they have to say about this, and it doesn’t really matter what I say. I mean that, that’s a proven fact. So, um, I just email it to them with something like, here’s the latest.
[00:08:12] Abigail Honor: I think I’m just subject jealous. I think it’s jealousy and also like. You are an artist then, so the more I’m learning about your process and what you are you are creating for people to enjoy and experience is that it’s very much like an artist creating something.
[00:08:26] Brenda Cowan: In a way, it’s, what a, what a blessing.
[00:08:30] Abigail Honor: Oh, it’s fantastic.
[00:08:30] Brenda Cowan: To be able to make something with your hands that is truly unique. There’s a particular climber that you did in California that you were particularly fond of.
[00:08:45] Spencer Luckey: Oh, the Irvine Spectrum Center?
[00:08:46] Brenda Cowan: Yeah, of course,
[00:08:48] Spencer Luckey: For sure.
[00:08:48] Brenda Cowan: Okay. Can you tell us about it?
[00:08:51] Spencer Luckey: Yeah, so, um, we got this really amazing, I mean, there’s this, this mall out in Irvine, California, and um, so they sent me these drawings and it was gonna be under this, um, pergola thing.
And, um, so we made it so it just scratched the ceiling of the pergola and, you know, it was gonna be too big for the space, which is kind of like one of my things, you know. How can we get more into this? How can we sort of make it look like it’s not supposed to be here, but it is here. It’s sort of like a, Richard Serra, I guess, is a good example of somebody who does that.
So it has a helix on the top and then these, um, sort of, uh, curved leg. So it’s just like the weirdest, nobody would ever recognize it as a sawhorse, but that’s my structural concept. And then it just sort of evolved and one day I noticed that there was this kind of tunnel that I was kind of making inadvertently, you know, I don’t know how much work you guys do in computer computer modeling, but you know, the computer teaches you or sort of truncates you into this sort of state of like, you don’t accept anything but perfection.
So, you know, I’m like making part of it perfect. And meanwhile neglecting the other part of it. ’cause I only wanna, you know, work at this one little park ’cause that’s all I can see on my computer screen. So I, I pan out and I’m like, wow, that’s a really cool thing. There’s this space under there. What if there’s like a walkthrough and then there’s pathways?
And one of the things that happens in California projects specifically is that they ask for an ADA accommodation. And, um, having spent a lot of time with my severely handicapped father who was also in the climber business. You know, we made any number of, um, sort of accommodations for the handicapped population.
So what I did was compose this funny little trail through the underside of this climber that a kid in a wheelchair could very easily navigate. That’s totally unmarked and, um, I have no idea again whether kids in, in, in wheelchairs end up there. I mean, the truth of the matter is that. I never talked to the client about it at all. They don’t know it’s there.
[00:10:58] Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, okay. You just put it in there.
[00:11:01] Spencer Luckey: I just, it just happened. You know, it’s one of those things, like I said, you sort of fixate on something in the computer and then all of a sudden you realize what you’ve done and then you, you know, you move a couple little things to sort of. Make it a little bit more legit, but not much more legit.
[00:11:16] Brenda Cowan: I love that serendipity can happen with a computer experience.
[00:11:19] Spencer Luckey: I mean, you have to acknowledge that that’s your medium, you know?
[00:11:22] Brenda Cowan: Sure. Your tool. Yeah.
[00:11:24] Spencer Luckey: And, um, you know, it’s an amazing tool. I love computer modeling. I probably wouldn’t have made it through architecture school where it not for computer modeling, I can’t draw particularly well. I mean, I can draw well enough to sort of like please myself. Mm-hmm. Or not even please myself. I used to actually the opposite, annoy myself and to, you know, sort of test something and then get to this point where I’m like, this has no scale, that it’s so ugly, you know, it looks nothing like what I had in my head,
[00:11:54] Brenda Cowan: Uhhuh.
[00:11:54] Spencer Luckey: And, but you know, it, it, it has a sort of geometric reality and so then, you know, you take what you can from that.
[00:12:02] Abigail Honor: But how big are these square footage wise? So the audience can, Ima imagine them in general.
[00:12:07] Spencer Luckey: You know, some of them are quite large. We’re we just finished one down in, um, Carmel, Indiana. That’s, uh, about 60 or 70 feet long. It’s really pretty, um, amazing. It’s a, we’ve just figured out how to put, uh, a, dynamic light, lED lights in our climbers.
[00:12:26] Abigail Honor: So do the LEDs, are they lighting up the stages of so that where, where you sort of step onto or are they, um, is it for something in the evening so you can see and still climb in the evenings?
[00:12:36] Spencer Luckey: Is it weird for me to show you a picture?
[00:12:38] Abigail Honor: No, no. Show us picture.
[00:12:41] Spencer Luckey: So this is the first generation LED.
[00:12:45] Abigail Honor: Oh, it’s lovely. Oh my gosh. Gorgeous. It’s like lily pads that are all illuminated around the edge.
[00:12:50] Spencer Luckey: Yeah. And these ones, um, you know, they can change the, change the colors and um, it can sort of migrate from one color to another.
But, um, the most recent version,
[00:13:02] Abigail Honor: that’s very cool. Spencer’s showing us sort of how they illuminate and the color changes throughout them, so it really brings them to life.
[00:13:09] Spencer Luckey: It’s just the latest, greatest thing.
[00:13:10] Brenda Cowan: Looks like falling pedals. So, so many of your climbers make me think of falling pedals.
[00:13:15] Abigail Honor: That’s very exciting. They also look like disco. Like I wanna get in that now.
[00:13:18] Brenda Cowan: Okay. Disco falling pedals.
[00:13:21] Abigail Honor: Yeah. I wanna get,
[00:13:21] Spencer Luckey: And here’s the rave version.
[00:13:22] Abigail Honor: Yeah, yeah. I’m so there. That is definitely bringing up to 11 to 13 year olds. I’m there.
[00:13:28] Spencer Luckey: There’s the super patriotic version.
[00:13:30] Abigail Honor: Oh, very nice. Red, white, and blue.
[00:13:32] Brenda Cowan: Amazing. Back to thinking about working with clients, what are the skills that you employ? What do you need to really do to be able to do this really unique kind of work? You’re not off the shelf?
[00:13:47] Spencer Luckey: Well, first and foremost, I try to make a friend. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s like nobody wants to do anything with somebody they don’t like, so it’s not in a manipulative way. I, I, you know, I actually really like people. So that’s always my first agenda is to, to try to, I don’t know, be amusing. And sometimes I overdo it and, you know, turn people off. I don’t know, I, I, it’s precarious right at the beginning. The first conversations are always sort of fraught in a way. You know, I generally, um, try to understand what their agenda is, what they want out of the climber, what they, you know, the, try to understand the architecture that it’s gonna go into, and. You know who their audience is. Um, you know, sometimes I get it completely wrong the first time, the second time, the third time, the fourth time, sometimes they lose patience with me and then don’t, you know, they ghost me. And I don’t know, it’s just, again, it’s like goes back to that. I send something, send somebody a, an email and with a bunch of pictures that I’m totally intrigued by, and then I hear nothing back.
But that happens, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s just as part of the game, I suppose.
[00:14:55] Brenda Cowan: But it’s the, you’ve got the creative process that you’re going through, which has its own ups and downs and unknowns and uncertainties, and then epiphanies, and then, you know, moments when you’re really energized. And I was, I’m really curious, like when you see a space where a climber will someday live.
What’s that like? Does like, do things start to pop into your head or?
[00:15:17] Spencer Luckey: Well, I, you know, I’m part Vulcan, so I always try to sort of like, look through the walls and see where the lines of structure are. Um, I try really hard to make something, design something that is, that’s, you know, complimentary to the architecture, to the structure of the building. Um, and we’re doing this project, uh, this summer at a, at a little school down in Florida. And, um, I was sitting on a train and I just was like, you know, I should really work on that project. Started drawing these things. So I was like, okay, it has to be kind of like this, you know, two columns with a lintel. And I was, all right, you know, it’s dumb, dumb. Um, that’s stupid and it’s ridiculous. Ridiculous. I have pages of these, you know, sort of, uh, double T looking things. Um, in my sketchbook coming back from DC and, um, and then, you know, a couple of days later I was like, oh, it’s a pie symbol, you know, because they can go and talk about it. It definitely exceeded their expectations about, you know, what it could be. And, um, and it’s ridiculous. I think that, you know, you have to just allow your, um, you know, kind of get conversant with what the problem is in a sense. Um, you know, we did this funny project in, um, Moscow a bunch of years ago, and they were like, you know, Ve vant zis space zeeme. Alright, space theme. What does that mean? You know, so, you know, my most sort of weirdo notions of space or sort blobs and, you know, and they’re like, this just not, we don’t get it, you know? But then I was like, you know what they want again? They want to feel good about themselves. They want to get it. They don’t want to be left out of the joke. They don’t, you know, none of that’s, it’s totally invalid in a way. And so we have this way of making like a tripod. My old man was obsessed with these. He, a lot of his climbers were just these simple tripods. ’cause it’s the simplest structure. My old man. Just like his son is a, was a bit of a Vulcan. And, um, but I tried to best him by making this one where the, the tripod with this and the sticks pass, um, passed the vertex. And then I was like, wow, what if I put like an atom symbol around it? Because, you know, one of the problems with that structure is that the top of it, you know, can, is a cantilever, but so, but if you constrain it with these hoops that make the atom symbol and all of a sudden I was like, it’s Russian constructivism. Like right there.
[00:17:52] Abigail Honor: And they loved it.
[00:17:53] Spencer Luckey: And they loved it immediately.
[00:17:54] Brenda Cowan: Oh my god. And there you go. The pitch.
[00:17:56] Abigail Honor: So he does know how very well to talk to clients and how to spin the work he does.
[00:18:01] Brenda Cowan: I know that we’re out of time, but I have to ask one quick question, which is, so I am a professor of design students and I would love to know, what advice would you give young creative folks right now who wanna build things and create things for others?
[00:18:21] Spencer Luckey: I was a never the teacher’s pet in school. Um, and so I’m, I’m kind of the last person that you should ask that kind of a question to. But what’s worked for me is, again, to be, to be honest and to be kind of cold with my, um, with my reflections on what I’ve done. Um, you know, a lot of my, uh, practice as a musician, you know, is it you just do scales, you know, or whatever it is again and again and again, and there’s no notion of perfection, it’s, you know, it’s fleeting. It’s, um, and you have to sort of, um, at least I try to just embrace my honest reflections on these things. And, and then I, I really try hard to never show anyone anything that I don’t love. Mm-hmm. It’s just a, and I, you know, I can’t put my finger on that, but, you know, I love the pie symbol. When I first, you know, I was like, this is, they’re gonna love it. I’m gonna love it. I can make it into something I’m gonna love. Or the constructivist thing or, um, the idea comes and it’s often, it’s not like epiphany or some sort of, it’s a process. You know, you have to again, get yourself so you’re kind of thinking about it, you know, when you’re, you know, doing laps in the pool or whatever it is you do. And just get it past the point where you’re in any kind of panic about it. Because that’s the, like the worst space for your brain, um, to be creative and get, you know, relaxed. One of the things that I learned in school was, you know, they have these hideous deadlines and they just come at you.
And so you have to learn to sort of compartmentalize the schedule and the stress and, um, and, you know, the, the context within which you’re operating and, and try to find calm in there. And, and not. Be reactive to your environment. Just stay on task. And it’s not that it’s a very hard thing to do, particularly when you’ve got your cell phone and you know, all the energy drinks and whatever goes on at science schools these days, um, but uh, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of it to me it’s the whole shoot and match is pleasing oneself. If you can’t honestly please yourself, you know, it’s kind of
[00:20:54] Brenda Cowan: How do you expect others, to fall in love?
[00:20:56] Spencer Luckey: Humans are really, really great at, um, spotting authenticity. And um, you know, you just can’t fake it.
[00:21:05] Abigail Honor: I completely agree. Just to sort of wrap it up here. No, I agree, Spencer, that when I’m listening to you, um, it’s never usually an epiphany could be a aha moment, but it’s at the end of a lot of work. It’s a process and you have to do to achieve something. Sitting and not doing as creatives and physical creative, whether it’s using a pen and a piece of paper or using a computer, you have to work through ideas to get to the idea. And so I just wanna say huge thank you for joining us on this show today. This is a pleasure.
[00:21:35] Spencer Luckey: What a huge honor it is.
[00:21:37] Abigail Honor: It’s been amazing. Like to glimpse into your life and how you make these incredible climbers, and I would like to challenge all our listeners, find the nearest climb and get in it.
[00:21:46] Brenda Cowan: Get in it.
[00:21:46] Abigail Honor: The kind of amazing and beautiful sculptures to actually even just, just look at, so. Thank you so much, Spencer. Thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of matters of experience wherever you listen to podcasts. And make sure to leave a rating and a review. Please share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.
[00:22:04] Brenda Cowan: Take care, everybody.
[00:22:08] Audio Engineer: Matters of experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Spencer Walker Luckey (born July 24, 1970) is an American artist and designer renowned for creating large-scale climbing structures known as Luckey Climbers. As the president of Luckey LLC, he continues the legacy of his father, Tom Luckey, who pioneered these innovative play sculptures. Raised in Short Beach, Connecticut, Spencer is the son of artist Tom Luckey and Elizabeth Mason. He attended the Foote School and Northfield Mount Hermon School, later earning degrees from Connecticut College and the Yale School of Architecture. Before embarking on his design career, Spencer held various jobs—including landscaper, waiter, painter, bike messenger, salesman, musician, mascot, carpenter, and convenience store clerk—experiences that enriched his creative perspective. In 2006, following an accident that left his father paralyzed, Spencer took over the operations of Luckey Climbers. Under his leadership, the company has expanded internationally, incorporating digital design techniques and structural analysis into the creation of climbers. Notable installations include projects at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, and the Spectrum Center in Irvine California. Spencer's designs aim to embody optimism, joy, and possibility, reflecting his belief in the power of art to bring people together. Outside of his professional endeavors, he enjoys swimming and is a dedicated musical hobbyist.

[00:00:00] Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, psychology, and innovation driving designed experiences. A big, hearty welcome to everyone listening. My name is Abigail Honor.
[00:00:17] Brenda Cowan: Hello everyone. This is Brenda Cowen.
[00:00:19] Abigail Honor: So today’s guest is Spencer Luckey, who leads Luckey Climbers and is a self-declared kid architect.
Luckey Climbers, for those who don’t know or who have seen one of over 80 that exist around the world, but don’t realize who made them, are those impressive climbing structures often in museums, but other locations too that are sort of suspended environments that hang and are intertwined spaces you can crawl through.
Um, Spencer’s work is a joyful rebellion against adult centric spaces turning architecture into a playground of exuberance, spontaneity, and connection. To quote him directly in his manifesto, he writes, climbers are kids built voice reminding us that design isn’t just about structure, it’s about soul movement and meeting.
So, uh, he builds not for power or prestige, but for celebration. For the questions kids ask and the delight we still carry. Spencer, a huge welcome to the show.
[00:01:21] Brenda Cowan: Welcome.
[00:01:22] Spencer Luckey: Thank you for that generous introduction. It’s just, um, you know, it’s a huge honor to come down here, to New York City to talk to really anyone but myself.
And, um, so I just, I think this is really incredibly, um, exotic and, and delightful as a sort of suburban mouse. I’m, I’m thrilled to be here.
[00:01:41] Abigail Honor: What’s it like, uh, working with kids, you know, and being surrounded in a kid’s world all the time?
[00:01:47] Spencer Luckey: One of the funny things about my business is I don’t actually work with kids.
I work almost exclusively with adults, and one of the things that I’m always constantly trying to eradicate is this sort of adult sensibility because it’s just. It just to sort of make way for kids to have their own imagination and have their own, um, you know, agendas. Uh, the big project of childhood is in a way, uh, trying to get more rights.
And so what they really want to do is have agency, you know, that’s like the end result of these rights. So. If you put them in a fake fire truck or something, which is, you know, could be cool if it was a real firetruck, right? Because then the kid would feel like they were, you know, acting out a, a, a real life fantasy or something.
But if you put them in a fake one, they’ll, they’ll play along with it for a little while, but they’ll pretty much not be firemen. Um, so that just goes out the window immediately and it really just becomes this thing that adults sold to other adults. And, you know, and they all kind of nodded along. Yeah, we’ll put the fire truck over here by the tree and, um, you know, and it’s, it’s well intended, but at the end of the day, kids are going to age out of that and they’re going to think to themselves, you know, I can’t go in that thing because it’s no longer compelling, um, use of my time and furthermore, it’s gonna like undermine my agenda, which is getting more rights.
[00:03:18] Abigail Honor: Yeah. So kids have taste and visual preferences. I mean, how they, they have preferences about everything as soon as they almost pop out, but they have, uh, they do have sort of aesthetic reactions to color and form quite early on. So how does their aesthetic sensibilities influence your work and, um, what materials do you use?
[00:03:39] Spencer Luckey: I have no idea how my sensibilities, um, influence kids or anything like that. I can only do what any other person in my situation, um, who’s honest about what they’re doing does. And that is just try to please myself. I’m not saying that I’m trying to make, you know, flat, black sort of chrome, weird battleship things with, uh, dazzled, but I’ve done a lot of thi, I mean, I’ve tried to make evil climbers. I really have, because I just think it’s funny, I, you know, would have an evil piece of playground equipment that people, as a matter of fact, we try to do this evil one out in, um, Normal, Illinois and unbeknownst to the engineers, I changed out these, you know, really critical, um, connection parts in the ceiling and to be, instead of these sort of dorky things, to be these really menacing claws very articulated and stuff. And, um, and you know, and then I confessed to him that these were, you know, new and better and evil and he edited them out. We had to.
[00:04:40] Brenda Cowan: No, we’d
[00:04:41] Spencer Luckey: hack them out. Yeah. People were, he was genuinely not on board with that as an agenda, you know, as a designer and art or artist or sculptor or whatever you wanna call me.
That’s my, the only thing I’m capable of really doing authentically is pleasing myself. So I have this simple rule where I just, you know, I, I try not to kid myself. I, I, I never finish something and then send it right out because I need to sleep on it a little.
[00:05:09] Brenda Cowan: Bit. Mm-hmm.
[00:05:10] Spencer Luckey: But then I never send it out unless I actually genuinely love it and I can think about all the reasons why I love it and you know, have a sort of rational response to my original sort of emotional action.
[00:05:23] Brenda Cowan: I think that there’s something about how open-ended your experiences are is probably why it appeals to kids. And well, and adults, but you know, kids, you know, beyond the age of four or five. Right. I think that they invite imagination and exploration and curiosity in a way that you get to, you get to decide what this is about and what it’s for and how to use it even.
[00:05:53] Spencer Luckey: Yeah. And at the end of the day, I mean, you know, the high sort of highest end I can think of is to have people come away feeling a little bit better about themselves and the world, and I don’t know if that, if it’s through an open-ended experience, I’ll take it.
[00:06:12] Brenda Cowan: There you go.
[00:06:13] Abigail Honor: I have a quick question about stakeholders. A lot of the museums we work on have many, many, many stakeholders. So we could have the local community, um, we could have, um, historians, curators, educators, people from the government, um, but we really make sure that we’re involving that community, who we are building the museum for. People who are going to use it.
You just mentioned that you are working directly with adults. Are you, when are you bringing the kids in? Are you prototyping with the kids? Do they have any involvement at all from the moment you’re awarded the job to the moment you open the experience?
[00:06:56] Spencer Luckey: To be perfectly honest, and you can put this in your podcast, I, I don’t.
I do my best in the early interviews to make it clear that I, I would much prefer to, to work alone in my office and then make suggestions and then they make decisions. You know, if they want to go and show it to a bunch of kids after I’ve done it, that’s fine. But I don’t wanna end up with a look, a kind of a brownness to, um, or grayness to sort of collaborative artwork.
You know, it’s hard enough, you know, somebody gives you a couple of bucks and you, you’ve gotta produce something that you think is compelling. In the early days, when I first got into this business, that I would fly out to wherever with the model and I would show them the model. And that was this, you know, had a lot of sort of emotional gravity to it in this, you know, nice set of drawings and all of that.
And, and they would, you know, we could converse and there would be a sort of substantive conversation. But these days, you know, I’m lucky if I can get my counterpart on the phone. So I’m often in this situation where I’m like, well, I’ll just, I, I mean, I, I wanna know what they have to say about this, and it doesn’t really matter what I say. I mean that, that’s a proven fact. So, um, I just email it to them with something like, here’s the latest.
[00:08:12] Abigail Honor: I think I’m just subject jealous. I think it’s jealousy and also like. You are an artist then, so the more I’m learning about your process and what you are you are creating for people to enjoy and experience is that it’s very much like an artist creating something.
[00:08:26] Brenda Cowan: In a way, it’s, what a, what a blessing.
[00:08:30] Abigail Honor: Oh, it’s fantastic.
[00:08:30] Brenda Cowan: To be able to make something with your hands that is truly unique. There’s a particular climber that you did in California that you were particularly fond of.
[00:08:45] Spencer Luckey: Oh, the Irvine Spectrum Center?
[00:08:46] Brenda Cowan: Yeah, of course,
[00:08:48] Spencer Luckey: For sure.
[00:08:48] Brenda Cowan: Okay. Can you tell us about it?
[00:08:51] Spencer Luckey: Yeah, so, um, we got this really amazing, I mean, there’s this, this mall out in Irvine, California, and um, so they sent me these drawings and it was gonna be under this, um, pergola thing.
And, um, so we made it so it just scratched the ceiling of the pergola and, you know, it was gonna be too big for the space, which is kind of like one of my things, you know. How can we get more into this? How can we sort of make it look like it’s not supposed to be here, but it is here. It’s sort of like a, Richard Serra, I guess, is a good example of somebody who does that.
So it has a helix on the top and then these, um, sort of, uh, curved leg. So it’s just like the weirdest, nobody would ever recognize it as a sawhorse, but that’s my structural concept. And then it just sort of evolved and one day I noticed that there was this kind of tunnel that I was kind of making inadvertently, you know, I don’t know how much work you guys do in computer computer modeling, but you know, the computer teaches you or sort of truncates you into this sort of state of like, you don’t accept anything but perfection.
So, you know, I’m like making part of it perfect. And meanwhile neglecting the other part of it. ’cause I only wanna, you know, work at this one little park ’cause that’s all I can see on my computer screen. So I, I pan out and I’m like, wow, that’s a really cool thing. There’s this space under there. What if there’s like a walkthrough and then there’s pathways?
And one of the things that happens in California projects specifically is that they ask for an ADA accommodation. And, um, having spent a lot of time with my severely handicapped father who was also in the climber business. You know, we made any number of, um, sort of accommodations for the handicapped population.
So what I did was compose this funny little trail through the underside of this climber that a kid in a wheelchair could very easily navigate. That’s totally unmarked and, um, I have no idea again whether kids in, in, in wheelchairs end up there. I mean, the truth of the matter is that. I never talked to the client about it at all. They don’t know it’s there.
[00:10:58] Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, okay. You just put it in there.
[00:11:01] Spencer Luckey: I just, it just happened. You know, it’s one of those things, like I said, you sort of fixate on something in the computer and then all of a sudden you realize what you’ve done and then you, you know, you move a couple little things to sort of. Make it a little bit more legit, but not much more legit.
[00:11:16] Brenda Cowan: I love that serendipity can happen with a computer experience.
[00:11:19] Spencer Luckey: I mean, you have to acknowledge that that’s your medium, you know?
[00:11:22] Brenda Cowan: Sure. Your tool. Yeah.
[00:11:24] Spencer Luckey: And, um, you know, it’s an amazing tool. I love computer modeling. I probably wouldn’t have made it through architecture school where it not for computer modeling, I can’t draw particularly well. I mean, I can draw well enough to sort of like please myself. Mm-hmm. Or not even please myself. I used to actually the opposite, annoy myself and to, you know, sort of test something and then get to this point where I’m like, this has no scale, that it’s so ugly, you know, it looks nothing like what I had in my head,
[00:11:54] Brenda Cowan: Uhhuh.
[00:11:54] Spencer Luckey: And, but you know, it, it, it has a sort of geometric reality and so then, you know, you take what you can from that.
[00:12:02] Abigail Honor: But how big are these square footage wise? So the audience can, Ima imagine them in general.
[00:12:07] Spencer Luckey: You know, some of them are quite large. We’re we just finished one down in, um, Carmel, Indiana. That’s, uh, about 60 or 70 feet long. It’s really pretty, um, amazing. It’s a, we’ve just figured out how to put, uh, a, dynamic light, lED lights in our climbers.
[00:12:26] Abigail Honor: So do the LEDs, are they lighting up the stages of so that where, where you sort of step onto or are they, um, is it for something in the evening so you can see and still climb in the evenings?
[00:12:36] Spencer Luckey: Is it weird for me to show you a picture?
[00:12:38] Abigail Honor: No, no. Show us picture.
[00:12:41] Spencer Luckey: So this is the first generation LED.
[00:12:45] Abigail Honor: Oh, it’s lovely. Oh my gosh. Gorgeous. It’s like lily pads that are all illuminated around the edge.
[00:12:50] Spencer Luckey: Yeah. And these ones, um, you know, they can change the, change the colors and um, it can sort of migrate from one color to another.
But, um, the most recent version,
[00:13:02] Abigail Honor: that’s very cool. Spencer’s showing us sort of how they illuminate and the color changes throughout them, so it really brings them to life.
[00:13:09] Spencer Luckey: It’s just the latest, greatest thing.
[00:13:10] Brenda Cowan: Looks like falling pedals. So, so many of your climbers make me think of falling pedals.
[00:13:15] Abigail Honor: That’s very exciting. They also look like disco. Like I wanna get in that now.
[00:13:18] Brenda Cowan: Okay. Disco falling pedals.
[00:13:21] Abigail Honor: Yeah. I wanna get,
[00:13:21] Spencer Luckey: And here’s the rave version.
[00:13:22] Abigail Honor: Yeah, yeah. I’m so there. That is definitely bringing up to 11 to 13 year olds. I’m there.
[00:13:28] Spencer Luckey: There’s the super patriotic version.
[00:13:30] Abigail Honor: Oh, very nice. Red, white, and blue.
[00:13:32] Brenda Cowan: Amazing. Back to thinking about working with clients, what are the skills that you employ? What do you need to really do to be able to do this really unique kind of work? You’re not off the shelf?
[00:13:47] Spencer Luckey: Well, first and foremost, I try to make a friend. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s like nobody wants to do anything with somebody they don’t like, so it’s not in a manipulative way. I, I, you know, I actually really like people. So that’s always my first agenda is to, to try to, I don’t know, be amusing. And sometimes I overdo it and, you know, turn people off. I don’t know, I, I, it’s precarious right at the beginning. The first conversations are always sort of fraught in a way. You know, I generally, um, try to understand what their agenda is, what they want out of the climber, what they, you know, the, try to understand the architecture that it’s gonna go into, and. You know who their audience is. Um, you know, sometimes I get it completely wrong the first time, the second time, the third time, the fourth time, sometimes they lose patience with me and then don’t, you know, they ghost me. And I don’t know, it’s just, again, it’s like goes back to that. I send something, send somebody a, an email and with a bunch of pictures that I’m totally intrigued by, and then I hear nothing back.
But that happens, you know? Mm-hmm. It’s just as part of the game, I suppose.
[00:14:55] Brenda Cowan: But it’s the, you’ve got the creative process that you’re going through, which has its own ups and downs and unknowns and uncertainties, and then epiphanies, and then, you know, moments when you’re really energized. And I was, I’m really curious, like when you see a space where a climber will someday live.
What’s that like? Does like, do things start to pop into your head or?
[00:15:17] Spencer Luckey: Well, I, you know, I’m part Vulcan, so I always try to sort of like, look through the walls and see where the lines of structure are. Um, I try really hard to make something, design something that is, that’s, you know, complimentary to the architecture, to the structure of the building. Um, and we’re doing this project, uh, this summer at a, at a little school down in Florida. And, um, I was sitting on a train and I just was like, you know, I should really work on that project. Started drawing these things. So I was like, okay, it has to be kind of like this, you know, two columns with a lintel. And I was, all right, you know, it’s dumb, dumb. Um, that’s stupid and it’s ridiculous. Ridiculous. I have pages of these, you know, sort of, uh, double T looking things. Um, in my sketchbook coming back from DC and, um, and then, you know, a couple of days later I was like, oh, it’s a pie symbol, you know, because they can go and talk about it. It definitely exceeded their expectations about, you know, what it could be. And, um, and it’s ridiculous. I think that, you know, you have to just allow your, um, you know, kind of get conversant with what the problem is in a sense. Um, you know, we did this funny project in, um, Moscow a bunch of years ago, and they were like, you know, Ve vant zis space zeeme. Alright, space theme. What does that mean? You know, so, you know, my most sort of weirdo notions of space or sort blobs and, you know, and they’re like, this just not, we don’t get it, you know? But then I was like, you know what they want again? They want to feel good about themselves. They want to get it. They don’t want to be left out of the joke. They don’t, you know, none of that’s, it’s totally invalid in a way. And so we have this way of making like a tripod. My old man was obsessed with these. He, a lot of his climbers were just these simple tripods. ’cause it’s the simplest structure. My old man. Just like his son is a, was a bit of a Vulcan. And, um, but I tried to best him by making this one where the, the tripod with this and the sticks pass, um, passed the vertex. And then I was like, wow, what if I put like an atom symbol around it? Because, you know, one of the problems with that structure is that the top of it, you know, can, is a cantilever, but so, but if you constrain it with these hoops that make the atom symbol and all of a sudden I was like, it’s Russian constructivism. Like right there.
[00:17:52] Abigail Honor: And they loved it.
[00:17:53] Spencer Luckey: And they loved it immediately.
[00:17:54] Brenda Cowan: Oh my god. And there you go. The pitch.
[00:17:56] Abigail Honor: So he does know how very well to talk to clients and how to spin the work he does.
[00:18:01] Brenda Cowan: I know that we’re out of time, but I have to ask one quick question, which is, so I am a professor of design students and I would love to know, what advice would you give young creative folks right now who wanna build things and create things for others?
[00:18:21] Spencer Luckey: I was a never the teacher’s pet in school. Um, and so I’m, I’m kind of the last person that you should ask that kind of a question to. But what’s worked for me is, again, to be, to be honest and to be kind of cold with my, um, with my reflections on what I’ve done. Um, you know, a lot of my, uh, practice as a musician, you know, is it you just do scales, you know, or whatever it is again and again and again, and there’s no notion of perfection, it’s, you know, it’s fleeting. It’s, um, and you have to sort of, um, at least I try to just embrace my honest reflections on these things. And, and then I, I really try hard to never show anyone anything that I don’t love. Mm-hmm. It’s just a, and I, you know, I can’t put my finger on that, but, you know, I love the pie symbol. When I first, you know, I was like, this is, they’re gonna love it. I’m gonna love it. I can make it into something I’m gonna love. Or the constructivist thing or, um, the idea comes and it’s often, it’s not like epiphany or some sort of, it’s a process. You know, you have to again, get yourself so you’re kind of thinking about it, you know, when you’re, you know, doing laps in the pool or whatever it is you do. And just get it past the point where you’re in any kind of panic about it. Because that’s the, like the worst space for your brain, um, to be creative and get, you know, relaxed. One of the things that I learned in school was, you know, they have these hideous deadlines and they just come at you.
And so you have to learn to sort of compartmentalize the schedule and the stress and, um, and, you know, the, the context within which you’re operating and, and try to find calm in there. And, and not. Be reactive to your environment. Just stay on task. And it’s not that it’s a very hard thing to do, particularly when you’ve got your cell phone and you know, all the energy drinks and whatever goes on at science schools these days, um, but uh, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s kind of it to me it’s the whole shoot and match is pleasing oneself. If you can’t honestly please yourself, you know, it’s kind of
[00:20:54] Brenda Cowan: How do you expect others, to fall in love?
[00:20:56] Spencer Luckey: Humans are really, really great at, um, spotting authenticity. And um, you know, you just can’t fake it.
[00:21:05] Abigail Honor: I completely agree. Just to sort of wrap it up here. No, I agree, Spencer, that when I’m listening to you, um, it’s never usually an epiphany could be a aha moment, but it’s at the end of a lot of work. It’s a process and you have to do to achieve something. Sitting and not doing as creatives and physical creative, whether it’s using a pen and a piece of paper or using a computer, you have to work through ideas to get to the idea. And so I just wanna say huge thank you for joining us on this show today. This is a pleasure.
[00:21:35] Spencer Luckey: What a huge honor it is.
[00:21:37] Abigail Honor: It’s been amazing. Like to glimpse into your life and how you make these incredible climbers, and I would like to challenge all our listeners, find the nearest climb and get in it.
[00:21:46] Brenda Cowan: Get in it.
[00:21:46] Abigail Honor: The kind of amazing and beautiful sculptures to actually even just, just look at, so. Thank you so much, Spencer. Thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of matters of experience wherever you listen to podcasts. And make sure to leave a rating and a review. Please share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.
[00:22:04] Brenda Cowan: Take care, everybody.
[00:22:08] Audio Engineer: Matters of experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

The Architecture of Play

The Architecture of Play

06/04/25
Where Stories Becomes Spaces

Where Stories Becomes Spaces

05/07/25
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Design can do more than communicate—it can captivate, transport, and transform. In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Shirin Frangoul-Brückner, founding partner of the globally acclaimed design studio Atelier Brückner. Shirin shares her journey from architecture to experience design, the philosophy of “form follows content,” and how immersive exhibitions—from the Titanic artifacts to ancient Ephesus—use emotion, interactivity, and sensory design to create lasting impact. She also opens up about leadership, guiding clients through vision and complexity, and how her firm is integrating AI to serve creativity—not replace it. This conversation offers inspiration for designers, museum professionals, and anyone passionate about creating experiences that move people.
Shirin Frangoul-Brückner, born in 1967 in Baghdad, is the visionary architect and founding partner of ATELIER BRÜCKNER. She established the company in 1997 alongside Uwe R. Brückner, transforming it from a small laboratory for scenography and architecture into a globally recognized leader in museum planning and exhibition design. Guided by the principle of "making the impossible possible," Shirin excels in new business, contracts, and management, but still being involved in the design process of various projects. In 2024, Shirin is proudly honored as a SEGD Fellow, an international recognition for visionary leaders and trailblazors whose work sets the gold standard in design excellence and leadership. Additionally, she is one of The Power 10 of the prestigious Blooloop 50 Museum Influencer List 2024. Shirin studied architecture in Kaiserslautern and Stuttgart and is a member of the DDC (German Designers' Club). Under her leadership, ATELIER BRÜCKNER has embraced the motto "Form Follows Content," creating narrative architectures that interweaves content, messages, exhibits, media, graphics and light with space. The built reality becomes a direct reflection, a carrier of the underlying conceptual or functional design. The firm operates with 130 employees across its Stuttgart and Seoul offices, working on both temporary and permanent projects worldwide. Faced with extraordinary challenges like the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza and the Museum of the Future in Dubai, Shirin and her team continue to push the boundaries of exhibition design, creating interactive and engaging spaces. The exceptional storytelling and multi-sensory design methods have significantly shaped the fields of museum and exhibition design. Current projects of ATELIER BRÜCKNER include the National Center of Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, US, the Uzbekistan and the UAE Pavilion for Expo 2025 in Japan, the London Museum and the Mukaab in Saudi Arabia.

[00:00:00] Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience at Podcast where explore the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation today. My name is Abby Honor.
[00:00:19] Brenda Cowen: Hello, I’m Brenda Cowen.
[00:00:20] Abigail Honor: So today it’s my pleasure to welcome Shirin Brückner to the show.
She is a founding partner of Atelier Brückner, which if you are in our business, you should have heard about them. And if you haven’t, go check out their work after the show because. It is incredible.
[00:00:37] Brenda Cowen: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:37] Abigail Honor: Shirin focuses on new business and management, but is still very much involved in the design process.
Um, in 2024, she was honored as an SEGD fellow and International Recognition for Visionary Leaders whose work sets the global standard in design excellence. And you are one of the Power 10 in the Blue Loop 50 Museum influencer list 2024. Which is an accomplished group of people from our industry. So Shirin, congratulations on all your recent accolades, and I know there’s even more that I didn’t list, but a huge welcome to the show.
[00:01:11] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Thank you very much for inviting me, and I’m happy to contribute to this podcast. Thank you.
[00:01:16] Brenda Cowen: We’re so excited to be talking with you today, Shirin, and just to get us kick started. Can you let us know what is it that attracted you to this industry in the first place? Do you have an origin story to share with our listeners?
[00:01:31] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Yeah, so basically this is a question which pops up quite often when people ask me, how did all this happen? Yeah. And um, I basically, I grew up in a very cultural, diverse family. So my father is a Iraqi, my mother is German. And in this mix of cultures, this really shaped my worldview and gave me a strong sense, uh, of resilience.
And from a very early age, I learned how somehow to interact with different perspective and also to embrace culture in really many different ways and forms. So also in school, I somehow, uh, was in both in mathematics, logical thinking and in creativity. And this is why I, at the end, I chose architecture and I really felt that is a perfect choice.
I’m so happy with not only with studying this, also in doing this as really this combination of, of logic and art. This is, um, sim, this is a very harmonious way of working and I think the next question is how, where was this big turning point for, um, from architecture to exhibition design? Yeah.
[00:02:45] Abigail Honor: Wait a minute. Let us ask the question. Otherwise you don’t need us. I love that about you. Yeah. My question was, what is it about experiential design that pulled you a little away from architecture?
[00:03:00] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: It was more of just a, a coincidence I would say, you know? Um, and this was the moment when we got in touch with a client who bought the rights to exhibit, uh, the, the objects of which were found on the ground, um, in, of the sea for of the Titanic.
And, um, he somehow looked for somebody to design this. And, um, this was a chance for us, for me and my husband to, um. To work on this very, um, emotional topic, I would say on this story, which, um, everybody knows from films and I think this was the first real opportunity to somehow apply this architectural thinking to exhibition design on the one side.
But it was also very special that we could, um, focus on a emotional story, um, somehow to put the visitor in the center of experience. And this was somehow, and to tell stories along of different characters and persons. Yeah. And a different perception on one story of very different people. And I think this is, this was the turning point.
This was an exhibition with in Hamburg, in the Spy Hashad, uh, um, and it was the same, at the same time the film came out and, uh, together with this film, it was a really success story. Also having a different approach and exhibition design. Um, not only from the explanations, but also about talking about emotions and people behind that.
[00:04:39] Abigail Honor: When you got this job, did, did you handle most of that work? Did you hire for that work? How did you address the needs of a museum exhibition as opposed to an architectural project?
[00:04:50] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Basically, uh, we were a team, uh, of, um, architects and, uh, somehow project popped up and we didn’t have employees or something like that where I was directly after my studies.
And my husband also just finished studies in stage design and somehow with this friends, we. We just worked on the project. Yeah. And everybody brought in his, um, his, his knowledge. And we, uh, also with the background of my husband on stage design, we just put the, uh, visitor in a different place. He’s not looking at a stage, he’s part of the stage, I would say, or working on the stage.
And this, I think somehow this combination, this was how it happens, I would say. Yeah.
[00:05:35] Brenda Cowen: We would love to hear about how it is that Atelier Brückner transformed or moved from more of a small laboratory for scenography and architecture. Into what some would say is a powerhouse of design that it is today. Was it sort of a smooth evolution or were there challenges along the way?
[00:05:58] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Please tell us there are challenges. Shirin,
[00:06:01] Brenda Cowen: Abby loves all of the challenges. Abby loves the
drama.
[00:06:04] Abigail Honor: Say smooth sailing.
[00:06:06] Brenda Cowen: You love the drama.
[00:06:07] Abigail Honor: I do.
[00:06:07] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I think there are challenges every day. It would be boring if there were not challenges, but um, I think how was the transformation? Um, it’s, I think this is necessary.
That we all somehow move forward and create new things and face challenges. And if you ask for challenges, I cannot remember one. You know, because this is what we’ve overcome and forget and we should not keep them in mind. Um. Of course there was a lot of crying and uh, problems, but, um, but this is not the center of our thinking.
We are looking for the success. We are looking for the solutions. And I would say I’m also a very solution driven person. I don’t stay in the problem. I immediately think in possible solutions because only this brings us forward. I think, and this is one of my personal strengths with which I could contribute to this, uh, to the success of the company, I would say,
[00:07:04] Abigail Honor: That’s, that’s great.
And actually a lot of the, the leaders or the people who head up companies have that attribute and skill to be able to look straight to how do we solve this and move forward, always moving forward. Um, so I’ve heard you say form follows content, um, and you’re very dedicated to storytelling. So I’m interested to sort of chat about the idea of storytelling in the work you do and how that’s evolved over the last, let’s say 20, 25 years for you.
The process.
[00:07:35] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Yeah. I think when we started. Um, somehow storytelling did exist in, but not in exhibition or museum, not in classical museums design. It was more in, in, in theater or in films and all that. And we somehow moved from this purely didactic fact-based display design. Yeah. Um, to somehow a more immersive and emotional journey.
What, which we want to convey to, to our, uh, to our visitors. And it’s really the goal somehow that we engage with all its senses. Um, yeah. And, uh, somehow connect deeper on a really deeper level. Uh, with the content, and I think this is what also what stays in mind for the visitor. There’s also, of course, this question, what are the trends at the moment, um, in this, in this direction of storytelling?
And what I really see now, it’s a big shift towards participatory experiences. Um, so. Things like role play games or interactive storytelling or highly customized journeys for, um, special target groups. Yeah. And this is something which, which really, um, um, attracts people. Yeah. And also makes content, uh, accessible for, for, for everybody, I would say.
So even interacting with real guides, with other visitors with the space itself. Um, the, just interaction and exchange with physical people. I think this is something which really touches everybody and which somehow brings stories alive.
[00:09:20] Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s really interesting. Can you talk to us a little bit though, about the senses? Because these experiences really are, to be truly immersive, have to trigger all the senses. Can you talk about a couple of projects where you brought in smell or touch and, and why you decided to use those?
[00:09:34] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: For example, the Ephesus Experience Museum. It’s directly in the ancient historic, uh, archeological site in Ephesus.
And here we created a digital journey, a visitor center through the ancient Ephesus in earlier times. So we somehow bring this, the artifact is the historic place. Yeah. And we somehow bring this artifact alive and, and try to. Try to explain to, to the visitor, uh, what did happen, what kind of, uh, uh, experience was it would have this been in these times for the people who lived during these times? Yeah. And I. We are, in this case, combining a visual storytelling, a large scale media production with a sound and interactive elements, but, uh, where the visitors really can see the history, but also they can feel it by stepping it into, and we, in this case, we created a lot of smells who somehow address not only the seeing and the hearing, but also the, the smelling of the surrounding in these times.
And I think I. The multisensory design, it really enhances the storytelling. It’s making it more tangible and emotionally powerful and leaving really long lasting experiences. Yeah,
[00:10:53] Brenda Cowen: Well,, the sense of smell in particular has this direct link with memory, and I can imagine people going into that experience and being able to be very, to be opened up to this broader experience and this history and the story that you’re crafting and also probably connecting a lot with their own memories and seeing the relevance between this history and even their own lives, um, and how they think.
[00:11:21] Abigail Honor: Can you talk a little bit about, because this is a problem we face all the time, so I’m like, great, I’ve got, Shirin, I can ask her exactly what they’re doing, what sort of groups you are talking about, and how you shepherd them and give them a unique journey that addresses their needs.
[00:11:35] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I think, um, there are different tasks and if I talk about target, um, audience driven experiences, often this are children experiences. For example, in the Grand Egyptian Museum, we have a complete, uh, which is a, uh, the Tutankhamun gallery we are designing is a very, um. Very, very object driven, um, experience. I would say only working with, with a lot of light and highlighting the, the stories behind the objects.
And for children, we have, um, a complete gallery where children can understand the society system in these times. Yeah. And understand what it means to be king and farmer and for example, and understand. What was the life in these times? What games did they play? How do they dress? And it’s a very physical experience where where there’s not one real object in there. It’s somehow creating, of course, a space, but a space which where children can interact with the content and with each other also. Yeah. But my favorite exhibition, which we, um, really created is, it’s a very small project, is the dialogue with time exhibition because, uh, this is, um make, making visitors, um, understand what it means, getting older.
And it’s a interesting concept because we casted old guides and these guides, um, somehow lead a group of visitors through the experience. And, uh, then, uh, visitors together with a guide, the complete group sit on a table and they start, um, um, discussing about ideas of being old and the guide tells his story and you are immediately in a situation where you are together with people you never would have known from different social backgrounds, from different, uh, whatever experiences and with come from different directions and cultures and everything.
And I think this is something when we talk about media driven exhibitions, which we did before, and more, um, low tech, uh, exhibitions where we try to really physically connect. This is something which is still something I really believe in. And, um, for all target groups.
[00:13:56] Abigail Honor: Has it been hard for you over the years to, to back away? How much guidance are you giving to the overall creative these days?
[00:14:04] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Uh, I would say this is, everything’s limited by time. We have, um, but also in the energy people have and take the jobs, you know, and I think, oh, we are really good in, in empowering people to somehow bring in their cool energy in, in the projects and take responsibility.
But also I think as, um, as a team leader or, uh, it is important to show people the way because I. We are every day facing impossible challenges. Yeah. Even I, if I see what we should do, I think, how should this work? Yeah. But it’s always step back, think a little bit different and, and then find some solution.
I just, uh, remember yesterday, two days ago, I got a call from an international, um, foundation we are working with, they want to have a museum of 5,000 square meters finished in September. Design and realization, high level showcases and all that. So of course you can say, uh, it’s not possible. Definitely.
Yeah. But you also can tell them what is possible. Yeah. And show a way to do it and. And I think this is something which, which is also my role in, in our office. Yeah. That, that somehow to, to, to go a step back, look at everything and really see, um, are we on the right track. Are there completely different ways to do things, um, and make these things possible?
Yeah.
[00:15:34] Brenda Cowen: What has changed and what has stayed the same over all of the years, over the past 27 years? Are your clients, are you finding that clients are coming to you and are really very different now than they were years ago or, or are the dynamics pretty much so the same.
[00:15:51] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: They are younger. No, but uh, I think, um, it, it did not change so much, I would say because clients, they do museums or projects like that mo mostly only once a time in their life.
Yeah. And this is their project and they have been preparing this for 10 years and now it’s the moment when the designer comes on board and they are excited and, and they are, do it only once and they are not professionals in doing that. Yeah. So, um, I think this didn’t change, um, since, since I’m working in this business.
So, um, we are in very different, uh, situations. We are the professionals and we do it every day. Yeah. So the excitement is different and we need to guide these clients throughout the processes. And these clients are individual persons. Yeah. And we, I think we really need to under need to understand what, what are the positions of these people? What do they want? What is important for them as institution, but also as an individual, also a team member, director or whatever, on, on, on client side. And I would say that did not change so much throughout time.
[00:17:07] Brenda Cowen: People are people.
[00:17:08] Abigail Honor: One of my questions to you is, as you’ve grown and matured. Um, in this business, um, do you ever say no to a client or what are some of the things that you wish you could tell your 20 plus year old self that you do now that you didn’t use to do?
[00:17:22] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: We are not good in saying no. So I am also facing sometimes the situation where I think I would really like to step out of this process, but, um, I also can say, uh, the, when we overcome this and the result is at the end good. I’m glad that I did not step out. Yeah. So I don’t try to do this. I try to, to really go through and, and, uh, finish the job with the best, what I can, we can contribute as company to the project because, um, I think in every project we are facing. The moments where, where it’s not so easy and uh, the question is when it’s getting so hard that you want to step out, is this and why not? Yeah. And, and everybody has a different level there. And, uh, so I. Sometimes it’s also simple because, uh, the contracts usually we as, um, as, as, as designers, we are not in a position to step out. Only the client can do this. So it’s very clear we mm-hmm should not think so much about stepping out, think about getting through and doing the best, I think. Yeah. But yeah.
[00:18:36] Abigail Honor: Funny. Yeah. There’s no way out. You’re locked in. What do you, um, as you’ve grown the company, have you had any more free time?
[00:18:43] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: No, uh, I’m not a person who has free time. If I have free time, I have a new project. So I’m, uh, somehow, um, always active and, and looking for possibilities and, and somehow to bring myself and the company forward. So it is even not a target for me to have free time. I, I invest time for what I think is important and this is, uh, the freedom. I, I have, I would say, and this is, I would like to get this more.
[00:19:12] Abigail Honor: Yeah. Oh, well, that’s great.
[00:19:14] Brenda Cowen: It’s great. It begs the question, what are you currently passionate about?
[00:19:19] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I would say there are two answers, yeah?. Um, I’m really professionally, I’m really, um, uh, looking forward to a transforming experience somehow, uh, to provoke, um, curiosity and, um, inspire visitors. Um, I really want to somehow be engaged in, in what I do. Yeah, this is important. And it’s always also interesting to see after 27 years, where does exhibition design go? Yeah. What is the future? What are new formats? And I would say that I’m looking to a transformation. To bring my team in a position somehow to transform the company to a company, which in the next 10 years can even proceed.
Um, and we are in a process and changing structures and doing that. And it’s really inspiring to see how this works and how to have a team, uh, after 27 years, uh, who somehow, where we can throw around ideas, where we can challenge each other and create something remarkable together. And somehow, um, it’s a joy and that really these ideas always take shape and come to life. And this is what I’m passionate about.
[00:20:40] Abigail Honor: AI. Before we run out of time, how is your company integrating AI into the process of the designs or even the ideation right now?
[00:20:49] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Every day. Daily in daily work as we are using it for, um, creating moods, I would say. Yeah. Uh, visually creating moods, um, pre preparatory work, uh, on renderings. Then also storyboards, so mainly technical work. Um, which, where, where a lot of diligence is you is in, but can just be done and then adapted by the designers itself. So it’s, it’s, we use it really every day, everywhere.
[00:21:19] Abigail Honor: Is anybody in your company aware or feeling the effects that AI will potentially have on the 130 people?
Not on all 130 people, but there is. AI helps you push the ball further and you don’t need quite as large teams and you’ll have to remain competitive and efficient. So, you know, what are you thinking or talking about in terms of people?
[00:21:39] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I think we, what we have, we have, uh, two people only working on, um, on our ai.
Um, we created, for example, um, an, uh, an own ai, AI who can draw objects. We have of often 15,000 objects, which need to be digitalized 3D to put it in showcases. So we do these things. We somehow try to put all our information in our AI system that we can find the references of showcases or, uh, if somebody asks me, where did we have the showcase detail, ex epsilon, I don’t know.
It’s so, so many. Yeah. And we try to set up something whether I, I really serves our needs. Yeah. And I don’t think that we will have less people. We have just people doing different things. Yeah. We are people, um, taking care about this AI things. Why at the moment they are rendering or waiting all night that the render is done somewhere.
Yeah. Uh, uh, things like that. So the stupid work is going away or is getting reduced. Yeah. But the, the creative work, we still need people and it, I don’t believe that, um, there, there will be less people in office. Um, it’s just different, different, um, directions and different setups. Yeah.
[00:22:58] Abigail Honor: This has been an fantastic,
[00:23:00] Brenda Cowen: wonderful
[00:23:00] Abigail Honor: Shirin. Thank you for sharing with us all your perspective experiences. Um, and yeah, we could go on and on.
[00:23:08] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Yeah. It was a pleasure to contribute to, to this podcast and also pleasure to meet you both. Thank you.
[00:23:14] Brenda Cowen: Likewise.
[00:23:15] Abigail Honor: Yep. Yep. Thanks to everyone who tuned in today. Please subscribe for more episodes of matters of experience. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.
[00:23:25] Brenda Cowen: Thank you. Everyone.
[00:23:29] Audio Engineer: Matters of experience is produced by Lauren Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Shirin Frangoul-Brückner, born in 1967 in Baghdad, is the visionary architect and founding partner of ATELIER BRÜCKNER. She established the company in 1997 alongside Uwe R. Brückner, transforming it from a small laboratory for scenography and architecture into a globally recognized leader in museum planning and exhibition design. Guided by the principle of "making the impossible possible," Shirin excels in new business, contracts, and management, but still being involved in the design process of various projects. In 2024, Shirin is proudly honored as a SEGD Fellow, an international recognition for visionary leaders and trailblazors whose work sets the gold standard in design excellence and leadership. Additionally, she is one of The Power 10 of the prestigious Blooloop 50 Museum Influencer List 2024. Shirin studied architecture in Kaiserslautern and Stuttgart and is a member of the DDC (German Designers' Club). Under her leadership, ATELIER BRÜCKNER has embraced the motto "Form Follows Content," creating narrative architectures that interweaves content, messages, exhibits, media, graphics and light with space. The built reality becomes a direct reflection, a carrier of the underlying conceptual or functional design. The firm operates with 130 employees across its Stuttgart and Seoul offices, working on both temporary and permanent projects worldwide. Faced with extraordinary challenges like the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza and the Museum of the Future in Dubai, Shirin and her team continue to push the boundaries of exhibition design, creating interactive and engaging spaces. The exceptional storytelling and multi-sensory design methods have significantly shaped the fields of museum and exhibition design. Current projects of ATELIER BRÜCKNER include the National Center of Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, US, the Uzbekistan and the UAE Pavilion for Expo 2025 in Japan, the London Museum and the Mukaab in Saudi Arabia.

[00:00:00] Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience at Podcast where explore the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation today. My name is Abby Honor.
[00:00:19] Brenda Cowen: Hello, I’m Brenda Cowen.
[00:00:20] Abigail Honor: So today it’s my pleasure to welcome Shirin Brückner to the show.
She is a founding partner of Atelier Brückner, which if you are in our business, you should have heard about them. And if you haven’t, go check out their work after the show because. It is incredible.
[00:00:37] Brenda Cowen: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:37] Abigail Honor: Shirin focuses on new business and management, but is still very much involved in the design process.
Um, in 2024, she was honored as an SEGD fellow and International Recognition for Visionary Leaders whose work sets the global standard in design excellence. And you are one of the Power 10 in the Blue Loop 50 Museum influencer list 2024. Which is an accomplished group of people from our industry. So Shirin, congratulations on all your recent accolades, and I know there’s even more that I didn’t list, but a huge welcome to the show.
[00:01:11] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Thank you very much for inviting me, and I’m happy to contribute to this podcast. Thank you.
[00:01:16] Brenda Cowen: We’re so excited to be talking with you today, Shirin, and just to get us kick started. Can you let us know what is it that attracted you to this industry in the first place? Do you have an origin story to share with our listeners?
[00:01:31] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Yeah, so basically this is a question which pops up quite often when people ask me, how did all this happen? Yeah. And um, I basically, I grew up in a very cultural, diverse family. So my father is a Iraqi, my mother is German. And in this mix of cultures, this really shaped my worldview and gave me a strong sense, uh, of resilience.
And from a very early age, I learned how somehow to interact with different perspective and also to embrace culture in really many different ways and forms. So also in school, I somehow, uh, was in both in mathematics, logical thinking and in creativity. And this is why I, at the end, I chose architecture and I really felt that is a perfect choice.
I’m so happy with not only with studying this, also in doing this as really this combination of, of logic and art. This is, um, sim, this is a very harmonious way of working and I think the next question is how, where was this big turning point for, um, from architecture to exhibition design? Yeah.
[00:02:45] Abigail Honor: Wait a minute. Let us ask the question. Otherwise you don’t need us. I love that about you. Yeah. My question was, what is it about experiential design that pulled you a little away from architecture?
[00:03:00] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: It was more of just a, a coincidence I would say, you know? Um, and this was the moment when we got in touch with a client who bought the rights to exhibit, uh, the, the objects of which were found on the ground, um, in, of the sea for of the Titanic.
And, um, he somehow looked for somebody to design this. And, um, this was a chance for us, for me and my husband to, um. To work on this very, um, emotional topic, I would say on this story, which, um, everybody knows from films and I think this was the first real opportunity to somehow apply this architectural thinking to exhibition design on the one side.
But it was also very special that we could, um, focus on a emotional story, um, somehow to put the visitor in the center of experience. And this was somehow, and to tell stories along of different characters and persons. Yeah. And a different perception on one story of very different people. And I think this is, this was the turning point.
This was an exhibition with in Hamburg, in the Spy Hashad, uh, um, and it was the same, at the same time the film came out and, uh, together with this film, it was a really success story. Also having a different approach and exhibition design. Um, not only from the explanations, but also about talking about emotions and people behind that.
[00:04:39] Abigail Honor: When you got this job, did, did you handle most of that work? Did you hire for that work? How did you address the needs of a museum exhibition as opposed to an architectural project?
[00:04:50] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Basically, uh, we were a team, uh, of, um, architects and, uh, somehow project popped up and we didn’t have employees or something like that where I was directly after my studies.
And my husband also just finished studies in stage design and somehow with this friends, we. We just worked on the project. Yeah. And everybody brought in his, um, his, his knowledge. And we, uh, also with the background of my husband on stage design, we just put the, uh, visitor in a different place. He’s not looking at a stage, he’s part of the stage, I would say, or working on the stage.
And this, I think somehow this combination, this was how it happens, I would say. Yeah.
[00:05:35] Brenda Cowen: We would love to hear about how it is that Atelier Brückner transformed or moved from more of a small laboratory for scenography and architecture. Into what some would say is a powerhouse of design that it is today. Was it sort of a smooth evolution or were there challenges along the way?
[00:05:58] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Please tell us there are challenges. Shirin,
[00:06:01] Brenda Cowen: Abby loves all of the challenges. Abby loves the
drama.
[00:06:04] Abigail Honor: Say smooth sailing.
[00:06:06] Brenda Cowen: You love the drama.
[00:06:07] Abigail Honor: I do.
[00:06:07] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I think there are challenges every day. It would be boring if there were not challenges, but um, I think how was the transformation? Um, it’s, I think this is necessary.
That we all somehow move forward and create new things and face challenges. And if you ask for challenges, I cannot remember one. You know, because this is what we’ve overcome and forget and we should not keep them in mind. Um. Of course there was a lot of crying and uh, problems, but, um, but this is not the center of our thinking.
We are looking for the success. We are looking for the solutions. And I would say I’m also a very solution driven person. I don’t stay in the problem. I immediately think in possible solutions because only this brings us forward. I think, and this is one of my personal strengths with which I could contribute to this, uh, to the success of the company, I would say,
[00:07:04] Abigail Honor: That’s, that’s great.
And actually a lot of the, the leaders or the people who head up companies have that attribute and skill to be able to look straight to how do we solve this and move forward, always moving forward. Um, so I’ve heard you say form follows content, um, and you’re very dedicated to storytelling. So I’m interested to sort of chat about the idea of storytelling in the work you do and how that’s evolved over the last, let’s say 20, 25 years for you.
The process.
[00:07:35] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Yeah. I think when we started. Um, somehow storytelling did exist in, but not in exhibition or museum, not in classical museums design. It was more in, in, in theater or in films and all that. And we somehow moved from this purely didactic fact-based display design. Yeah. Um, to somehow a more immersive and emotional journey.
What, which we want to convey to, to our, uh, to our visitors. And it’s really the goal somehow that we engage with all its senses. Um, yeah. And, uh, somehow connect deeper on a really deeper level. Uh, with the content, and I think this is what also what stays in mind for the visitor. There’s also, of course, this question, what are the trends at the moment, um, in this, in this direction of storytelling?
And what I really see now, it’s a big shift towards participatory experiences. Um, so. Things like role play games or interactive storytelling or highly customized journeys for, um, special target groups. Yeah. And this is something which, which really, um, um, attracts people. Yeah. And also makes content, uh, accessible for, for, for everybody, I would say.
So even interacting with real guides, with other visitors with the space itself. Um, the, just interaction and exchange with physical people. I think this is something which really touches everybody and which somehow brings stories alive.
[00:09:20] Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s really interesting. Can you talk to us a little bit though, about the senses? Because these experiences really are, to be truly immersive, have to trigger all the senses. Can you talk about a couple of projects where you brought in smell or touch and, and why you decided to use those?
[00:09:34] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: For example, the Ephesus Experience Museum. It’s directly in the ancient historic, uh, archeological site in Ephesus.
And here we created a digital journey, a visitor center through the ancient Ephesus in earlier times. So we somehow bring this, the artifact is the historic place. Yeah. And we somehow bring this artifact alive and, and try to. Try to explain to, to the visitor, uh, what did happen, what kind of, uh, uh, experience was it would have this been in these times for the people who lived during these times? Yeah. And I. We are, in this case, combining a visual storytelling, a large scale media production with a sound and interactive elements, but, uh, where the visitors really can see the history, but also they can feel it by stepping it into, and we, in this case, we created a lot of smells who somehow address not only the seeing and the hearing, but also the, the smelling of the surrounding in these times.
And I think I. The multisensory design, it really enhances the storytelling. It’s making it more tangible and emotionally powerful and leaving really long lasting experiences. Yeah,
[00:10:53] Brenda Cowen: Well,, the sense of smell in particular has this direct link with memory, and I can imagine people going into that experience and being able to be very, to be opened up to this broader experience and this history and the story that you’re crafting and also probably connecting a lot with their own memories and seeing the relevance between this history and even their own lives, um, and how they think.
[00:11:21] Abigail Honor: Can you talk a little bit about, because this is a problem we face all the time, so I’m like, great, I’ve got, Shirin, I can ask her exactly what they’re doing, what sort of groups you are talking about, and how you shepherd them and give them a unique journey that addresses their needs.
[00:11:35] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I think, um, there are different tasks and if I talk about target, um, audience driven experiences, often this are children experiences. For example, in the Grand Egyptian Museum, we have a complete, uh, which is a, uh, the Tutankhamun gallery we are designing is a very, um. Very, very object driven, um, experience. I would say only working with, with a lot of light and highlighting the, the stories behind the objects.
And for children, we have, um, a complete gallery where children can understand the society system in these times. Yeah. And understand what it means to be king and farmer and for example, and understand. What was the life in these times? What games did they play? How do they dress? And it’s a very physical experience where where there’s not one real object in there. It’s somehow creating, of course, a space, but a space which where children can interact with the content and with each other also. Yeah. But my favorite exhibition, which we, um, really created is, it’s a very small project, is the dialogue with time exhibition because, uh, this is, um make, making visitors, um, understand what it means, getting older.
And it’s a interesting concept because we casted old guides and these guides, um, somehow lead a group of visitors through the experience. And, uh, then, uh, visitors together with a guide, the complete group sit on a table and they start, um, um, discussing about ideas of being old and the guide tells his story and you are immediately in a situation where you are together with people you never would have known from different social backgrounds, from different, uh, whatever experiences and with come from different directions and cultures and everything.
And I think this is something when we talk about media driven exhibitions, which we did before, and more, um, low tech, uh, exhibitions where we try to really physically connect. This is something which is still something I really believe in. And, um, for all target groups.
[00:13:56] Abigail Honor: Has it been hard for you over the years to, to back away? How much guidance are you giving to the overall creative these days?
[00:14:04] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Uh, I would say this is, everything’s limited by time. We have, um, but also in the energy people have and take the jobs, you know, and I think, oh, we are really good in, in empowering people to somehow bring in their cool energy in, in the projects and take responsibility.
But also I think as, um, as a team leader or, uh, it is important to show people the way because I. We are every day facing impossible challenges. Yeah. Even I, if I see what we should do, I think, how should this work? Yeah. But it’s always step back, think a little bit different and, and then find some solution.
I just, uh, remember yesterday, two days ago, I got a call from an international, um, foundation we are working with, they want to have a museum of 5,000 square meters finished in September. Design and realization, high level showcases and all that. So of course you can say, uh, it’s not possible. Definitely.
Yeah. But you also can tell them what is possible. Yeah. And show a way to do it and. And I think this is something which, which is also my role in, in our office. Yeah. That, that somehow to, to, to go a step back, look at everything and really see, um, are we on the right track. Are there completely different ways to do things, um, and make these things possible?
Yeah.
[00:15:34] Brenda Cowen: What has changed and what has stayed the same over all of the years, over the past 27 years? Are your clients, are you finding that clients are coming to you and are really very different now than they were years ago or, or are the dynamics pretty much so the same.
[00:15:51] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: They are younger. No, but uh, I think, um, it, it did not change so much, I would say because clients, they do museums or projects like that mo mostly only once a time in their life.
Yeah. And this is their project and they have been preparing this for 10 years and now it’s the moment when the designer comes on board and they are excited and, and they are, do it only once and they are not professionals in doing that. Yeah. So, um, I think this didn’t change, um, since, since I’m working in this business.
So, um, we are in very different, uh, situations. We are the professionals and we do it every day. Yeah. So the excitement is different and we need to guide these clients throughout the processes. And these clients are individual persons. Yeah. And we, I think we really need to under need to understand what, what are the positions of these people? What do they want? What is important for them as institution, but also as an individual, also a team member, director or whatever, on, on, on client side. And I would say that did not change so much throughout time.
[00:17:07] Brenda Cowen: People are people.
[00:17:08] Abigail Honor: One of my questions to you is, as you’ve grown and matured. Um, in this business, um, do you ever say no to a client or what are some of the things that you wish you could tell your 20 plus year old self that you do now that you didn’t use to do?
[00:17:22] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: We are not good in saying no. So I am also facing sometimes the situation where I think I would really like to step out of this process, but, um, I also can say, uh, the, when we overcome this and the result is at the end good. I’m glad that I did not step out. Yeah. So I don’t try to do this. I try to, to really go through and, and, uh, finish the job with the best, what I can, we can contribute as company to the project because, um, I think in every project we are facing. The moments where, where it’s not so easy and uh, the question is when it’s getting so hard that you want to step out, is this and why not? Yeah. And, and everybody has a different level there. And, uh, so I. Sometimes it’s also simple because, uh, the contracts usually we as, um, as, as, as designers, we are not in a position to step out. Only the client can do this. So it’s very clear we mm-hmm should not think so much about stepping out, think about getting through and doing the best, I think. Yeah. But yeah.
[00:18:36] Abigail Honor: Funny. Yeah. There’s no way out. You’re locked in. What do you, um, as you’ve grown the company, have you had any more free time?
[00:18:43] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: No, uh, I’m not a person who has free time. If I have free time, I have a new project. So I’m, uh, somehow, um, always active and, and looking for possibilities and, and somehow to bring myself and the company forward. So it is even not a target for me to have free time. I, I invest time for what I think is important and this is, uh, the freedom. I, I have, I would say, and this is, I would like to get this more.
[00:19:12] Abigail Honor: Yeah. Oh, well, that’s great.
[00:19:14] Brenda Cowen: It’s great. It begs the question, what are you currently passionate about?
[00:19:19] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I would say there are two answers, yeah?. Um, I’m really professionally, I’m really, um, uh, looking forward to a transforming experience somehow, uh, to provoke, um, curiosity and, um, inspire visitors. Um, I really want to somehow be engaged in, in what I do. Yeah, this is important. And it’s always also interesting to see after 27 years, where does exhibition design go? Yeah. What is the future? What are new formats? And I would say that I’m looking to a transformation. To bring my team in a position somehow to transform the company to a company, which in the next 10 years can even proceed.
Um, and we are in a process and changing structures and doing that. And it’s really inspiring to see how this works and how to have a team, uh, after 27 years, uh, who somehow, where we can throw around ideas, where we can challenge each other and create something remarkable together. And somehow, um, it’s a joy and that really these ideas always take shape and come to life. And this is what I’m passionate about.
[00:20:40] Abigail Honor: AI. Before we run out of time, how is your company integrating AI into the process of the designs or even the ideation right now?
[00:20:49] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Every day. Daily in daily work as we are using it for, um, creating moods, I would say. Yeah. Uh, visually creating moods, um, pre preparatory work, uh, on renderings. Then also storyboards, so mainly technical work. Um, which, where, where a lot of diligence is you is in, but can just be done and then adapted by the designers itself. So it’s, it’s, we use it really every day, everywhere.
[00:21:19] Abigail Honor: Is anybody in your company aware or feeling the effects that AI will potentially have on the 130 people?
Not on all 130 people, but there is. AI helps you push the ball further and you don’t need quite as large teams and you’ll have to remain competitive and efficient. So, you know, what are you thinking or talking about in terms of people?
[00:21:39] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: I think we, what we have, we have, uh, two people only working on, um, on our ai.
Um, we created, for example, um, an, uh, an own ai, AI who can draw objects. We have of often 15,000 objects, which need to be digitalized 3D to put it in showcases. So we do these things. We somehow try to put all our information in our AI system that we can find the references of showcases or, uh, if somebody asks me, where did we have the showcase detail, ex epsilon, I don’t know.
It’s so, so many. Yeah. And we try to set up something whether I, I really serves our needs. Yeah. And I don’t think that we will have less people. We have just people doing different things. Yeah. We are people, um, taking care about this AI things. Why at the moment they are rendering or waiting all night that the render is done somewhere.
Yeah. Uh, uh, things like that. So the stupid work is going away or is getting reduced. Yeah. But the, the creative work, we still need people and it, I don’t believe that, um, there, there will be less people in office. Um, it’s just different, different, um, directions and different setups. Yeah.
[00:22:58] Abigail Honor: This has been an fantastic,
[00:23:00] Brenda Cowen: wonderful
[00:23:00] Abigail Honor: Shirin. Thank you for sharing with us all your perspective experiences. Um, and yeah, we could go on and on.
[00:23:08] Shirin Frangoul-Brückner: Yeah. It was a pleasure to contribute to, to this podcast and also pleasure to meet you both. Thank you.
[00:23:14] Brenda Cowen: Likewise.
[00:23:15] Abigail Honor: Yep. Yep. Thanks to everyone who tuned in today. Please subscribe for more episodes of matters of experience. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.
[00:23:25] Brenda Cowen: Thank you. Everyone.
[00:23:29] Audio Engineer: Matters of experience is produced by Lauren Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Where Stories Becomes Spaces

Where Stories Becomes Spaces

05/07/25
What If It Doesn’t Work? (And What If It Does?)

What If It Doesn’t Work? (And What If It Does?)

April 2, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

What does it mean to design for dialogue—not just display? In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Jonathan Alger, founding partner at C&G Partners and a leading voice in exhibition and experience design.

Jonathan shares how designing with empathy, navigating creative discomfort, and embracing uncertainty can lead to deeper, more inclusive storytelling. From his work with museums and nonprofits to projects for NASA, Jonathan discusses how personal testimony, collaboration, and trust shape impactful experiences that resonate across boundaries.

Whether you’re a creative leader, designer, or simply curious about the thinking behind the world’s most meaningful exhibitions—this episode offers insight into how design can be both a process and a conversation.

Jonathan Alger is Managing Partner and Co-founder of the design firm C&G Partners. He is a multi-specialist working in interactive cultural space and experiential design. He is also the host and author of "Making the Museum,” a podcast and newsletter for the cultural experience field. Jonathan’s clients include the 9/11 Museum, Bronx Zoo, Cornell, Federal Reserve, Gates Foundation, Holocaust Museum, Library of Congress, NASA, National Archives, Princeton, Smithsonian, and US Department of State. Jonathan has been honored by the AIGA, AAM, AASLH, Anthem Awards, Apex Awards, ADC, CA, IDSA, NEH, SEGD, TDC and the Webbys. He is a National Design Award Finalist and two-time winner of the AAM MUSE awards, and served two terms as President of the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Before co-founding C&G Partners, Jonathan was a Principal at the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar Inc. Jonathan graduated from Yale with honors and distinction in Architecture, magna cum laude. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.

Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you are new to the show, a hardy welcome to our regular listeners. Thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor. Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

Abigail Honor: Today we are talking with a very recognizable voice in our community, literally and figuratively. Jonathan Alger, Jonathan, many know you as the co-founder and managing partner of CNG Partners, where your clients run the gamut and include the nine 11 Museum, nasa, Cornell, the Smithsonian, US Department of State.

Abigail Honor: I, I can go on. You’ve been honored. Buy more initialisms than I can pronounce sequentially on this show. ’cause I tried. As well as being a two time winner of the A Am Muse Awards, he’s also served two terms of the president of SEGD and recently we’re all enjoying your podcast and newsletter, making the museum.

Abigail Honor: Jonathan, a huge welcome to the show.

Jonathan Alger: Very happy to be here. Thank you both for having me. I’m a big fan of your show.

Brenda Cowan: Thank you Jonathan. I happen to know that you’re a musician, you’re an avid reader, and I think of it as a collector of amazing true or sometimes not so true facts and anecdotes. You always seem to have an incredible story to share.

Brenda Cowan: That inevitably leaves me wondering. Is that for real? I also know that you appreciate it when others in your firm have and share what I’ll call out of work talents such as art making and music. So tell us how do your myriad personal and professional interests and talents synergize into the work that you do?

Jonathan Alger: I don’t know. Uh, I think that if I were giving advice to somebody today about pursuing a career or creating a company or both, I’m not sure I would advise them to do what we have done because I’m not sure that the environment is really conducive to that. You know, nowadays it’s all about specializing and, and what we do is sort of neither specializing nor generalizing, but, somewhere in between. And I think that’s a, that’s a difficult spot to be in, I think. But for us, it’s been great. We love the lifestyle of multi-specialty work, and so we’re in, in my firm, I, I do a lot of exhibition design and experience design. That’s what I write about. That’s what I podcast about. That’s what I’m sort of most known for, but coming up in the business, I did all the other things that you would think a traditional communication design person would do: branding and, uh, way finding and digital projects and print and all of that sort of stuff. So it was sort of a apprenticeship that felt a little bit more like learning how to run or learning how to do the decathlon rather than learning how to run the a hundred meter dash only.

Jonathan Alger: But you know, again, I’m not sure that that’s business advice I would give any, anyone today. Do not, do not set out to become a medium sized Swiss army knife.

Abigail Honor: I feel the exact same way. We don’t have an elevator pitch for what we do. Every time I meet a client, it’s really hard because when you are medium size, small to medium.

Abigail Honor: I think we’re probably a bit smaller than you guys and you’re trying to pitch what you do, but you have a depth or a multidisciplinary team that can actually do branding, do wayfinding, for example, experience design, um, you know, vr, ar, digital, whatever it is in your Swiss Army knife. It’s really hard to be able to pitch that to clients when they’re often just looking for one thing

Jonathan Alger: That’s right.

Abigail Honor: I’m always trying to say, what’s your problem and let us fix it. Don’t come to us for a set specific task. How are some of the challenges? As you mentioned, you have this rich team and they have a lot of things they can do. How do you see the next five years in terms of your business? Do you ever think, oh, we need to specialize.

Abigail Honor: It will be better to be one size fits all for people or like, what’s your perception on that?

Jonathan Alger: I have no idea. I’d like to be able to answer with a very fluid and cogent, uh, words to live by that people could whip their notebook out on and start scribbling away, but I don’t really, I don’t really have an answer for that.

Jonathan Alger: I think we’re maybe birds of a feather. Um, we’ve been around long enough that we’ve just got a pretty big portfolio in each one of those areas. So when a client comes to us with a particular specialty they want, we just show them that. Every once in a while we come across a client that needs, you know, pineapples, storm doors, and to be flown in an airplane and we can handle them as well.

Abigail Honor: So in terms of like CNG, you know, you’re very much known for a focus on cultural nonprofit work. What, why, why is it tell us like that special focus and why it’s important for you?

Jonathan Alger: Our firm, uh, CNG Partners is a descended firm and of another firm called, uh, Chermayeff & Geismar, and Chermayeff & Geismar is a, a sort of a original gangster, uh, formed in the fifties old school, New York graphic design firm. One of the firms that invented or popularized the term graphic design and was one of the very first firms ever to do exhibition design as a firm actually.

Jonathan Alger: And I just happened to luckily get an opportunity to work there and I, I started there as a junior designer and I left there as, as one of the principles of the firm, and then started this firm, which is a descendant. And that firm for whatever reason, and probably personal interest, et cetera, just didn’t do much commercial work, didn’t do much marketing, didn’t sell soap as we used to say.

Jonathan Alger: And so the firm that I now am the managing partner of and one of the owners of is following suit, and that started to refine itself even more when we created this firm 20 years ago. We started eventually, after five, 10 years in, we realized that 85, 90% of of our clients and our financial health was coming from the broadly defined cultural sector.

Jonathan Alger: And so we said, let’s just plant a flag. And not actively go after commercial projects as much.

Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s really interesting. Financially, was that a gamble?

Jonathan Alger: You know, like, I’m, I’m fond of saying like, nonprofit is a tax status, not a business goal. So, uh, well run nonprofits. We work with a lot of nonprofits, we work with a lot of government entities. We work with NGOs, et cetera. Let’s think about some nonprofits that we know well by name: Harvard, the Smithsonian, National Geographic. I don’t know, NASA, if you want to include government entities. These, I don’t think you’d think of any of those entities as being poorly funded. So I think something like 10% of the workforce in the United States works in the nonprofit sector writ large.

Jonathan Alger: And so it’s, it’s a good place to be. You can even be a niche within a niche, and that’s, that’s where we are doing arts and culture.

Brenda Cowan: So when I think about how it is that CNG brings voices, people, the human into your exhibition projects and how it is that, in my interpretation, it makes for very inclusive environments, it makes for, again, very human environments.

Brenda Cowan: And I’m curious to hear a little bit about how it is that you think or you approach projects with a human element in mind. Or is it the kind of thing that just sort of develops heuristically?

Jonathan Alger: There’s always been an issue with museums taking a stand and having a very firm opinion about something. In some cases, it’s sort of incontrovertible.

Jonathan Alger: We are the Museum of Forks. Forks have tines and on the other end is a part where you hold them. Right? You can say that if you’re the museum of for, you’re the curator of the Museum of Forks. You can say things like that. But otherwise, we work with a lot of museums and museum-like entities that are a little bit uncomfortable with sort of taking a stand.

Jonathan Alger: So one of the, I don’t know, tricks or hacks or rules of thumb that, that we’ve stumbled on and and gone with is this idea of the personal testimony trick. The idea that, if we can get someone who’s maybe not a subject matter expert, they’re not an SME, they’re just somebody else who has lived experience or they’re adjacent to the subject, or they may not know everything about chemistry, but they work in a lab and we have them say what they feel about a subject, then that’s a great way for visitors to have a way in that’s a little bit more understandable to them.

Jonathan Alger: It’s also a great way for museums to avoid looking like there’s only one answer and that people are supposed to look to them for some kind of absolute truth. So that’s the sort of the personal testimony trick, and you can do that a number of ways. You can do that like we’re doing right now, recording something in audio.

Jonathan Alger: You can also do it in writing.

Brenda Cowan: I’m really curious as a leader, how it is that you effectively communicate or even educate clients about the work that you do. It’s a particular form of communication, um, I would suggest, and I’m really curious, how do you approach that?

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I’d say I, some people refer to that as sort of, uh, consulting or educational consultative relationship with your clients. Other people refer to it as being long-winded and pedantic. I guess it, it depends on the, the situation, but I don’t mind at all trying to help clients understand every aspect of something that they might want to understand. Uh, and some people are like that, you know, on the show that I do, I just had a guest who is a specialist in museum display cases, and you can tell that she loves to explain that stuff to people, and that is stuff that really needs to be explained to people. And nine times out of 10, the clients that we’re working with are people who have never done this before. They may very well never do it again. They may decide never to do it again. Every once in a while they decide to do it again.

Jonathan Alger: But when you go in and you want to have your knee operated on, and there’s some people that are just like, hey, fix my knee, okay, knock me out, take care of it. But there are other people that said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. What are my options? What’s entailed? I think you just have to do that.

Abigail Honor: Given what you’ve just said in terms of the education, if you have money and you need to build a museum, they automatically, the clients think, I need an architect. I keep finding us in situations where whenever we are brought in, the client has already made some decisions, like even buying hardware too early.

Jonathan Alger: Oh yeah. We get that all the time.

Abigail Honor: And it’s,

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, the, the AV salespeople got to them.

Jonathan Alger: They got to them.

Abigail Honor: Exactly. How do we,

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really big LED wall. It’s curving.

Abigail Honor: It’s exactly like that. Yeah. So how do we build a better understanding of our industry and how to work through these projects and our process with clients or build that awareness so they’re doing it in the right order at least?

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really, that’s a super question I’ve never really thought exactly about that, you know, we are, everyone around this table is sort of around the same table, right? We don’t have a client sitting in the fourth chair over there. So if I take your question correctly, it is, how can we make sure that before we show up, the clients know what it is that we’re gonna do and they’re starting to make the right decisions, et cetera.

Jonathan Alger: So, I don’t know, maybe, uh, you know, uh, SEGD, the Society for Experiential Graph Design has just started this new group, a professional, uh, practice group, uh, that is for people to do exhibition and experience design. Maybe we should focus one of the committees of that group on creating some kind of website or page at SEGD.org or literature or something that could somehow be distributed. You could use the, the sort of the power and the force of a larger organization, uh, and kind of do a got milk campaign. Like if we’re all dairy farmers, you could do a bit of a got milk campaign, not to, not to create demand for our bovine liquid, but to make the client sort of understand, you know, what, what the basic steps are.

Abigail Honor: Yeah. And who they need sitting around the table at the beginning.

Jonathan Alger: That’s a great idea. I’m gonna go do that right now. I’m gonna leave,

Brenda Cowan: I would suggest that you’re already underway with doing this, or at least into, into begin our segue actually into talking about making the museum, part of what I see happening is you making a very substantial contribution to providing everyone and certainly, you know, prospective clients or existing clients with a vocabulary, with an understanding of the tools, the techniques, and understanding the functions and the possibilities of, you know, what I think of as a very kaleidoscopic profession. And I’m curious, was that your intention or do you see yourself doing that? Because from the outside, it seems that that is a huge part of your outcomes.

Jonathan Alger: So making the museum, shameless plug. You can look at makingthemuseum.com, dear Listener, is both a podcast, which is attempting to be as good as the podcast that I’m on right now, but is falling very short.

Brenda Cowan: Au contraire.

Jonathan Alger: But is also a newsletter. It started out as a newsletter. I was writing five very short one minute read, uh, newsletters per week and now it’s three times a week by popular demand or popular un-demand. And that started, uh, two ways. One was sort of a selfish way. I’d, I’d had a lifelong dream to attempt to get over my absolutely fundamental terror of writing, uh, in public, uh, doing something where it wasn’t just business emails, but something where I was purely writing and I was asking people to look at my writing.

Jonathan Alger: I, I, I went through school, uh, with a whole bunch of friends who are, you know, writers for a, for a business, and I always thought that that was great, and I thought that I, I couldn’t do it. I tried and it was terrible, and I wanted to tackle that monster. And so I did that and I took courses and yada yada.

Jonathan Alger: And the other thing was this thing that people do is a small community. Even if you were to say, okay, all the people that do museum exhibition and let’s add all the people that do theme park work, let’s add them in and let’s add people who do themed retail and let’s add cruise ships and uh, visitor centers and alumni centers and zoos, you know, all of that.

Jonathan Alger: Even if we brought all of those people together, it’d still be a fairly small number. So, back to architects, last time I checked, there was like 80,000. There’s probably 120,000 members of the AIA right now. But SEGD itself has what, 2000. So it’s a relatively small group, and that means that there isn’t a critical mass adequate to generate a, uh, criticism, uh, textual communication. There isn’t writing in the field per se, except here and there. And the other gap is professional development, that there isn’t a way that you can get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and get your one word a day calendar about your profession. Or, you know, every month you take a little continuing education unit or something and it’s like, ooh, storm drain flashing great.

Jonathan Alger: You know? And I just felt that, uh, I could combine those two things. I can combine that interest in writing, the fact that I’ve been doing it for a number of years, and I can share what I’ve learned.

Abigail Honor: One of the things I just wanna pick on what you said, Jonathan, is you had a need to write. You didn’t feel comfortable writing, and you forced yourself through that discomfort to achieve the goal that was pushing you forwards.

Abigail Honor: But only from doing that and facing those fears and facing those obstacles and overcoming do you ever accomplish anything? So unfortunately, in order to accomplish anything, you have to go through the, through the quagmire and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation to get the other side.

Jonathan Alger: Uh, Abby, you’re uh, totally right.

Jonathan Alger: I think that there’s this big realm of discomfort that you have to aim for. I’ve done projects with clients, some of my client work has been insanely uncomfortable for me. Things we’re, we’re working with a client group that I don’t think I have anything in common with, I don’t agree with in some ways. I agree with the project they’re doing, but there’s something else about, uh, who they are that may be on a personal basis I wouldn’t agree with.

Jonathan Alger: And the thing that I find all the time is once you get through this sort of weird more Mordor on the other side, you’re like: What? That wasn’t Mordor at all. Who has so worried about that zone of discomfort turns out in retrospect, looking back at it to be wonderful. I’ve had clients that I thought were gonna be just, I, I don’t, I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this.

Jonathan Alger: And you kind of figure it out. And after the first meeting, everybody is like, you know, going out to lunch together individually, you are like, what?

Abigail Honor: Yeah, I completely agree. Completely agree. And also dealing in the moment that it’s not comfortable with the job where you’ve overreached somewhere or you feel you may be overreaching or you’re not all on the same page, whatever the challenge is, learning to deal with the stress of that is something that I’m constantly challenged with.

Brenda Cowan: Well, this is something, uh, we had, uh, on a recent podcast, Sarana Pringle from Yale who does studies and research in creativity and emotional intelligence. And this was a piece of what she was talking about and what she studies, which is for the creative person, and I would say for a creative leader as well, being able to enter into discomfort and being able to manage not knowing. How this is going to turn out or where this is going to go is an enormous skill and it’s something that you have as a significant tool in your toolbox.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I think that’s often the case when you’re, when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business leader, or you’re a partner in a firm, or you’re trying to, uh, negotiate any kind of new possibility. It’s highly likely that some aspect of what you’re being asked to do is something that you currently are not a master of, and it simply doesn’t work that you would attempt to become a master of the thing in advance and then seek out somebody because all of the engagements are unique. They’re all one-offs, right? They’re all very individual. We just finished a project for. It’s an interactive university project at a lab of Ornithology where the, the median visitor is a 62-year-old, uh, white female with expensive binoculars. If I had attempted to become the master of that before we began that, I don’t know, I’d have a very long gray beard and then they would’ve chosen somebody else. So you have to be willing to knit the parachute on the way down a little bit. You, you have to be confident that you can do it. You have to have a, a record of having done that many times. Before to be confident, like, sure, I can jump out the plane.

Abigail Honor: Mm-hmm. What about fear of failure? Do you think some of the motivation is because you’re like, I’m not gonna fail. I cannot fail. Or how do you deal with failure? Because we all fail. Right? You fail forward. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. I’m a big believer in failure, so how do you deal with it?

Jonathan Alger: I like it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a mug. I’m a big believer in failure. I like that. Yeah. You have to acknowledge that you will have a failure, but. You have to make the right bets, right? Everything is thinking in bets, so there are situations where you’re guaranteed to fail. Take on situations like that deliberately and for a specific reason. Otherwise, try to find situations where you could possibly not fail and just do everything you can to not fail.

Abigail Honor: It’s a delicate balance though, right? Because as you are boldly going where you haven’t gone before, trying something new or part new, there is still probably, if we were betting people, a percentage of failure always.

Jonathan Alger: Right, and you do fail. You do fail. That’s, that’s for sure. You get more points for, you know, most improved player is sort of more impressive than player who yet again, one player of the year.

Brenda Cowan: Well, you’re never starting from zero after you have gone for something you’ve attempted, something, you fail, and when you go again, you’re not starting from zero. And I think that that is a reality, and it’s also a mindset that can really, you know, it’s like an abundance mindset. It really enables you, I would suggest, to be able to build the skill and to perhaps end up mastering. Whatever the case might be.

Abigail Honor: Yesterday, we did a pitch for a big commercial campaign and we made the images in ai. We brought them to life in ai and these were science images and technology images, and so we basically made a video in four hours. We got the job simply because we just outworked everyone in this four hours and made what looked like you. The client could see the spots, right? We gave them that wet their appetite. And so I’m sort of shocked at how quickly it’s going and I just wondered how you felt about it because we are already seeing clients using it.

Abigail Honor: So if we are not doing it, they’ll come to the table and show us what, well, last night we did this and so we have to keep up with our clients now. Because you get a client who happens to be, have a creative director who’s very techie and suddenly we can’t be outworked by them. So I just wondered what your, we’re in a frenetic race to keep up with AI and to see how we can use it effectively, and I just wondered what your thinking was on it all.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I, I think that, uh, you know, the advances in AI are not evenly distributed. Mm-hmm. It’s not a, it’s not a yeah’s kind of a linear way that’s moving up the beech tsunami that’s coming towards our island or whatever. It’s, I don’t know. It’s, it’s an army where some of the phalanx are further ahead than the other ones or something.

Jonathan Alger: But in, in what we do when we’re trying to work on a physical space, it’s a complex, unique, three-dimensional puzzle. In, um, a situation like that, there is no way that AI can solve the problem for you. Uh, once you’ve solved it, AI could, you know, render up something similar. Uh, in the early days of Dall-E and Midjourney.

Jonathan Alger: I said, you know, Dall-E, hey, I’m gonna experiment with you. I’d like to you to make me, uh, an uh, photographic realistic image of a young woman in a sundress in a museum looking at a sword that’s in a vitrine. And the results were absolutely laughable. So the more specific in the early days right now for ai, the more specific that you want to get, the less joy you’re gonna have and things that are already well chewed and masticated by the computers of the internet where there’s already ample material to learn on. You’ll be able to do something like that. So if I were to say, Hey, AI, give me a picture of a multicultural group of preppy kids drinking sodas. Boy, I could get some great stuff for that. But if I were to say like, give me an image of a really cool concept for an exhibit that’s about, uh, shepherding in Iceland. It’s gonna, it’s gonna balk.

Abigail Honor: Yep. Last question. Advice to young exhibit designers?

Jonathan Alger: I would say in, it depends. If you would like to make yourself indispensable and get a well-rounded, a little bit of everything, kind of an experience to go work at a firm that is looking for that. You should go sign up for Brenda’s program. If you would like to work for a firm like mine and there aren’t many or like yours, Abby, there, there’s maybe 20, 25 firms like ours in the entire country. If you wanna work for a firm like that, it’s a little bit more of a mercenary outlook. And for people like that, I would recommend, uh, that you should, first, you should become a T-shaped person. You should get a very broad understanding, but there should be one thing that you’re very deep in. And, um, that, that might be architecture. We have our, um, our head, our most senior staff member in 3D design has two degrees in architecture.

Jonathan Alger: So, uh, and you know, likewise with graphic design, uh, likewise with media, et cetera. So, um, when people are hiring us and they, they need to get the job done well, and they need to get it done quickly, et cetera, that’s, that’s the kind of, um, talent pool that we’re, that we’re looking for.

Abigail Honor: Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really interesting and entertaining. And yeah, everybody check out MTM. It’s a fantastic podcast.

Brenda Cowan: It really is.

Abigail Honor: Podcast. Absolutely. Essential. Essential, I think.

Jonathan Alger: Aw, I like that word. Yeah.

Abigail Honor: So, um, yeah, thank you and thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend.

Abigail Honor: We’ll see you next time.

Engineer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lauren Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Jonathan Alger is Managing Partner and Co-founder of the design firm C&G Partners. He is a multi-specialist working in interactive cultural space and experiential design. He is also the host and author of "Making the Museum,” a podcast and newsletter for the cultural experience field. Jonathan’s clients include the 9/11 Museum, Bronx Zoo, Cornell, Federal Reserve, Gates Foundation, Holocaust Museum, Library of Congress, NASA, National Archives, Princeton, Smithsonian, and US Department of State. Jonathan has been honored by the AIGA, AAM, AASLH, Anthem Awards, Apex Awards, ADC, CA, IDSA, NEH, SEGD, TDC and the Webbys. He is a National Design Award Finalist and two-time winner of the AAM MUSE awards, and served two terms as President of the Society for Experiential Graphic Design. Before co-founding C&G Partners, Jonathan was a Principal at the design firm Chermayeff & Geismar Inc. Jonathan graduated from Yale with honors and distinction in Architecture, magna cum laude. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.

Abigail Honor: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you are new to the show, a hardy welcome to our regular listeners. Thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor. Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

Abigail Honor: Today we are talking with a very recognizable voice in our community, literally and figuratively. Jonathan Alger, Jonathan, many know you as the co-founder and managing partner of CNG Partners, where your clients run the gamut and include the nine 11 Museum, nasa, Cornell, the Smithsonian, US Department of State.

Abigail Honor: I, I can go on. You’ve been honored. Buy more initialisms than I can pronounce sequentially on this show. ’cause I tried. As well as being a two time winner of the A Am Muse Awards, he’s also served two terms of the president of SEGD and recently we’re all enjoying your podcast and newsletter, making the museum.

Abigail Honor: Jonathan, a huge welcome to the show.

Jonathan Alger: Very happy to be here. Thank you both for having me. I’m a big fan of your show.

Brenda Cowan: Thank you Jonathan. I happen to know that you’re a musician, you’re an avid reader, and I think of it as a collector of amazing true or sometimes not so true facts and anecdotes. You always seem to have an incredible story to share.

Brenda Cowan: That inevitably leaves me wondering. Is that for real? I also know that you appreciate it when others in your firm have and share what I’ll call out of work talents such as art making and music. So tell us how do your myriad personal and professional interests and talents synergize into the work that you do?

Jonathan Alger: I don’t know. Uh, I think that if I were giving advice to somebody today about pursuing a career or creating a company or both, I’m not sure I would advise them to do what we have done because I’m not sure that the environment is really conducive to that. You know, nowadays it’s all about specializing and, and what we do is sort of neither specializing nor generalizing, but, somewhere in between. And I think that’s a, that’s a difficult spot to be in, I think. But for us, it’s been great. We love the lifestyle of multi-specialty work, and so we’re in, in my firm, I, I do a lot of exhibition design and experience design. That’s what I write about. That’s what I podcast about. That’s what I’m sort of most known for, but coming up in the business, I did all the other things that you would think a traditional communication design person would do: branding and, uh, way finding and digital projects and print and all of that sort of stuff. So it was sort of a apprenticeship that felt a little bit more like learning how to run or learning how to do the decathlon rather than learning how to run the a hundred meter dash only.

Jonathan Alger: But you know, again, I’m not sure that that’s business advice I would give any, anyone today. Do not, do not set out to become a medium sized Swiss army knife.

Abigail Honor: I feel the exact same way. We don’t have an elevator pitch for what we do. Every time I meet a client, it’s really hard because when you are medium size, small to medium.

Abigail Honor: I think we’re probably a bit smaller than you guys and you’re trying to pitch what you do, but you have a depth or a multidisciplinary team that can actually do branding, do wayfinding, for example, experience design, um, you know, vr, ar, digital, whatever it is in your Swiss Army knife. It’s really hard to be able to pitch that to clients when they’re often just looking for one thing

Jonathan Alger: That’s right.

Abigail Honor: I’m always trying to say, what’s your problem and let us fix it. Don’t come to us for a set specific task. How are some of the challenges? As you mentioned, you have this rich team and they have a lot of things they can do. How do you see the next five years in terms of your business? Do you ever think, oh, we need to specialize.

Abigail Honor: It will be better to be one size fits all for people or like, what’s your perception on that?

Jonathan Alger: I have no idea. I’d like to be able to answer with a very fluid and cogent, uh, words to live by that people could whip their notebook out on and start scribbling away, but I don’t really, I don’t really have an answer for that.

Jonathan Alger: I think we’re maybe birds of a feather. Um, we’ve been around long enough that we’ve just got a pretty big portfolio in each one of those areas. So when a client comes to us with a particular specialty they want, we just show them that. Every once in a while we come across a client that needs, you know, pineapples, storm doors, and to be flown in an airplane and we can handle them as well.

Abigail Honor: So in terms of like CNG, you know, you’re very much known for a focus on cultural nonprofit work. What, why, why is it tell us like that special focus and why it’s important for you?

Jonathan Alger: Our firm, uh, CNG Partners is a descended firm and of another firm called, uh, Chermayeff & Geismar, and Chermayeff & Geismar is a, a sort of a original gangster, uh, formed in the fifties old school, New York graphic design firm. One of the firms that invented or popularized the term graphic design and was one of the very first firms ever to do exhibition design as a firm actually.

Jonathan Alger: And I just happened to luckily get an opportunity to work there and I, I started there as a junior designer and I left there as, as one of the principles of the firm, and then started this firm, which is a descendant. And that firm for whatever reason, and probably personal interest, et cetera, just didn’t do much commercial work, didn’t do much marketing, didn’t sell soap as we used to say.

Jonathan Alger: And so the firm that I now am the managing partner of and one of the owners of is following suit, and that started to refine itself even more when we created this firm 20 years ago. We started eventually, after five, 10 years in, we realized that 85, 90% of of our clients and our financial health was coming from the broadly defined cultural sector.

Jonathan Alger: And so we said, let’s just plant a flag. And not actively go after commercial projects as much.

Abigail Honor: Oh, that’s really interesting. Financially, was that a gamble?

Jonathan Alger: You know, like, I’m, I’m fond of saying like, nonprofit is a tax status, not a business goal. So, uh, well run nonprofits. We work with a lot of nonprofits, we work with a lot of government entities. We work with NGOs, et cetera. Let’s think about some nonprofits that we know well by name: Harvard, the Smithsonian, National Geographic. I don’t know, NASA, if you want to include government entities. These, I don’t think you’d think of any of those entities as being poorly funded. So I think something like 10% of the workforce in the United States works in the nonprofit sector writ large.

Jonathan Alger: And so it’s, it’s a good place to be. You can even be a niche within a niche, and that’s, that’s where we are doing arts and culture.

Brenda Cowan: So when I think about how it is that CNG brings voices, people, the human into your exhibition projects and how it is that, in my interpretation, it makes for very inclusive environments, it makes for, again, very human environments.

Brenda Cowan: And I’m curious to hear a little bit about how it is that you think or you approach projects with a human element in mind. Or is it the kind of thing that just sort of develops heuristically?

Jonathan Alger: There’s always been an issue with museums taking a stand and having a very firm opinion about something. In some cases, it’s sort of incontrovertible.

Jonathan Alger: We are the Museum of Forks. Forks have tines and on the other end is a part where you hold them. Right? You can say that if you’re the museum of for, you’re the curator of the Museum of Forks. You can say things like that. But otherwise, we work with a lot of museums and museum-like entities that are a little bit uncomfortable with sort of taking a stand.

Jonathan Alger: So one of the, I don’t know, tricks or hacks or rules of thumb that, that we’ve stumbled on and and gone with is this idea of the personal testimony trick. The idea that, if we can get someone who’s maybe not a subject matter expert, they’re not an SME, they’re just somebody else who has lived experience or they’re adjacent to the subject, or they may not know everything about chemistry, but they work in a lab and we have them say what they feel about a subject, then that’s a great way for visitors to have a way in that’s a little bit more understandable to them.

Jonathan Alger: It’s also a great way for museums to avoid looking like there’s only one answer and that people are supposed to look to them for some kind of absolute truth. So that’s the sort of the personal testimony trick, and you can do that a number of ways. You can do that like we’re doing right now, recording something in audio.

Jonathan Alger: You can also do it in writing.

Brenda Cowan: I’m really curious as a leader, how it is that you effectively communicate or even educate clients about the work that you do. It’s a particular form of communication, um, I would suggest, and I’m really curious, how do you approach that?

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I’d say I, some people refer to that as sort of, uh, consulting or educational consultative relationship with your clients. Other people refer to it as being long-winded and pedantic. I guess it, it depends on the, the situation, but I don’t mind at all trying to help clients understand every aspect of something that they might want to understand. Uh, and some people are like that, you know, on the show that I do, I just had a guest who is a specialist in museum display cases, and you can tell that she loves to explain that stuff to people, and that is stuff that really needs to be explained to people. And nine times out of 10, the clients that we’re working with are people who have never done this before. They may very well never do it again. They may decide never to do it again. Every once in a while they decide to do it again.

Jonathan Alger: But when you go in and you want to have your knee operated on, and there’s some people that are just like, hey, fix my knee, okay, knock me out, take care of it. But there are other people that said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. What are my options? What’s entailed? I think you just have to do that.

Abigail Honor: Given what you’ve just said in terms of the education, if you have money and you need to build a museum, they automatically, the clients think, I need an architect. I keep finding us in situations where whenever we are brought in, the client has already made some decisions, like even buying hardware too early.

Jonathan Alger: Oh yeah. We get that all the time.

Abigail Honor: And it’s,

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, the, the AV salespeople got to them.

Jonathan Alger: They got to them.

Abigail Honor: Exactly. How do we,

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really big LED wall. It’s curving.

Abigail Honor: It’s exactly like that. Yeah. So how do we build a better understanding of our industry and how to work through these projects and our process with clients or build that awareness so they’re doing it in the right order at least?

Jonathan Alger: That’s a really, that’s a super question I’ve never really thought exactly about that, you know, we are, everyone around this table is sort of around the same table, right? We don’t have a client sitting in the fourth chair over there. So if I take your question correctly, it is, how can we make sure that before we show up, the clients know what it is that we’re gonna do and they’re starting to make the right decisions, et cetera.

Jonathan Alger: So, I don’t know, maybe, uh, you know, uh, SEGD, the Society for Experiential Graph Design has just started this new group, a professional, uh, practice group, uh, that is for people to do exhibition and experience design. Maybe we should focus one of the committees of that group on creating some kind of website or page at SEGD.org or literature or something that could somehow be distributed. You could use the, the sort of the power and the force of a larger organization, uh, and kind of do a got milk campaign. Like if we’re all dairy farmers, you could do a bit of a got milk campaign, not to, not to create demand for our bovine liquid, but to make the client sort of understand, you know, what, what the basic steps are.

Abigail Honor: Yeah. And who they need sitting around the table at the beginning.

Jonathan Alger: That’s a great idea. I’m gonna go do that right now. I’m gonna leave,

Brenda Cowan: I would suggest that you’re already underway with doing this, or at least into, into begin our segue actually into talking about making the museum, part of what I see happening is you making a very substantial contribution to providing everyone and certainly, you know, prospective clients or existing clients with a vocabulary, with an understanding of the tools, the techniques, and understanding the functions and the possibilities of, you know, what I think of as a very kaleidoscopic profession. And I’m curious, was that your intention or do you see yourself doing that? Because from the outside, it seems that that is a huge part of your outcomes.

Jonathan Alger: So making the museum, shameless plug. You can look at makingthemuseum.com, dear Listener, is both a podcast, which is attempting to be as good as the podcast that I’m on right now, but is falling very short.

Brenda Cowan: Au contraire.

Jonathan Alger: But is also a newsletter. It started out as a newsletter. I was writing five very short one minute read, uh, newsletters per week and now it’s three times a week by popular demand or popular un-demand. And that started, uh, two ways. One was sort of a selfish way. I’d, I’d had a lifelong dream to attempt to get over my absolutely fundamental terror of writing, uh, in public, uh, doing something where it wasn’t just business emails, but something where I was purely writing and I was asking people to look at my writing.

Jonathan Alger: I, I, I went through school, uh, with a whole bunch of friends who are, you know, writers for a, for a business, and I always thought that that was great, and I thought that I, I couldn’t do it. I tried and it was terrible, and I wanted to tackle that monster. And so I did that and I took courses and yada yada.

Jonathan Alger: And the other thing was this thing that people do is a small community. Even if you were to say, okay, all the people that do museum exhibition and let’s add all the people that do theme park work, let’s add them in and let’s add people who do themed retail and let’s add cruise ships and uh, visitor centers and alumni centers and zoos, you know, all of that.

Jonathan Alger: Even if we brought all of those people together, it’d still be a fairly small number. So, back to architects, last time I checked, there was like 80,000. There’s probably 120,000 members of the AIA right now. But SEGD itself has what, 2000. So it’s a relatively small group, and that means that there isn’t a critical mass adequate to generate a, uh, criticism, uh, textual communication. There isn’t writing in the field per se, except here and there. And the other gap is professional development, that there isn’t a way that you can get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and get your one word a day calendar about your profession. Or, you know, every month you take a little continuing education unit or something and it’s like, ooh, storm drain flashing great.

Jonathan Alger: You know? And I just felt that, uh, I could combine those two things. I can combine that interest in writing, the fact that I’ve been doing it for a number of years, and I can share what I’ve learned.

Abigail Honor: One of the things I just wanna pick on what you said, Jonathan, is you had a need to write. You didn’t feel comfortable writing, and you forced yourself through that discomfort to achieve the goal that was pushing you forwards.

Abigail Honor: But only from doing that and facing those fears and facing those obstacles and overcoming do you ever accomplish anything? So unfortunately, in order to accomplish anything, you have to go through the, through the quagmire and put yourself in an uncomfortable situation to get the other side.

Jonathan Alger: Uh, Abby, you’re uh, totally right.

Jonathan Alger: I think that there’s this big realm of discomfort that you have to aim for. I’ve done projects with clients, some of my client work has been insanely uncomfortable for me. Things we’re, we’re working with a client group that I don’t think I have anything in common with, I don’t agree with in some ways. I agree with the project they’re doing, but there’s something else about, uh, who they are that may be on a personal basis I wouldn’t agree with.

Jonathan Alger: And the thing that I find all the time is once you get through this sort of weird more Mordor on the other side, you’re like: What? That wasn’t Mordor at all. Who has so worried about that zone of discomfort turns out in retrospect, looking back at it to be wonderful. I’ve had clients that I thought were gonna be just, I, I don’t, I don’t know how we’re gonna get through this.

Jonathan Alger: And you kind of figure it out. And after the first meeting, everybody is like, you know, going out to lunch together individually, you are like, what?

Abigail Honor: Yeah, I completely agree. Completely agree. And also dealing in the moment that it’s not comfortable with the job where you’ve overreached somewhere or you feel you may be overreaching or you’re not all on the same page, whatever the challenge is, learning to deal with the stress of that is something that I’m constantly challenged with.

Brenda Cowan: Well, this is something, uh, we had, uh, on a recent podcast, Sarana Pringle from Yale who does studies and research in creativity and emotional intelligence. And this was a piece of what she was talking about and what she studies, which is for the creative person, and I would say for a creative leader as well, being able to enter into discomfort and being able to manage not knowing. How this is going to turn out or where this is going to go is an enormous skill and it’s something that you have as a significant tool in your toolbox.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I think that’s often the case when you’re, when you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a business leader, or you’re a partner in a firm, or you’re trying to, uh, negotiate any kind of new possibility. It’s highly likely that some aspect of what you’re being asked to do is something that you currently are not a master of, and it simply doesn’t work that you would attempt to become a master of the thing in advance and then seek out somebody because all of the engagements are unique. They’re all one-offs, right? They’re all very individual. We just finished a project for. It’s an interactive university project at a lab of Ornithology where the, the median visitor is a 62-year-old, uh, white female with expensive binoculars. If I had attempted to become the master of that before we began that, I don’t know, I’d have a very long gray beard and then they would’ve chosen somebody else. So you have to be willing to knit the parachute on the way down a little bit. You, you have to be confident that you can do it. You have to have a, a record of having done that many times. Before to be confident, like, sure, I can jump out the plane.

Abigail Honor: Mm-hmm. What about fear of failure? Do you think some of the motivation is because you’re like, I’m not gonna fail. I cannot fail. Or how do you deal with failure? Because we all fail. Right? You fail forward. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. I’m a big believer in failure, so how do you deal with it?

Jonathan Alger: I like it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a mug. I’m a big believer in failure. I like that. Yeah. You have to acknowledge that you will have a failure, but. You have to make the right bets, right? Everything is thinking in bets, so there are situations where you’re guaranteed to fail. Take on situations like that deliberately and for a specific reason. Otherwise, try to find situations where you could possibly not fail and just do everything you can to not fail.

Abigail Honor: It’s a delicate balance though, right? Because as you are boldly going where you haven’t gone before, trying something new or part new, there is still probably, if we were betting people, a percentage of failure always.

Jonathan Alger: Right, and you do fail. You do fail. That’s, that’s for sure. You get more points for, you know, most improved player is sort of more impressive than player who yet again, one player of the year.

Brenda Cowan: Well, you’re never starting from zero after you have gone for something you’ve attempted, something, you fail, and when you go again, you’re not starting from zero. And I think that that is a reality, and it’s also a mindset that can really, you know, it’s like an abundance mindset. It really enables you, I would suggest, to be able to build the skill and to perhaps end up mastering. Whatever the case might be.

Abigail Honor: Yesterday, we did a pitch for a big commercial campaign and we made the images in ai. We brought them to life in ai and these were science images and technology images, and so we basically made a video in four hours. We got the job simply because we just outworked everyone in this four hours and made what looked like you. The client could see the spots, right? We gave them that wet their appetite. And so I’m sort of shocked at how quickly it’s going and I just wondered how you felt about it because we are already seeing clients using it.

Abigail Honor: So if we are not doing it, they’ll come to the table and show us what, well, last night we did this and so we have to keep up with our clients now. Because you get a client who happens to be, have a creative director who’s very techie and suddenly we can’t be outworked by them. So I just wondered what your, we’re in a frenetic race to keep up with AI and to see how we can use it effectively, and I just wondered what your thinking was on it all.

Jonathan Alger: Yeah, I, I think that, uh, you know, the advances in AI are not evenly distributed. Mm-hmm. It’s not a, it’s not a yeah’s kind of a linear way that’s moving up the beech tsunami that’s coming towards our island or whatever. It’s, I don’t know. It’s, it’s an army where some of the phalanx are further ahead than the other ones or something.

Jonathan Alger: But in, in what we do when we’re trying to work on a physical space, it’s a complex, unique, three-dimensional puzzle. In, um, a situation like that, there is no way that AI can solve the problem for you. Uh, once you’ve solved it, AI could, you know, render up something similar. Uh, in the early days of Dall-E and Midjourney.

Jonathan Alger: I said, you know, Dall-E, hey, I’m gonna experiment with you. I’d like to you to make me, uh, an uh, photographic realistic image of a young woman in a sundress in a museum looking at a sword that’s in a vitrine. And the results were absolutely laughable. So the more specific in the early days right now for ai, the more specific that you want to get, the less joy you’re gonna have and things that are already well chewed and masticated by the computers of the internet where there’s already ample material to learn on. You’ll be able to do something like that. So if I were to say, Hey, AI, give me a picture of a multicultural group of preppy kids drinking sodas. Boy, I could get some great stuff for that. But if I were to say like, give me an image of a really cool concept for an exhibit that’s about, uh, shepherding in Iceland. It’s gonna, it’s gonna balk.

Abigail Honor: Yep. Last question. Advice to young exhibit designers?

Jonathan Alger: I would say in, it depends. If you would like to make yourself indispensable and get a well-rounded, a little bit of everything, kind of an experience to go work at a firm that is looking for that. You should go sign up for Brenda’s program. If you would like to work for a firm like mine and there aren’t many or like yours, Abby, there, there’s maybe 20, 25 firms like ours in the entire country. If you wanna work for a firm like that, it’s a little bit more of a mercenary outlook. And for people like that, I would recommend, uh, that you should, first, you should become a T-shaped person. You should get a very broad understanding, but there should be one thing that you’re very deep in. And, um, that, that might be architecture. We have our, um, our head, our most senior staff member in 3D design has two degrees in architecture.

Jonathan Alger: So, uh, and you know, likewise with graphic design, uh, likewise with media, et cetera. So, um, when people are hiring us and they, they need to get the job done well, and they need to get it done quickly, et cetera, that’s, that’s the kind of, um, talent pool that we’re, that we’re looking for.

Abigail Honor: Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really interesting and entertaining. And yeah, everybody check out MTM. It’s a fantastic podcast.

Brenda Cowan: It really is.

Abigail Honor: Podcast. Absolutely. Essential. Essential, I think.

Jonathan Alger: Aw, I like that word. Yeah.

Abigail Honor: So, um, yeah, thank you and thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend.

Abigail Honor: We’ll see you next time.

Engineer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lauren Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

What If It Doesn’t Work? (And What If It Does?)

What If It Doesn’t Work? (And What If It Does?)

April 2, 2025
Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

March 5, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
How do creativity and courage shape the future of design? In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Murilo Melo, a design leader who believes that great design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about meaning, connection, and bold decision-making.

Murilo shares insights on the evolving role of designers as problem definers, the power of taking risks in branding, and how creativity and strategy must work hand in hand. He also reflects on the challenges of balancing speed, technology, and thoughtfulness in today’s fast-paced world.

Whether you’re a designer, brand strategist, or creative professional, this episode offers a fresh perspective on how to make brands truly matter.
Murilo Melo is the Global Head of Design at GUT. With over 20 years of experience, Murilo has worked at agencies such as: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Wunderman Thompson, Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, BETC/Havas, DM9DDB (DDB Brazil). He has directly contributed to iconic projects for clients such as: Coca Cola, AB Inbev, Netflix, Google, Hersheys, Kraft Heinz, Mercado Livre, FIAT, Honda, among others. He has won awards at all national and international festivals such as Cannes Lions Grand Prix + more than 30 Cannes lions, D&AD Pencils, Effie, One Show, Clio, Andys and ADC.

Murilo Melo

HERSHE

Grad in Black

New York Festivals Advertising Awards

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a hearty welcome, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: So today we’re chatting with Murilo Melo, who is the global head of design at Gut. He has over 20 years of experience working at agencies like Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, and Havas. He’s worked on iconic projects for clients like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Google and Hershey: I’m not a huge fan of the taste of that chocolate, but what I do like was the HERSHE campaign for International Women’s Day, where you showcased female artists of all types on the packaging and across digital.

 

It was absolutely beautiful and told our story really, really effectively. And you’ve also won awards like such a long list of awards, top national, international festivals like Cannes Lions, D&AD, Effie, One Show, Clio, the list goes on. And now your career is most definitely climaxing as you join my design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards this year, as we have the opportunity to review and award the top talent in design experience design for the past year, which we’re going to talk about later. Murilo, welcome to the show.

 

Murilo: Thank you so much, Abigail. Thank you, Brenda. And after this introduction, I might call you for every meeting I do with my team.

 

Abby: We’re available. We’re available. I’ve never been to Brazil. I’m right there.

 

Brenda: Oh my gosh. And I’m right there with you. And what is so delightful is that you make it very easy for us to be very enthusiastic about your work and what you do and where you’ve been. I’d love to dive in and get us kickstarted with thinking about what it’s like to design for iconic brands, iconic brands that are household names around the world, and even through your design work, how it is that you’re at once thinking on a massive scale, right, globally, but also about everyday people, everyday lives. Can you tell us about how you craft messages, how you craft experiences that work for the whole world, so to speak, and yet resonate with just individual people? The human scale.

 

Murilo: Yeah, this, this Brenda, is a challenge because these brands, most of these brands we are talking about, they are loved brands and people love brands, people connect with the brands, they talk about it, they’re reacting to their social media. So, when you’re working with these kind of major brands around the world, it is a responsibility to know what to do. But also the payoff is amazing because of course you have great minds at the brand side, from the marketing team, from the, even the design team inside the companies, and I feel this is important. I’m super respectful for what the relationship between brands and people, and the goal is always to be impactful in a good way, because people, people get it, you know, when you’re pushing too hard or when it’s not related and you’re just doing something to call the attention. So, what I try to do, and I think it really works, is to be true to the brand and to the consumers.

 

Abby: That’s really interesting.

 

Brenda: What does it look like to be true to the consumer? Like, is there a way of thinking about the person so that we can resonate with, you know, the brand with them? Is there a particular like headspace that you get into, or is there a method?

 

Murilo: I don’t think there’s an established method, but I think it’s something related to, deliver to the people what the brand has to give, because sometimes we see some, some brands, or some communication pushing so hard into a direction that the brand does not represent. They don’t have that commitment inside of their marketing team. And then it sounds fake, you know. So, I think it’s, it’s a kind of a respectful thing. And I think brands are more—they are more aware of this nowadays. We lived at a time, a recent period that anything was worth it to say if it looked good for the brands. And people are not buying that anymore and brands are taking more care. I think it’s something that the market is more mature about, which is great.

 

Abby: But how do you like, in, like taking Hershey or Coca-Cola, I know a lot of people enjoy Hershey, lots of people enjoy Coca-Cola. How are you putting yourself in the mind’s eye of the consumer? Do you look on social? Are you seeing the way they talk about the brand, what they like about the brand? How is it that you know how to successfully address that consumer? Words to use, visuals to choose, or concept to make the campaign about? Do you know what I mean? Because you’re over there, you’re in Brazil, you may or may not like the brand you’re working for. So how do you bridge that gap?

 

Murilo: Yeah, for example, the Hershey’s campaign, HERSHE, it all started with the finding that on the name and in the packaging, you have “her,” and you have “she,” which is nice, a nice finding, and we are all excited about that. But we’re like, what are we doing with this? Like, are we just saying, hey, there’s “her” and “she,” here, congratulate woman. Well, I don’t think that’s enough. But that’s kind of what I was saying before, like why, why are you saying that?

 

Then we took a step further and say, hey, we should elevate women, her, artists, she writes, her poems, her paintings, and then bring the community in. And like I was saying, inside the company at the time we worked on this project, there was, a department that was, the leadership was filled, I mean, majority of the leadership was women. So, it was all true to the brand, but it came to the consumers to be part of that. And the initiative really worked because it has a large scale of showing the artists and making a gallery and exporting the idea to many countries. And the community got excited because we can, you can do these kind of things, and the community refuses, and that’s okay, it’s part of the job. But it was interesting for everyone. So, I think when we got into that place, we said, well, we are actually doing something relevant, influential, and not only communication or advertising, you know.

 

Brenda: Yeah, it was a dialogue.

 

Murilo: Yes.

 

Abby: When you think about design, it can mean a lot of things. It’s a huge umbrella, right? There’s visual and communication design, digital and user experience design, UX, product industrial design, environmental experiential design, marketing, advertising design, fashion design, spatial design. So, talk to us about what your focus is or what types of design you’re drawn to in your sort of everyday life, so not necessarily what you put out, but what influences you.

 

Murilo: Yeah, sure, and design is everywhere, is in everything. And that is hard for us that are obsessed about design because it’s like, where do I look? So, I mean, I live in a constant, like, overwhelming about everything that is being done, especially now that we have access to everything throughout social media. And it’s too much, actually, because it’s too much good stuff that you see, interesting stuff and it’s hard to follow everything.

 

But what really caught my attention and what I like, I love the most when I talk about design and talking about the day by day, is when I see design connected to creativity. And it could sound redundant because it is a creative expression. But when design is connected to a creative purpose or something behind it, I think it’s, it elevates the creativity and the creativity, it’s really beneficiated by design.

 

I’ve been seeing a lot of luxury brands on social media, and they’re working so well with design, and animation, and kind of unusual things visually. And this is, is more interesting for me at least, than what we saw in the past that was kind of a blasé thing, something more distant. So, I mean, it’s a random example, but I think creativity elevates design, and since my day-by-day work is—I have a design studio inside of an advertising agency, right? So, my sweet spot in curiosity in my heart is between this connection: design and creativity coming to impact and to amuse people.

 

Brenda: We had a wonderful conversation a while ago with Zorana Pringle, who is an expert in creativity. She does research at Yale, and I really appreciate listening to you talk about creativity right now and its relationship with design and also thinking about how it is that creativity is kind of like a muscle that we exercise, and it sounds like, you know, when you talk about imagination, when you talk about inspiration, when you talk about creativity, you very much so are bringing a lot of that, you know, that muscle to the table, if you will, which certainly must make a big difference, or at least it seems to result in some pretty remarkable projects.

 

So, thinking about some remarkable projects, one of the things that I was really curious about was about pitching to clients. And I’m curious when you know that you truly have something special to share, what’s it like when you know that you’ve really created this amazing idea, and is there a trick to getting everybody else on board?

 

Murilo: That’s a good question, and I wish I had the trick answer, but I think it’s deeper than that because it’s a construction. In the past, I think designers from, especially from this environment, advertising, creativity, branding, they were often seen as finishers of an idea, right, like executing, developed the concept, so let’s put the design team now that things are coming right. And this perception is shifting. For me, it already shifted completely. So, designers are no longer just problem solvers, they are problem definers. So, they help shape conversation before a single visual idea is created, and this is where I think is the heart of the, the thing when you want to, let’s call it sell a design piece. You got to show the relevance before because it’s a business decision because it’s important for the brand to create value. And then I show you the idea of how doing that. And it’s not just like, being a showman, a showwoman in presenting, but about making the client realize how important the design is for its brand or its projects.

 

Abby: I have a quick, quick sort of build on to that because we’ve had some experiences where we’ve pitched something, a concept, and the client initially has loved it, and then over successive meetings, or it even could be the next one, something internally shifted and the feedbacks almost gets 180ed. Has that ever happened to you, when client feedback has started off really onboard to an idea and sort of got watered down, maybe somehow.

 

Brenda: Something got lost in the process.

 

Murilo: Yeah, yeah, this is really frequent because the clients, they have more complex structures nowadays, like I think before it was one-on-one, just a team of decision makers and now the big clients, they have a whole marketing team, a lot of layers, and we work with something that is kind of subjective. We sell like ideas and there is risk on that.

 

That’s why I think the most important thing is to push courage from the clients. It is brave to approve something that has not been done, or that’s kind of not what the brand has always worked on. And we at Gut, we have a methodology which is amazing, which is the bravery scale. We bring clients in and we say, hey, let’s look at the bravery scale, from 1 to 10, and we talk about what is being 10, brave, like living like there’s no tomorrow. And 1 is like, hey, I don’t know if I should. And there are a lot of steps on this bravery scale. And maybe the thing on some projects is to go from 2 to 3, which is amazing. It’s incredible. It’s not being like; I’m going to throw the papers and put my job in risk. No, it’s something, it’s one thing that’s going to maybe be rewarded and then you’re going to jump more. It’s going to make you feel secure and more brave. So, it’s this kind of thing we talk about this with the clients and it sometimes works.

 

Brenda: That’s such a beautiful answer.

 

Abby: Yeah, what a great idea as well to get people on board with where they’re coming from, because a lot of our guests talk about boards, if we’re creating exhibitions for museums and lots of different stakeholders, as you mentioned, often 50 up to 100 different stakeholders, all with different appetites for risk, all perceiving the job to be done with different risks involved and wanting to, as you just mentioned, move the needle. So, it’s a really great method that you’ve just described for making sure that at least from your perspective, as the agency, you understand where the client’s risk adversity lies or bravery lies. I think that’s fantastic.

 

Brenda: It is good. And also, I would imagine that your, your awareness of the consumer and, some of those sort of emotional connections that people have with the products, with the brands makes a big difference.

 

Murilo: It’s super does, and we live in a world that it’s possible to test and learn faster. You can try with a small group, you can try it on social media and see how, how is the appetite of people, if the client is a low score on the brave scale, it is a way to start, like, let’s push the tone a little bit and try this with this group. Well, it’s a good reaction. Let’s amplify. Can we scale that? And when we scale that the bravery will be rewarded. And if it is rewarded, it is something that it’s inspiring. Colleagues, the juniors of the team will say, hey, you look what he did, he, it was risky, and it was worth it. I mean, I’m talking like a dreamer because I believe in this. I think this really works.

 

Abby: Do you think that being a dreamer, like you’re obviously great, very personable, I would imagine fantastic with clients, very articulate. You just mentioned juniors. Can you teach what you have?

 

Murilo: Well, I think it’s about trust, intimacy. It’s like everything in life when we are, like, you have to make an impression, you are not yourself, and when you’re not yourself, things sound kind of fake. If you don’t connect, you don’t convince anyone of anything, you know, and that’s not quite easy, because sometimes from the client side or even from inside our team, people are not that open. And how to open their, their hearts and their conversation, and to make this, it’s this kind of soft skill, let’s call it, like that, that I think the world, the world is given so much credit for. Because technically, with all we are seeing the AI things and everything, we are reaching a high level of technical capabilities. But the emotional one, I think that’s the key for these kind of things, you know.

 

Brenda: The pace at which new design tools are being created have sped up projects, and I’m really curious about whether in your experiences, whether or not expectations have shifted in terms of how like rapidly teams are developing and implementing design work. How do you stay so thoughtful? How do you stay so true to the richness of what it is that you’re creating in an industry that seems to be moving increasingly faster?

 

Murilo: It is a paradox because it saves us time, but for us to use it and save us time, we have to invest time to learn. But I think we have to find room to, to breathe, to absorb and to use it and to move it to the next round because it’s a cause of a lot of anxiety. I’m really anxious because when we are working and doing great work and I see something coming out and say, hey, should I have worked less on this project to dedicate time for me and my team to learn that? Because this is the future and if you go into that direction, I mean, I don’t know if we can survive. It’s too much. So, I would, I would take a breath and focus on the work. Stay curious, of course, it’s like, it’s essential for our, has always been for our profession, but at least for me, I don’t see myself always working and producing and learning and testing new. I mean, we have to have space for stuff, you know, that’s at least my point of view.

 

Abby: Well, I think also with, with AI, when you’re making imagery, it’s a whole different way of being creative. So originally, we had pen to paper and it was one way of drawing something, and then you have your tablet and you have your pen, and now we have writing words to create images, which is a whole different mode of processing. And I’m sure if we had a scientist here, when it comes to the brain, like I’m, I’m much more a hold and do, a physical—and so now I’m typing words to articulate an image that I’m trying to get to. But it takes time, and it takes practice. We’re finding it still takes huge amounts of time to get exactly what you want. It takes no time to get something, it’s how well you can start working with it and collaborating with it.

 

Murilo: Yeah, there’s something kind of personal about this. I realized I have always loved notebooks and Moleskines and taking notes, and I realized, it was something that just came to me, that I was not using anymore. I had forgotten my notebooks, and I was searching already, I was thinking on the computer, so I went to Pinterest, to Google, maybe to ChatGPT, anything and was trying to—and then it came to me in December say, no, no, I have to get back to my notebook. And I bought a notebook, and it was game changer. I dedicate ten minutes, I don’t know, some time, thinking, writing, and then I use the machine and I’m trying to do this with the team, hey, hey, let’s, let’s be like AI-free, computer-free for a moment, and then we go—this step is magic, and it already made a lot of difference in my year.

 

Brenda: Oh, good for you.

 

Abby: I have a question for you, Brenda, about your students.

 

Brenda: Sure.

 

Abby: So, in a way, Murilo’s getting his team to slow down, and in answer to your observation that everything’s going faster, how do your students do that? Like how do we fight against the world we live in because everybody’s tempted to just go in and do the prompt, which is a—just get on with it, you know. When you’re talking with your students and guiding them through the world they’re about to go into, what is some advice you give them on how to slow down?

 

Brenda: What I’m able to do with my students is shape an understanding that we’re not fighting, necessarily, the world. The world is, you know, it is changing. It’s developing. It’s growing. The tools are there. They are faster. Ultimately, though, I have a bit of a privilege and I think the students have a bit of a luxury being in the classroom where I can say, we’re going to take a pause right now, and where the majority of the work that I do with them is paper and pencil and it’s, you know, kind of crazy and kind of messy and a little chaotic and very, very creative. And I think that learning that taking that pause, again, like, you know, we’re hearing right now, it’s just simply another tool. A pause is a tool, just like AI is a tool, just like paper and pencil are tools.

 

Murilo: Perfect, yes.

 

Brenda: So, what are like maybe 1 or 2 of the projects that you’re the most proud of?

 

Murilo: We did a project that was really meaningful for so many people. There’s this thing, this, this pain around the world. That is when people are going to graduate, the graduation caps, they are hard to fit into Black people hair. And then our team, which has Black people creating, executing the idea, which of course is their place to think about it, they came up with a solution, said, hey, why shouldn’t we find a designer and make some special graduation caps for all kinds of hairs? And then we said, well, this is amazing. This is a really human thing, and it’s an important moment. It’s about self-esteem, everything. And then we went to talk with a designer, a fashion designer, and he was amazed by the idea. He draw 4 or 5 caps for different kinds of curly hair. And then it was like, it was liquid, people and especially Black people that had passed these into their graduations that work here, they were so excited about the idea. And of course, we were excited too. And then we put it out in the world, and it was amazing. It was amazing. It was really emotional. And now we are actually having the caps into the graduation ceremonies and people are actually wearing them. So, I’m super proud of this, you know.

 

Brenda: Oh my God, this is amazing. This is, like literally, this is a problem in my own program and with my students when they graduate.

 

Murilo: It is Grad In Black, it’s called, the project. And we have an open source for these designs. So, the designers did, we have an open source, a PDF where you can just do it anywhere you want. It tells you how to, and it’s there.

 

Brenda: Amazing.

 

Abby: That’s incredible. Well, so that’s an example of design solving a big problem. Right? That is super rewarding. So, let’s talk about our design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards. So, you’ll be joining a number of incredible jury members like Jonathan Alger from C&G and Monica Herman from Giant Spoon. So I’m excited to collaborate with Scott Rose, the president, to add sections in the design category that reflect our profession like experiential activations, branded environments, and exhibition design, as well as all the more traditional design entries, because one of the reasons Murilo, that, at least I and I believe Brenda, want to do our podcast is to really build awareness about what we do. And a lot of that is exhibition design, experience design. And so having those categories now under the design umbrella and be recognized for awards is incredibly important to all of the people making amazing work. So, what is it about these awards that are exciting for you?

 

Murilo: The jury will see much more work, creative work because the market is wider. The market is asking for more work. So, we are producing more design work, more relevant design work and it will be amazing to see. I’m actually really curious because I think this past year was game changer for design. So, I think it’s our opportunity to learn, the jury and anyone who applies the work. It is something good because people keep consuming, because people see what have beaten them or what they have beaten. So, it’s a time to study. In advertising and design, we don’t dedicate as much time to study as in medicine, for example. And I think the award shows, they have these, these possibility. Okay, let’s see the golds for New York Festival this year, what the jury said the golds are, where are the industry heading. So, it’s something about the future too, because a lot of these great minds coming together to this conclusion, it is something pointing to the future.

 

Brenda: That is so exciting. Murilo, I’m really hoping you can talk to us about something that you are very, currently, very passionate about. What is—and it could be anything, this is a big, wide open question, but what are you just really, really excited about working with right now?

 

Murilo: I’m trying to go deeper into the entertainment industry. We are doing a project for a rapper/singer in Brazil, and he has such an amazing concept for his album, and we are navigating through that, how to make content for a musician, and the first part was doing a graphic design, and it’s already amazing because you have to study the platforms, how it will look like in Spotify or Apple Music. But beyond that, how is the music industry communicating? Is it a long format? It is a video clip, it is not a video clip anymore, is something on TikTok. So, it’s like a reinvention and there are no answers for these questions, as every time is a new thing. Like Beyoncé comes with an album that talks about, I mean, all the legacy from the country music, and it’s something that is a decision. But Rosalía doing something in TikTok, that is making a performance of her whole live album, which is something that shook the industry. So, I’m really curious about that at this moment.

 

And I would expand the music thing to entertainment, like we are working for a project for Netflix and it’s a new series, it’s a title treatment, and then you have to deep dive on how the art direction and the design comes to life inside the series. How can we apply the logo or the, the attitude or the photography inside of the content? So, these are things that are on my radar right now, and I’m really trying to study and to learn about them.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, you know, I listen, I’m listening to you, and I just keep imagining that you think in a very kaleidoscopic way, like how it is that you are able to integrate so many different aspects of design, be curious about so many different kinds of things, and yet altogether you’re able to form a single message, a single image, perhaps a single idea.

 

Abby

This was really enjoyable. I love the way you described us as problem designers. I just love that. And that method of sort of when you’re pitching, showing the relevance to the client, whatever it is you’re pitching and creating that value and then showing the idea is just is it’s a great way to really ease in ideas that are out of the box. Murilo, thank you so much.

 

Brenda: What a pleasure talking to you.

 

Abby: Yeah, this was fantastic.

 

Murilo: It was really a special moment. Thank you.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you liked what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience, wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you for joining us, everyone.

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Murilo Melo is the Global Head of Design at GUT. With over 20 years of experience, Murilo has worked at agencies such as: F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Wunderman Thompson, Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, BETC/Havas, DM9DDB (DDB Brazil). He has directly contributed to iconic projects for clients such as: Coca Cola, AB Inbev, Netflix, Google, Hersheys, Kraft Heinz, Mercado Livre, FIAT, Honda, among others. He has won awards at all national and international festivals such as Cannes Lions Grand Prix + more than 30 Cannes lions, D&AD Pencils, Effie, One Show, Clio, Andys and ADC.

Murilo Melo

HERSHE

Grad in Black

New York Festivals Advertising Awards

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a hearty welcome, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: So today we’re chatting with Murilo Melo, who is the global head of design at Gut. He has over 20 years of experience working at agencies like Leo Burnett, Publicis Brazil, and Havas. He’s worked on iconic projects for clients like Coca-Cola, Netflix, Google and Hershey: I’m not a huge fan of the taste of that chocolate, but what I do like was the HERSHE campaign for International Women’s Day, where you showcased female artists of all types on the packaging and across digital.

 

It was absolutely beautiful and told our story really, really effectively. And you’ve also won awards like such a long list of awards, top national, international festivals like Cannes Lions, D&AD, Effie, One Show, Clio, the list goes on. And now your career is most definitely climaxing as you join my design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards this year, as we have the opportunity to review and award the top talent in design experience design for the past year, which we’re going to talk about later. Murilo, welcome to the show.

 

Murilo: Thank you so much, Abigail. Thank you, Brenda. And after this introduction, I might call you for every meeting I do with my team.

 

Abby: We’re available. We’re available. I’ve never been to Brazil. I’m right there.

 

Brenda: Oh my gosh. And I’m right there with you. And what is so delightful is that you make it very easy for us to be very enthusiastic about your work and what you do and where you’ve been. I’d love to dive in and get us kickstarted with thinking about what it’s like to design for iconic brands, iconic brands that are household names around the world, and even through your design work, how it is that you’re at once thinking on a massive scale, right, globally, but also about everyday people, everyday lives. Can you tell us about how you craft messages, how you craft experiences that work for the whole world, so to speak, and yet resonate with just individual people? The human scale.

 

Murilo: Yeah, this, this Brenda, is a challenge because these brands, most of these brands we are talking about, they are loved brands and people love brands, people connect with the brands, they talk about it, they’re reacting to their social media. So, when you’re working with these kind of major brands around the world, it is a responsibility to know what to do. But also the payoff is amazing because of course you have great minds at the brand side, from the marketing team, from the, even the design team inside the companies, and I feel this is important. I’m super respectful for what the relationship between brands and people, and the goal is always to be impactful in a good way, because people, people get it, you know, when you’re pushing too hard or when it’s not related and you’re just doing something to call the attention. So, what I try to do, and I think it really works, is to be true to the brand and to the consumers.

 

Abby: That’s really interesting.

 

Brenda: What does it look like to be true to the consumer? Like, is there a way of thinking about the person so that we can resonate with, you know, the brand with them? Is there a particular like headspace that you get into, or is there a method?

 

Murilo: I don’t think there’s an established method, but I think it’s something related to, deliver to the people what the brand has to give, because sometimes we see some, some brands, or some communication pushing so hard into a direction that the brand does not represent. They don’t have that commitment inside of their marketing team. And then it sounds fake, you know. So, I think it’s, it’s a kind of a respectful thing. And I think brands are more—they are more aware of this nowadays. We lived at a time, a recent period that anything was worth it to say if it looked good for the brands. And people are not buying that anymore and brands are taking more care. I think it’s something that the market is more mature about, which is great.

 

Abby: But how do you like, in, like taking Hershey or Coca-Cola, I know a lot of people enjoy Hershey, lots of people enjoy Coca-Cola. How are you putting yourself in the mind’s eye of the consumer? Do you look on social? Are you seeing the way they talk about the brand, what they like about the brand? How is it that you know how to successfully address that consumer? Words to use, visuals to choose, or concept to make the campaign about? Do you know what I mean? Because you’re over there, you’re in Brazil, you may or may not like the brand you’re working for. So how do you bridge that gap?

 

Murilo: Yeah, for example, the Hershey’s campaign, HERSHE, it all started with the finding that on the name and in the packaging, you have “her,” and you have “she,” which is nice, a nice finding, and we are all excited about that. But we’re like, what are we doing with this? Like, are we just saying, hey, there’s “her” and “she,” here, congratulate woman. Well, I don’t think that’s enough. But that’s kind of what I was saying before, like why, why are you saying that?

 

Then we took a step further and say, hey, we should elevate women, her, artists, she writes, her poems, her paintings, and then bring the community in. And like I was saying, inside the company at the time we worked on this project, there was, a department that was, the leadership was filled, I mean, majority of the leadership was women. So, it was all true to the brand, but it came to the consumers to be part of that. And the initiative really worked because it has a large scale of showing the artists and making a gallery and exporting the idea to many countries. And the community got excited because we can, you can do these kind of things, and the community refuses, and that’s okay, it’s part of the job. But it was interesting for everyone. So, I think when we got into that place, we said, well, we are actually doing something relevant, influential, and not only communication or advertising, you know.

 

Brenda: Yeah, it was a dialogue.

 

Murilo: Yes.

 

Abby: When you think about design, it can mean a lot of things. It’s a huge umbrella, right? There’s visual and communication design, digital and user experience design, UX, product industrial design, environmental experiential design, marketing, advertising design, fashion design, spatial design. So, talk to us about what your focus is or what types of design you’re drawn to in your sort of everyday life, so not necessarily what you put out, but what influences you.

 

Murilo: Yeah, sure, and design is everywhere, is in everything. And that is hard for us that are obsessed about design because it’s like, where do I look? So, I mean, I live in a constant, like, overwhelming about everything that is being done, especially now that we have access to everything throughout social media. And it’s too much, actually, because it’s too much good stuff that you see, interesting stuff and it’s hard to follow everything.

 

But what really caught my attention and what I like, I love the most when I talk about design and talking about the day by day, is when I see design connected to creativity. And it could sound redundant because it is a creative expression. But when design is connected to a creative purpose or something behind it, I think it’s, it elevates the creativity and the creativity, it’s really beneficiated by design.

 

I’ve been seeing a lot of luxury brands on social media, and they’re working so well with design, and animation, and kind of unusual things visually. And this is, is more interesting for me at least, than what we saw in the past that was kind of a blasé thing, something more distant. So, I mean, it’s a random example, but I think creativity elevates design, and since my day-by-day work is—I have a design studio inside of an advertising agency, right? So, my sweet spot in curiosity in my heart is between this connection: design and creativity coming to impact and to amuse people.

 

Brenda: We had a wonderful conversation a while ago with Zorana Pringle, who is an expert in creativity. She does research at Yale, and I really appreciate listening to you talk about creativity right now and its relationship with design and also thinking about how it is that creativity is kind of like a muscle that we exercise, and it sounds like, you know, when you talk about imagination, when you talk about inspiration, when you talk about creativity, you very much so are bringing a lot of that, you know, that muscle to the table, if you will, which certainly must make a big difference, or at least it seems to result in some pretty remarkable projects.

 

So, thinking about some remarkable projects, one of the things that I was really curious about was about pitching to clients. And I’m curious when you know that you truly have something special to share, what’s it like when you know that you’ve really created this amazing idea, and is there a trick to getting everybody else on board?

 

Murilo: That’s a good question, and I wish I had the trick answer, but I think it’s deeper than that because it’s a construction. In the past, I think designers from, especially from this environment, advertising, creativity, branding, they were often seen as finishers of an idea, right, like executing, developed the concept, so let’s put the design team now that things are coming right. And this perception is shifting. For me, it already shifted completely. So, designers are no longer just problem solvers, they are problem definers. So, they help shape conversation before a single visual idea is created, and this is where I think is the heart of the, the thing when you want to, let’s call it sell a design piece. You got to show the relevance before because it’s a business decision because it’s important for the brand to create value. And then I show you the idea of how doing that. And it’s not just like, being a showman, a showwoman in presenting, but about making the client realize how important the design is for its brand or its projects.

 

Abby: I have a quick, quick sort of build on to that because we’ve had some experiences where we’ve pitched something, a concept, and the client initially has loved it, and then over successive meetings, or it even could be the next one, something internally shifted and the feedbacks almost gets 180ed. Has that ever happened to you, when client feedback has started off really onboard to an idea and sort of got watered down, maybe somehow.

 

Brenda: Something got lost in the process.

 

Murilo: Yeah, yeah, this is really frequent because the clients, they have more complex structures nowadays, like I think before it was one-on-one, just a team of decision makers and now the big clients, they have a whole marketing team, a lot of layers, and we work with something that is kind of subjective. We sell like ideas and there is risk on that.

 

That’s why I think the most important thing is to push courage from the clients. It is brave to approve something that has not been done, or that’s kind of not what the brand has always worked on. And we at Gut, we have a methodology which is amazing, which is the bravery scale. We bring clients in and we say, hey, let’s look at the bravery scale, from 1 to 10, and we talk about what is being 10, brave, like living like there’s no tomorrow. And 1 is like, hey, I don’t know if I should. And there are a lot of steps on this bravery scale. And maybe the thing on some projects is to go from 2 to 3, which is amazing. It’s incredible. It’s not being like; I’m going to throw the papers and put my job in risk. No, it’s something, it’s one thing that’s going to maybe be rewarded and then you’re going to jump more. It’s going to make you feel secure and more brave. So, it’s this kind of thing we talk about this with the clients and it sometimes works.

 

Brenda: That’s such a beautiful answer.

 

Abby: Yeah, what a great idea as well to get people on board with where they’re coming from, because a lot of our guests talk about boards, if we’re creating exhibitions for museums and lots of different stakeholders, as you mentioned, often 50 up to 100 different stakeholders, all with different appetites for risk, all perceiving the job to be done with different risks involved and wanting to, as you just mentioned, move the needle. So, it’s a really great method that you’ve just described for making sure that at least from your perspective, as the agency, you understand where the client’s risk adversity lies or bravery lies. I think that’s fantastic.

 

Brenda: It is good. And also, I would imagine that your, your awareness of the consumer and, some of those sort of emotional connections that people have with the products, with the brands makes a big difference.

 

Murilo: It’s super does, and we live in a world that it’s possible to test and learn faster. You can try with a small group, you can try it on social media and see how, how is the appetite of people, if the client is a low score on the brave scale, it is a way to start, like, let’s push the tone a little bit and try this with this group. Well, it’s a good reaction. Let’s amplify. Can we scale that? And when we scale that the bravery will be rewarded. And if it is rewarded, it is something that it’s inspiring. Colleagues, the juniors of the team will say, hey, you look what he did, he, it was risky, and it was worth it. I mean, I’m talking like a dreamer because I believe in this. I think this really works.

 

Abby: Do you think that being a dreamer, like you’re obviously great, very personable, I would imagine fantastic with clients, very articulate. You just mentioned juniors. Can you teach what you have?

 

Murilo: Well, I think it’s about trust, intimacy. It’s like everything in life when we are, like, you have to make an impression, you are not yourself, and when you’re not yourself, things sound kind of fake. If you don’t connect, you don’t convince anyone of anything, you know, and that’s not quite easy, because sometimes from the client side or even from inside our team, people are not that open. And how to open their, their hearts and their conversation, and to make this, it’s this kind of soft skill, let’s call it, like that, that I think the world, the world is given so much credit for. Because technically, with all we are seeing the AI things and everything, we are reaching a high level of technical capabilities. But the emotional one, I think that’s the key for these kind of things, you know.

 

Brenda: The pace at which new design tools are being created have sped up projects, and I’m really curious about whether in your experiences, whether or not expectations have shifted in terms of how like rapidly teams are developing and implementing design work. How do you stay so thoughtful? How do you stay so true to the richness of what it is that you’re creating in an industry that seems to be moving increasingly faster?

 

Murilo: It is a paradox because it saves us time, but for us to use it and save us time, we have to invest time to learn. But I think we have to find room to, to breathe, to absorb and to use it and to move it to the next round because it’s a cause of a lot of anxiety. I’m really anxious because when we are working and doing great work and I see something coming out and say, hey, should I have worked less on this project to dedicate time for me and my team to learn that? Because this is the future and if you go into that direction, I mean, I don’t know if we can survive. It’s too much. So, I would, I would take a breath and focus on the work. Stay curious, of course, it’s like, it’s essential for our, has always been for our profession, but at least for me, I don’t see myself always working and producing and learning and testing new. I mean, we have to have space for stuff, you know, that’s at least my point of view.

 

Abby: Well, I think also with, with AI, when you’re making imagery, it’s a whole different way of being creative. So originally, we had pen to paper and it was one way of drawing something, and then you have your tablet and you have your pen, and now we have writing words to create images, which is a whole different mode of processing. And I’m sure if we had a scientist here, when it comes to the brain, like I’m, I’m much more a hold and do, a physical—and so now I’m typing words to articulate an image that I’m trying to get to. But it takes time, and it takes practice. We’re finding it still takes huge amounts of time to get exactly what you want. It takes no time to get something, it’s how well you can start working with it and collaborating with it.

 

Murilo: Yeah, there’s something kind of personal about this. I realized I have always loved notebooks and Moleskines and taking notes, and I realized, it was something that just came to me, that I was not using anymore. I had forgotten my notebooks, and I was searching already, I was thinking on the computer, so I went to Pinterest, to Google, maybe to ChatGPT, anything and was trying to—and then it came to me in December say, no, no, I have to get back to my notebook. And I bought a notebook, and it was game changer. I dedicate ten minutes, I don’t know, some time, thinking, writing, and then I use the machine and I’m trying to do this with the team, hey, hey, let’s, let’s be like AI-free, computer-free for a moment, and then we go—this step is magic, and it already made a lot of difference in my year.

 

Brenda: Oh, good for you.

 

Abby: I have a question for you, Brenda, about your students.

 

Brenda: Sure.

 

Abby: So, in a way, Murilo’s getting his team to slow down, and in answer to your observation that everything’s going faster, how do your students do that? Like how do we fight against the world we live in because everybody’s tempted to just go in and do the prompt, which is a—just get on with it, you know. When you’re talking with your students and guiding them through the world they’re about to go into, what is some advice you give them on how to slow down?

 

Brenda: What I’m able to do with my students is shape an understanding that we’re not fighting, necessarily, the world. The world is, you know, it is changing. It’s developing. It’s growing. The tools are there. They are faster. Ultimately, though, I have a bit of a privilege and I think the students have a bit of a luxury being in the classroom where I can say, we’re going to take a pause right now, and where the majority of the work that I do with them is paper and pencil and it’s, you know, kind of crazy and kind of messy and a little chaotic and very, very creative. And I think that learning that taking that pause, again, like, you know, we’re hearing right now, it’s just simply another tool. A pause is a tool, just like AI is a tool, just like paper and pencil are tools.

 

Murilo: Perfect, yes.

 

Brenda: So, what are like maybe 1 or 2 of the projects that you’re the most proud of?

 

Murilo: We did a project that was really meaningful for so many people. There’s this thing, this, this pain around the world. That is when people are going to graduate, the graduation caps, they are hard to fit into Black people hair. And then our team, which has Black people creating, executing the idea, which of course is their place to think about it, they came up with a solution, said, hey, why shouldn’t we find a designer and make some special graduation caps for all kinds of hairs? And then we said, well, this is amazing. This is a really human thing, and it’s an important moment. It’s about self-esteem, everything. And then we went to talk with a designer, a fashion designer, and he was amazed by the idea. He draw 4 or 5 caps for different kinds of curly hair. And then it was like, it was liquid, people and especially Black people that had passed these into their graduations that work here, they were so excited about the idea. And of course, we were excited too. And then we put it out in the world, and it was amazing. It was amazing. It was really emotional. And now we are actually having the caps into the graduation ceremonies and people are actually wearing them. So, I’m super proud of this, you know.

 

Brenda: Oh my God, this is amazing. This is, like literally, this is a problem in my own program and with my students when they graduate.

 

Murilo: It is Grad In Black, it’s called, the project. And we have an open source for these designs. So, the designers did, we have an open source, a PDF where you can just do it anywhere you want. It tells you how to, and it’s there.

 

Brenda: Amazing.

 

Abby: That’s incredible. Well, so that’s an example of design solving a big problem. Right? That is super rewarding. So, let’s talk about our design jury at New York Festival Advertising Awards. So, you’ll be joining a number of incredible jury members like Jonathan Alger from C&G and Monica Herman from Giant Spoon. So I’m excited to collaborate with Scott Rose, the president, to add sections in the design category that reflect our profession like experiential activations, branded environments, and exhibition design, as well as all the more traditional design entries, because one of the reasons Murilo, that, at least I and I believe Brenda, want to do our podcast is to really build awareness about what we do. And a lot of that is exhibition design, experience design. And so having those categories now under the design umbrella and be recognized for awards is incredibly important to all of the people making amazing work. So, what is it about these awards that are exciting for you?

 

Murilo: The jury will see much more work, creative work because the market is wider. The market is asking for more work. So, we are producing more design work, more relevant design work and it will be amazing to see. I’m actually really curious because I think this past year was game changer for design. So, I think it’s our opportunity to learn, the jury and anyone who applies the work. It is something good because people keep consuming, because people see what have beaten them or what they have beaten. So, it’s a time to study. In advertising and design, we don’t dedicate as much time to study as in medicine, for example. And I think the award shows, they have these, these possibility. Okay, let’s see the golds for New York Festival this year, what the jury said the golds are, where are the industry heading. So, it’s something about the future too, because a lot of these great minds coming together to this conclusion, it is something pointing to the future.

 

Brenda: That is so exciting. Murilo, I’m really hoping you can talk to us about something that you are very, currently, very passionate about. What is—and it could be anything, this is a big, wide open question, but what are you just really, really excited about working with right now?

 

Murilo: I’m trying to go deeper into the entertainment industry. We are doing a project for a rapper/singer in Brazil, and he has such an amazing concept for his album, and we are navigating through that, how to make content for a musician, and the first part was doing a graphic design, and it’s already amazing because you have to study the platforms, how it will look like in Spotify or Apple Music. But beyond that, how is the music industry communicating? Is it a long format? It is a video clip, it is not a video clip anymore, is something on TikTok. So, it’s like a reinvention and there are no answers for these questions, as every time is a new thing. Like Beyoncé comes with an album that talks about, I mean, all the legacy from the country music, and it’s something that is a decision. But Rosalía doing something in TikTok, that is making a performance of her whole live album, which is something that shook the industry. So, I’m really curious about that at this moment.

 

And I would expand the music thing to entertainment, like we are working for a project for Netflix and it’s a new series, it’s a title treatment, and then you have to deep dive on how the art direction and the design comes to life inside the series. How can we apply the logo or the, the attitude or the photography inside of the content? So, these are things that are on my radar right now, and I’m really trying to study and to learn about them.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, you know, I listen, I’m listening to you, and I just keep imagining that you think in a very kaleidoscopic way, like how it is that you are able to integrate so many different aspects of design, be curious about so many different kinds of things, and yet altogether you’re able to form a single message, a single image, perhaps a single idea.

 

Abby

This was really enjoyable. I love the way you described us as problem designers. I just love that. And that method of sort of when you’re pitching, showing the relevance to the client, whatever it is you’re pitching and creating that value and then showing the idea is just is it’s a great way to really ease in ideas that are out of the box. Murilo, thank you so much.

 

Brenda: What a pleasure talking to you.

 

Abby: Yeah, this was fantastic.

 

Murilo: It was really a special moment. Thank you.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you liked what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience, wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

 

Brenda: Thank you for joining us, everyone.

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

Creativity and Courage with Murilo Melo

March 5, 2025
Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

February 5, 2025
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
In this episode of Matters of Experience, Abigail Honor and Brenda Cowan sit down with Monica Herman, a seasoned experiential design strategist, to explore the transformative power of meaningful experiences. Monica shares how her work moves beyond “cool” designs, focusing instead on creating moments that address real needs—whether building awareness, shifting perceptions, or evoking awe.

Discover how experiential design bridges the gap between brands and audiences, turning awareness into emotion and inspiring action. From pop-ups to shared urban moments, Monica unpacks the art and strategy of designing experiences that truly matter.

This is a must-listen for anyone passionate about creativity, connection, and the evolving role of design in shaping how we live, work, and feel.
Monica Herman is the VP ECD of Experiential at Giant Spoon. Previous to joining Giant Spoon, Monica led experiential creative globally across VICE Media Group, where she managed the team responsible for the award-winning viral sensation, 29Rooms. With both an architecture and agency background, Monica offers expertise in multiple fields of design and creative direction, including environmental design, graphic design, UX and art direction and ranging in scope from conceptual visual storytelling to advanced fabrication and construction techniques for built environments. Monica has been named to Adweek Creative 100 & Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Madison Avenue. In 2023, her team's work helped land Giant Spoon on Fast Company’s list of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.

Monica Herman

Giant Spoon

29ROOMS — Monica Herman

SAMSUNG YOUNIVERSE — Monica Herman

ADIDAS FORUM CITY TAKEOVER — Monica Herman

UNBOTHERED WASH DAY — Monica Herman

HOUSE OF DRAGONS — Monica Herman

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum, a multimedia experience design company headquartered in New York City, and our podcast explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and welcome back to our regular listeners.

 

So today we’d like to welcome Monica Herman to the show, who currently works at Giant Spoon as their VP Executive Creative Director. Now, besides being responsible for the now pretty iconic House of Dragons second season promotion—which was awesome, and from my apartment I can see the Empire State Building, and there was suddenly this huge dragon creeping around the top and I was stoked, and like, “who is the genius behind this?”—and part of a fantastic integrated campaign across the city and around the world, Monica has also led experiential creative globally across Vice Media Group. And you were responsible for 29Rooms, which was another viral sensation, and you’ve got what, interestingly, both an architectural and agency background, which seems like really that sweet spot in so many ways right now. So, Monica, I’m excited to talk with you. Welcome to the show.

 

Monica: Thank you so much, Abigail and Brenda. I really appreciate you having me. I’ve known Brenda for years now, and I’ve been, it’s been such a pleasure visiting her class at FIT and just hearing all the great things she’s working on, and I’m so excited to talk to you both.

 

Brenda: We are really excited to have you, in part because you have such a breadth of areas of experience, exploration and expertise, and you’ve worn many different hats throughout your career thus far. And when I think about your work, I think about how it is that you always create with an eye for storytelling and creating epic experiences in different kinds of ways. So, we’re going to begin by just asking you about where your journey began. How did your creative world begin?

 

Monica: You know, it’s funny because I had parents, you know, who loved the arts, who encouraged me to do whatever. And I think, you know, I came to that very naturally. But I’d say the origin story starts with Sex and the City, which came out, I think, when I was like in sixth grade or eighth grade or somewhere around there. And I remember, like my rich friend had HBO, right, and like I would go over to their house and like when their parents weren’t watching, we would like, turn on Sex and the City, and like, my mind exploded, you know, I was like, this is New York City?! And like, the clothes and like the fantasy and it’s, it’s funny, you know, you watch it now and, you know, there’s 6000 ways it’s problematic, but for, you know, a 13-year-old in Michigan, I was like, must get there. Must do those things.

 

Brenda: I was just going to say, so were you like in like an urban setting or—

 

Monica: No.

 

Brenda: More of a suburb?

 

Monica: Small town.

 

Brenda: So, this was new in a whole variety of ways for you?

 

Monica: Yeah, it was, it was. And, you know, my mother’s family is from Chicago, so, you know, been going to the city, it wasn’t like I was on the farm, like seeing, you know, television for the first time. But just this idea that cities were just full of possibility and again, being a very aesthetically driven person, just really being blown away by this idea.

 

And of course, not just that, but any other cultural reference at the time where you just saw like the, like I said, the fashion and the architecture, and so I was very single minded sort of in that approach and I, I remember I think it was in like my, like a school play program in my, you know, senior year where I said, like, I wanted to be like Charlotte York. I wanted to go in art and business. Like, that sounded right to me. You know, I was like, yeah, that I get that.

 

Abby: So, yeah, what happened next?

 

Monica: Well, what happened next is I did get that art history degree at University of Michigan, and I came to the city actually planning, in all seriousness, to go into art business. And I had wanted to—I always knew I wanted a master’s degree, but I moved to the city, I graduated from undergrad, came to the city in 2008, which is when the economy crashed and I had gotten a job through some connections at a textile and rug gallery in Soho, which was like amazing.

 

So, working in Soho, you know, I was a gallerista, you know, I was at the front, and I was doing all those things. And, you know, I was watching the economy, like, collapse around me. Right? And quite literally, cause you’re in Soho, you’re just like seeing the streets empty out, you know, and people would come in and inquire about this and that, but no one’s buying, you know, $25,000 rugs in 2008. So, watching that experience and watching my boss, who had just recently started that business, sort of grapple with that, I got a little scared, you know, like, and it was okay, and I said, wow, like, I want a, I want a hard skill. Right? And I felt, you know, the luxury market, which is what art really is, you know, for if we’re getting into it didn’t seem like the right thing to go into at the time, especially because, you know, I didn’t necessarily have the connections to like, make it in that market.

 

So, I said, okay, hard skill, hard skill, how do I get one of those? And I remember—I swear, I don’t watch that much television, but maybe this is just younger, in my younger days—Project Runway was very popular. So now I’m Sex and City, Project Runway. I’m definitely gonna regret this podcast later. So, I said, like, maybe there’s something with fashion design. So, I looked up Parsons and I was super interested. But you know, they didn’t have a master. You had to get an undergrad, and I didn’t want to do that at the time, I knew I’d be doing this on my own with student loans, so there’s just a lot of factors there. And I came across a master’s program for architectural lighting, and I saw that, and I said, that, like, I want to do that. I don’t know what that is. It sounded great. I must do that. I ended up going to the dean because I had no portfolio. And I said, like, let me in, let me in. Please. So, he said, okay, go to summer school for architecture, which I did. And then I started my master’s in architectural lighting design, and then I ended up working in that field for two and a half years after grad school.

 

Abby: Wow. That’s amazing.

 

Brenda: No, it’s, you are exactly what I hope all of my graduate students would be like. You know, and actually, I think that they really are because so many of them, right, likewise, they come into the program, they’re just like, gimme, gimme, gimme. I want to get into this industry. I want to get into this business. I don’t even know exactly, entirely precisely what it is, but I know that I want it, and that’s such an important way to think. And I can actually see back to the original idea of, you know, the origin story. It makes sense that you have ended up or at this point in your career, doing things that are really innovative and really different and unexpected and really spectacular in a lot of ways.

 

Abby: How did you decide to sort of move over or include all of the experience design you’re now doing? So, what was that transition like and why did it happen?

 

Monica: So, I was really lucky. I ended up in an incredible architectural lighting agency, I would say the best in the world, the Office for Visual Interaction. And my main client was Zaha Hadid and I was working on—

 

Abby: Wait, your main client off the bat?

 

Monica: Yes, off the bat.

 

Abby: Wow.

 

Monica: Off the bat, that’s right. And so, you know, working on the Zaha work and traveling to Rabat and traveling to London and being under the tutelage of such incredible designers and the founders, Jean and Enrique, absolutely amazing. It was like going to boot camp.

 

Abby: How were you chosen? Why, why you?

 

Monica: You know, you’ll have to call Jean and Enrique and ask. But I do remember, I was lucky, I remember they came to see my thesis presentation. Maybe what they, they saw in my work, which, coming from liberal arts, I was so obsessed with sort of psychology and the human experience, and I remember, so there’s, there’s a tendency, I think, in some of those, theses that I’ve seen now over the years, because I go back to school, for people to, to really focus on sort of like tactical problem solving, and a lot of the themes come up again and again and they’re not bad. They’re ripe for, for discussion, whether it’s like, circadian rhythms or, you know, hospital lighting or all these things.

 

But I really came at it from what I saw as like a very sort of emotional, romantic, and I was, my thesis was about, you know, how lighting profoundly can influence people’s relationships in space, right, so if I’m having this conversation with you at this table and we’re under this fluorescent lighting, that sets the tone, if nothing else was changed except suddenly it’s just me, you and a candle between us, like, everything’s different. Just, just by changing that. And I, you know, I found that subject so fascinating, and I think it was, it was different, and they respected that.

 

So, back to your question, which was okay, but then how did I go from that to, to leaving that. And I think it speaks to okay, I was with the best in the industry. I was, I was working on the best architect in the world. I was working on the most exciting projects, and I wasn’t fundamentally happy. And I don’t know, happiness, if you want to say it that way, but there was something that, I think, about the field was potentially at odds with my personality or the kind of things that drive me, which has to do with probably my worst trait, which is like impatience.

 

And I think to be a successful architect, and you could, I’m sure other people would argue differently, you know, you—patience is really a key virtue. And when I spoke to the really passionate architects, you know, on Zaha’s side, the way they spoke about their work and the idea of legacy and leaving something behind and their dedication to seeing something through with decades, you know, I’m sitting across the table and being like, that’s so cool. I don’t feel that at all. Like I just, I didn’t feel that way.

 

And so, I was sort of fixated on this idea, like, what is this? How could I possibly be bored in this field that’s fundamentally unboring? But to me, who just, like, wants to keep moving on and trying new things like, I don’t know that I have it in me to really sort of dive in for that decades long, which is what the projects deserve, and which is incredible. I wish I was that person.

 

Abby: Is it the legacy part that you weren’t—like if they’re doing these ten-year projects so that they can leave a legacy and the building will stand, is the projects you do now, one, bam, they’re done. You are leaving a legacy of the work that you’ve, I mean incredible work, your portfolio, but a different sort of legacy I guess, not one that people can go and physically enjoy. So, do you think about your legacy in your work right now?

 

Monica: No, I think about my legacy in my personal relationships, and I actually think, so that’s one of the things that gives me the freedom to enjoy my job is that I take my work very seriously, and I am so dedicated to and I have so much gratitude. But it’s a cliche to say, like, we’re not, you know, curing cancer, but it’s a cliche for a reason. You have to approach work that way where it’s, you know, your, you kind of say like, this is fundamentally, it’s a non-necessary thing, that it’s just a joy to create. So yeah. So, I’ve never felt that. I feel very motivated by my career. I love to work. I feel lucky to work. I’m ambitious, but I’ve never felt like I must leave my mark on the world. I’d love to. I mean, I love reading, so I get so jealous of novelists, you know, and I wish that was me, but since it’s not and when I look at that, I’ve never felt like, oh, that’s the thing I need to leave behind.

 

Brenda: You strike me as a very highly present person, and a person who’s really all in, in the moment and being creative and really thinking through what it is that you’re doing and being creative. And it just seems to me that working like that, you know, whether it leaves a legacy or not, who cares? We’re in the moment, we’re making something cool as shit, right?

 

Abby: But she’s making—you are, Monica, communicating with people because you’re making memories and moments for others which leave an indelible mark, and they’ll remember forever and ever. Like when you think about Sex and the City and that little relevance that it played to you in moving to New York City, when you see some of or encounter some of the projects that you’ve worked on, I mean, they really connect with people, and I think that they’ve built those people’s memories and people hopefully will be inspired in whatever it is they do after being immersed in some of the amazing things that you’ve created, that I know we’re going to go on to talk about. So, I think that you’re, the way you are and who you are is very much reflected in the type of work you do.

 

Brenda: I think that there’s a big difference between doing creative work because it’s what you want to do, and it’s where you are, and it’s the headspace that you’re in. There’s a difference between just doing the work and/or protecting your brand, so to speak. And I think that that makes for really different kinds of projects, if I were to guess.

 

Abby: And then moving to your projects, so you work physically, digitally, conceptually, and all of your work really connects people together in very powerful, playful and even I would say introspective ways. So, I’m thinking about the Samsung YOUniverse (y-o-universe to those listening) Experience, the Adidas City Takeover that you did, and Unbothered Wash Day. So, you’ve done a ton of different projects for brands and messaged in ways that really reach out to participants in meaningful and personal ways. So, tell us about some of your projects where you think the story really was evergreen or archetypal and connected with people in fundamental ways?

 

Monica: Well, let’s talk about Unbothered Wash Day. So, this was a virtual event—that cursed phrase, virtual event. But this happened in January, I believe, of 2021, right, so right in the thick of the pandemic. I was working at Vice at the time, and Unbothered was a Refinery29 subbrand focused on our Black female audience. And there had been success editorially with a column called Wash Day that focused on ritual and haircare, and the idea of that sort of time of week where our Black female audience was doing, sort of, wash day, doing hair. And there was so much talk around that, and there was so much online community forming. How can we celebrate that community and kind of make it bigger than people’s personal routines, but find a way to really celebrate that culture with the audience?

 

So actually, kind of inviting everyone to a shared wash day in which we had creators come in to talk about self-care and talk about what self-care meant for our, the community of readers in that time in the pandemic, I mean everything from sort of products to mental health to, all of that coming together. So, I think doing that at the time and just creating that space and sort of more literalizing the idea of a community coming together for a virtual event versus sort of just everyone sharing stories. You actually got to be live and talk face to face and sort of share your experience or meet some of the creators you were interested in. So that was great. And I remember we won an award for that. It felt like a gift. Right? You’re not, you weren’t sitting there saying like, oh, we want you to do this, or we have a message to you. It just felt like we were actually giving something to, to the audience who at that time, it was something to do when no one could do anything and just, a way of sharing experience during a really complicated time.

 

Brenda: I’ve got like so many thousands of thoughts and responses now and what I love about listening to you talk about Unbothered Wash Day, right, is that you talk about it, from the perspective and for the perspective of the audience, right, it’s all about the audience. It’s all about the person who’s going to engage, who’s going to get something out of it.

 

It’s not about your personal brand, right, and it’s probably why you’re able to work with so much speed is if you take that, if you’re taking that approach, are you taking that approach like with every project, like do you, you know, start with, okay, the end user and where are they coming from? Who are they? What do they want? What are their expectations? What are they desiring, you know, and then how do we craft towards that?

 

Abby: I’m going to build on that just for a second and say, yeah, like how do the projects come to you? Are they, help we need, this is our problem as a brand, you know, this is our community, like how is the process of the way the jobs come in and then how’s the process of the way that you’re ideating and who for, the client or the customer?

 

Monica: Well, first of all, it’s always for both, right? So, it’s not binary. And that’s a great, but it’s a great task to say that is it for the client or the, or the customer. You do start with the business problem, right, and that’s, that’s what we’re in, right, like we’re not there just to do cool things because it’s cool.

 

We’re there because we’re addressing something, whether that’s awareness, no one’s ever heard of this brand or perception, it’s maybe a big box brand that wants to look cool and culturally relevant. You’re really thinking about kind of, what is it this business needs to sort of accomplish, you know, it’s viewership, it’s sales, it’s whatever, and you, you start there and we’ve got strategists who come in and they, and they come up with that approach and you sort of figure out what it is that you’re trying to say. And then this is really, really important. And we can talk about this when we get into House of the Dragon or something else, you then craft the medium coming out of that, right, so you never if you’re, you know, you don’t approach it being like, okay, we’re going to do a screening, we’re going to do a pop-up. You can, but that’s not the work I’m interested in doing now.

 

So, it’s like, and I’m talking about this in the ideal state, right. So it’s identifying that and it’s identifying for me a hook, right, and I think like one of the things that is, can be a pitfall both for creatives and for brands is this desire to accomplish or say, every single thing you’ve ever felt about sort of your brand, you know, through the lens of like an experience or something like that. And I get that impulse, like I really, I sympathize with, I empathize with it, you know, so my job is to sort of guide people away from that because I’m like, you know, let’s take, for example, a television show, right? You know, you’re like, I don’t need to recreate the story that your show does that, my job is to not take that and then replicate it out in the world. My job is to just get people excited and wanting to learn more, wanting to do that next step.

 

Brenda: Well, this is, I mean, it’s the perfect timing to just have you talk about House of Dragon. You know, I’m excited and just want to sort of introduce the question by talking about the physicality of House of Dragon, that campaign, which I, I think it was mind boggling in just the best possible way, and not just because of all of the various media elements, but because, you know, there were so many physical, you know, monumental physical attributes to it.

 

And, you know, maybe it’s just like a personal thing for me or whatever, but there’s something about taking over the Manhattan Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, right, and seeing that and driving past that every single day or walking down the block from it. And it would be wonderful for you just to share with our listeners, how did you come to those, and if you would just describe a little bit about what the physicality was, in particular?

 

Monica: We had done House of Dragon Promotion season one, and in that, you know, HBO had come to us and they’re so smart, like, our clients at HBO are great marketers. So, they knew sort of for season one that they wanted to reach the sort of all existing fan base first, people who love Game of Thrones, bring people into the world of the show.

 

So, when we did that, we created an immersive experience at Comic-Con. It was a standalone recreation of the Red Keep, in which we invited fans to actually line up and experience hatching a dragon for themselves, right, so it was very theatrical. There were literally actors there, you know, you are recreating sets in some ways and bringing this to life and tapping into that, like true fantasy element for people who already were sort of invested in that, or we knew we could kind of reignite that.

 

Now, season two, right? They’ve got a foothold and now they want to go big. So right, I said season one, we bring people into the world of the show, season two, we brought the world of the show into our world, and we’re doing that in service of what they had asked us to do, which was kind of tease the narrative structure of season two, which is that basically there’s two warring factions, right? You have two, kind of, competing queens, you have a green council and a black council, and the whole sort of, all of season two is built around the idea that all must choose, right, and like there are two sides, everyone must choose them. Like everyone’s going down, but they’re going to go down fighting and there’s sort of no middle ground.

 

So, in doing that, you know, we’re like, okay, but how you do that, I’m not going to get there and I’m not going to make a billboard experience that’s like, so Queen Rhaenyra did this and Queen Alicent did this, and this is why she—no one gives a shit, right? I’m going to lose people right away. But if I can tap into, if we can tap into people’s sort of existing affinities that you’re already familiar with: Mets versus Yankees, this bagel shop versus that bagel shop, your competing housewives, you know, whatever it is that you already—everyone loves competition and rivalry, you know, whatever that is. If we can find a way to bridge those affiliations suddenly without doing anything at all, we’ve got you, right, and this was a multifaceted campaign.

 

So, you mentioned The Dragon. That was a big stunt. And then we made it really, really simple, right? You know, it is just kind of like green, black, green, black, all must choose, and these inciting messages. So, it was this combination of meeting people where they are and doing it in a very simple and visually ownable way, right, so just saying like green and black banners like, that’s it. And that’s one of the things you’ve got to really think about is, you know, what is the ownable sort of visual symbol for the show.

 

Brenda: Why do you consider season two House the Dragon, one of your best, your very best projects?

 

Monica: Yes. I love it in its simplicity, and I love that it defies categorization in some point. So, I’m very careful, like people say it’s an experiential campaign, I’m like, no it was not. It was a 360 integrated campaign. It’s not a, you know, whatever you want to say about it, it wasn’t, it was totally unique in that respect. So, they didn’t come to us and say, okay, we want necessarily a massive stunt. They just said, what is the best way to get people to raise their banners? World’s your oyster, any canvas you can think of. So that was competing trailers on YouTube. That was the sports partnerships, like I said, we did do the bar nights of sort of competing cocktail bars that, you know, different places in Manhattan, you know, competing pizza spots to the stunt to that—

 

So, it’s like when you. when you really look at the breadth of all the ways we brought that message to life and showing that that simple concept of just sort of assigning allegiances, right, is infinitely scalable. We just, we went wild and that was very fun. So that’s, that’s what’s interesting to me. I’m always looking to build, to break medium.

 

You know, we could talk about this idea of like, what experiences, you know, are or can be, and I think the idea of pushing medium and it’s not always like a pop-up, there’s not always, you know, 6 to 100 pallets of plywood, you know, in a built thing going into this, it really can be everything from a social experience to the sort of shared awe that comes when, you know, all these millions of people in the city walk out and they’re on their commute and they see a dragon on the Empire State Building, and I’m getting texts from people I haven’t heard from years, like, oh, I work on 27th Street, and we looked out and we could see it. So that was really sort of incredible. And I think the one other point you brought up was that mix, and you said this of what was real.

 

And Brenda, you asked about, you said physicality, what was real and what was not real, you know, what was CGI. And that was very important to us too. And we knew, like, okay, we wanted to do some things or show up in places we know we’d never get the permits for, even though if anyone can get permits, it’s Giant Spoon, but we knew if we went like pure CGI, like it wouldn’t land, right? So, what we needed to do is actually mess with people, right? And not in a, like a manipulative way, again, like you’re, you’re trying to trick people, but to just say like, whoa, like this is incredible.

 

Brenda: It’s playful, in a playful way.

 

Monica: It’s playful, you know? So, when you look at that, like those banners on Grand Central, Rockefeller Plaza, the New York Stock Exchange, like all of those were real, right? The dragon was real. So, you see that, and then you’re like, but the bridges, they’re not, you know, and everything, it was just like a total, so people were actually, they didn’t feel tricked. They were having fun. They were having fun, kind of understanding, like what they were seeing.

 

Brenda: If you could have anything that you wanted where, in terms of experiential, where do you hope things go five years from now?

 

Monica: I hope they’re sustainable. Right? That’s going to be a really interesting challenge and one I don’t have the answer for. Everyone’s been trying for years and years. But it’s you know I think substituting you know sustainably sourced MDF versus not is not the answer, right, like it’s going to take like pretty wild innovation to think about what that means. Right? Like it’s not just recycled materials. So, I think it’s a sustainable industry in which we can find ways to bring these stories to life that are low impact, and doing that through technology, through sort of social invitations versus maybe built environments as much. I love built environments, so it’s a tricky—makes me nervous to even say that because I love a built environment, you know? But I’m thinking, well, how could I do that sort of absent of materiality in some ways and just kind of invite people to experience things different?

 

So, I would say in five years I want to define that, and I want to find a way to always keep doubling down on relationships of people in real life. You know, that’s what inspires me is to see kind of what people are, what they’re doing in the world. There’s a reason I’m in experimental and that, you know, I just love that. So, I don’t know, I think it’s that and it’s, it’s making sure that the technology, while that will advance and we’ll find different ways of kind of creating environments, that they’re all in service, of just making things feel more human than they were ever before.

 

Brenda: You just have such an insightful way of thinking about, really, the whole world of experiential and the nature of people, and which gets back to your, right, origin with your interest in psychology.

 

Abby: And community building. A lot of your work brings communities together virtually or in person. So, you’re building communities, which essentially is what we all try to do, whether it’s exhibit design or in all the advertising that you do. Yeah, you bring together these people, so they keep this human connection, and the delight and all that you bring, we don’t have enough of that in the world.

 

So, thank you for all the work you do. I think it’s absolutely incredible and really excited to see what you can do next in New York City, what’s around the corner.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, I see you hitting rural areas next.

 

Monica: I would love that.

 

Brenda: I see that in your future.

 

Monica: I can’t stop dreaming about crop circles. I hope that’s not a hint.

 

Abby: Oh, you heard it here first, crop circles.

 

Brenda: No, I’m seeing you do major earthworks. Okay.

 

Abby: Thank you so much, Monica, for joining us today.

 

Monica: Thank you so much for having me.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. See you next time!

 

Brenda: Thank you everyone!

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Monica Herman is the VP ECD of Experiential at Giant Spoon. Previous to joining Giant Spoon, Monica led experiential creative globally across VICE Media Group, where she managed the team responsible for the award-winning viral sensation, 29Rooms. With both an architecture and agency background, Monica offers expertise in multiple fields of design and creative direction, including environmental design, graphic design, UX and art direction and ranging in scope from conceptual visual storytelling to advanced fabrication and construction techniques for built environments. Monica has been named to Adweek Creative 100 & Business Insider’s Rising Stars of Madison Avenue. In 2023, her team's work helped land Giant Spoon on Fast Company’s list of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.

Monica Herman

Giant Spoon

29ROOMS — Monica Herman

SAMSUNG YOUNIVERSE — Monica Herman

ADIDAS FORUM CITY TAKEOVER — Monica Herman

UNBOTHERED WASH DAY — Monica Herman

HOUSE OF DRAGONS — Monica Herman

[Music]

 

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience. My name is Abigail Honor.

 

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

 

Abby: This podcast is produced by Lorem Ipsum, a multimedia experience design company headquartered in New York City, and our podcast explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Hello to anybody listening for the first time, and welcome back to our regular listeners.

 

So today we’d like to welcome Monica Herman to the show, who currently works at Giant Spoon as their VP Executive Creative Director. Now, besides being responsible for the now pretty iconic House of Dragons second season promotion—which was awesome, and from my apartment I can see the Empire State Building, and there was suddenly this huge dragon creeping around the top and I was stoked, and like, “who is the genius behind this?”—and part of a fantastic integrated campaign across the city and around the world, Monica has also led experiential creative globally across Vice Media Group. And you were responsible for 29Rooms, which was another viral sensation, and you’ve got what, interestingly, both an architectural and agency background, which seems like really that sweet spot in so many ways right now. So, Monica, I’m excited to talk with you. Welcome to the show.

 

Monica: Thank you so much, Abigail and Brenda. I really appreciate you having me. I’ve known Brenda for years now, and I’ve been, it’s been such a pleasure visiting her class at FIT and just hearing all the great things she’s working on, and I’m so excited to talk to you both.

 

Brenda: We are really excited to have you, in part because you have such a breadth of areas of experience, exploration and expertise, and you’ve worn many different hats throughout your career thus far. And when I think about your work, I think about how it is that you always create with an eye for storytelling and creating epic experiences in different kinds of ways. So, we’re going to begin by just asking you about where your journey began. How did your creative world begin?

 

Monica: You know, it’s funny because I had parents, you know, who loved the arts, who encouraged me to do whatever. And I think, you know, I came to that very naturally. But I’d say the origin story starts with Sex and the City, which came out, I think, when I was like in sixth grade or eighth grade or somewhere around there. And I remember, like my rich friend had HBO, right, and like I would go over to their house and like when their parents weren’t watching, we would like, turn on Sex and the City, and like, my mind exploded, you know, I was like, this is New York City?! And like, the clothes and like the fantasy and it’s, it’s funny, you know, you watch it now and, you know, there’s 6000 ways it’s problematic, but for, you know, a 13-year-old in Michigan, I was like, must get there. Must do those things.

 

Brenda: I was just going to say, so were you like in like an urban setting or—

 

Monica: No.

 

Brenda: More of a suburb?

 

Monica: Small town.

 

Brenda: So, this was new in a whole variety of ways for you?

 

Monica: Yeah, it was, it was. And, you know, my mother’s family is from Chicago, so, you know, been going to the city, it wasn’t like I was on the farm, like seeing, you know, television for the first time. But just this idea that cities were just full of possibility and again, being a very aesthetically driven person, just really being blown away by this idea.

 

And of course, not just that, but any other cultural reference at the time where you just saw like the, like I said, the fashion and the architecture, and so I was very single minded sort of in that approach and I, I remember I think it was in like my, like a school play program in my, you know, senior year where I said, like, I wanted to be like Charlotte York. I wanted to go in art and business. Like, that sounded right to me. You know, I was like, yeah, that I get that.

 

Abby: So, yeah, what happened next?

 

Monica: Well, what happened next is I did get that art history degree at University of Michigan, and I came to the city actually planning, in all seriousness, to go into art business. And I had wanted to—I always knew I wanted a master’s degree, but I moved to the city, I graduated from undergrad, came to the city in 2008, which is when the economy crashed and I had gotten a job through some connections at a textile and rug gallery in Soho, which was like amazing.

 

So, working in Soho, you know, I was a gallerista, you know, I was at the front, and I was doing all those things. And, you know, I was watching the economy, like, collapse around me. Right? And quite literally, cause you’re in Soho, you’re just like seeing the streets empty out, you know, and people would come in and inquire about this and that, but no one’s buying, you know, $25,000 rugs in 2008. So, watching that experience and watching my boss, who had just recently started that business, sort of grapple with that, I got a little scared, you know, like, and it was okay, and I said, wow, like, I want a, I want a hard skill. Right? And I felt, you know, the luxury market, which is what art really is, you know, for if we’re getting into it didn’t seem like the right thing to go into at the time, especially because, you know, I didn’t necessarily have the connections to like, make it in that market.

 

So, I said, okay, hard skill, hard skill, how do I get one of those? And I remember—I swear, I don’t watch that much television, but maybe this is just younger, in my younger days—Project Runway was very popular. So now I’m Sex and City, Project Runway. I’m definitely gonna regret this podcast later. So, I said, like, maybe there’s something with fashion design. So, I looked up Parsons and I was super interested. But you know, they didn’t have a master. You had to get an undergrad, and I didn’t want to do that at the time, I knew I’d be doing this on my own with student loans, so there’s just a lot of factors there. And I came across a master’s program for architectural lighting, and I saw that, and I said, that, like, I want to do that. I don’t know what that is. It sounded great. I must do that. I ended up going to the dean because I had no portfolio. And I said, like, let me in, let me in. Please. So, he said, okay, go to summer school for architecture, which I did. And then I started my master’s in architectural lighting design, and then I ended up working in that field for two and a half years after grad school.

 

Abby: Wow. That’s amazing.

 

Brenda: No, it’s, you are exactly what I hope all of my graduate students would be like. You know, and actually, I think that they really are because so many of them, right, likewise, they come into the program, they’re just like, gimme, gimme, gimme. I want to get into this industry. I want to get into this business. I don’t even know exactly, entirely precisely what it is, but I know that I want it, and that’s such an important way to think. And I can actually see back to the original idea of, you know, the origin story. It makes sense that you have ended up or at this point in your career, doing things that are really innovative and really different and unexpected and really spectacular in a lot of ways.

 

Abby: How did you decide to sort of move over or include all of the experience design you’re now doing? So, what was that transition like and why did it happen?

 

Monica: So, I was really lucky. I ended up in an incredible architectural lighting agency, I would say the best in the world, the Office for Visual Interaction. And my main client was Zaha Hadid and I was working on—

 

Abby: Wait, your main client off the bat?

 

Monica: Yes, off the bat.

 

Abby: Wow.

 

Monica: Off the bat, that’s right. And so, you know, working on the Zaha work and traveling to Rabat and traveling to London and being under the tutelage of such incredible designers and the founders, Jean and Enrique, absolutely amazing. It was like going to boot camp.

 

Abby: How were you chosen? Why, why you?

 

Monica: You know, you’ll have to call Jean and Enrique and ask. But I do remember, I was lucky, I remember they came to see my thesis presentation. Maybe what they, they saw in my work, which, coming from liberal arts, I was so obsessed with sort of psychology and the human experience, and I remember, so there’s, there’s a tendency, I think, in some of those, theses that I’ve seen now over the years, because I go back to school, for people to, to really focus on sort of like tactical problem solving, and a lot of the themes come up again and again and they’re not bad. They’re ripe for, for discussion, whether it’s like, circadian rhythms or, you know, hospital lighting or all these things.

 

But I really came at it from what I saw as like a very sort of emotional, romantic, and I was, my thesis was about, you know, how lighting profoundly can influence people’s relationships in space, right, so if I’m having this conversation with you at this table and we’re under this fluorescent lighting, that sets the tone, if nothing else was changed except suddenly it’s just me, you and a candle between us, like, everything’s different. Just, just by changing that. And I, you know, I found that subject so fascinating, and I think it was, it was different, and they respected that.

 

So, back to your question, which was okay, but then how did I go from that to, to leaving that. And I think it speaks to okay, I was with the best in the industry. I was, I was working on the best architect in the world. I was working on the most exciting projects, and I wasn’t fundamentally happy. And I don’t know, happiness, if you want to say it that way, but there was something that, I think, about the field was potentially at odds with my personality or the kind of things that drive me, which has to do with probably my worst trait, which is like impatience.

 

And I think to be a successful architect, and you could, I’m sure other people would argue differently, you know, you—patience is really a key virtue. And when I spoke to the really passionate architects, you know, on Zaha’s side, the way they spoke about their work and the idea of legacy and leaving something behind and their dedication to seeing something through with decades, you know, I’m sitting across the table and being like, that’s so cool. I don’t feel that at all. Like I just, I didn’t feel that way.

 

And so, I was sort of fixated on this idea, like, what is this? How could I possibly be bored in this field that’s fundamentally unboring? But to me, who just, like, wants to keep moving on and trying new things like, I don’t know that I have it in me to really sort of dive in for that decades long, which is what the projects deserve, and which is incredible. I wish I was that person.

 

Abby: Is it the legacy part that you weren’t—like if they’re doing these ten-year projects so that they can leave a legacy and the building will stand, is the projects you do now, one, bam, they’re done. You are leaving a legacy of the work that you’ve, I mean incredible work, your portfolio, but a different sort of legacy I guess, not one that people can go and physically enjoy. So, do you think about your legacy in your work right now?

 

Monica: No, I think about my legacy in my personal relationships, and I actually think, so that’s one of the things that gives me the freedom to enjoy my job is that I take my work very seriously, and I am so dedicated to and I have so much gratitude. But it’s a cliche to say, like, we’re not, you know, curing cancer, but it’s a cliche for a reason. You have to approach work that way where it’s, you know, your, you kind of say like, this is fundamentally, it’s a non-necessary thing, that it’s just a joy to create. So yeah. So, I’ve never felt that. I feel very motivated by my career. I love to work. I feel lucky to work. I’m ambitious, but I’ve never felt like I must leave my mark on the world. I’d love to. I mean, I love reading, so I get so jealous of novelists, you know, and I wish that was me, but since it’s not and when I look at that, I’ve never felt like, oh, that’s the thing I need to leave behind.

 

Brenda: You strike me as a very highly present person, and a person who’s really all in, in the moment and being creative and really thinking through what it is that you’re doing and being creative. And it just seems to me that working like that, you know, whether it leaves a legacy or not, who cares? We’re in the moment, we’re making something cool as shit, right?

 

Abby: But she’s making—you are, Monica, communicating with people because you’re making memories and moments for others which leave an indelible mark, and they’ll remember forever and ever. Like when you think about Sex and the City and that little relevance that it played to you in moving to New York City, when you see some of or encounter some of the projects that you’ve worked on, I mean, they really connect with people, and I think that they’ve built those people’s memories and people hopefully will be inspired in whatever it is they do after being immersed in some of the amazing things that you’ve created, that I know we’re going to go on to talk about. So, I think that you’re, the way you are and who you are is very much reflected in the type of work you do.

 

Brenda: I think that there’s a big difference between doing creative work because it’s what you want to do, and it’s where you are, and it’s the headspace that you’re in. There’s a difference between just doing the work and/or protecting your brand, so to speak. And I think that that makes for really different kinds of projects, if I were to guess.

 

Abby: And then moving to your projects, so you work physically, digitally, conceptually, and all of your work really connects people together in very powerful, playful and even I would say introspective ways. So, I’m thinking about the Samsung YOUniverse (y-o-universe to those listening) Experience, the Adidas City Takeover that you did, and Unbothered Wash Day. So, you’ve done a ton of different projects for brands and messaged in ways that really reach out to participants in meaningful and personal ways. So, tell us about some of your projects where you think the story really was evergreen or archetypal and connected with people in fundamental ways?

 

Monica: Well, let’s talk about Unbothered Wash Day. So, this was a virtual event—that cursed phrase, virtual event. But this happened in January, I believe, of 2021, right, so right in the thick of the pandemic. I was working at Vice at the time, and Unbothered was a Refinery29 subbrand focused on our Black female audience. And there had been success editorially with a column called Wash Day that focused on ritual and haircare, and the idea of that sort of time of week where our Black female audience was doing, sort of, wash day, doing hair. And there was so much talk around that, and there was so much online community forming. How can we celebrate that community and kind of make it bigger than people’s personal routines, but find a way to really celebrate that culture with the audience?

 

So actually, kind of inviting everyone to a shared wash day in which we had creators come in to talk about self-care and talk about what self-care meant for our, the community of readers in that time in the pandemic, I mean everything from sort of products to mental health to, all of that coming together. So, I think doing that at the time and just creating that space and sort of more literalizing the idea of a community coming together for a virtual event versus sort of just everyone sharing stories. You actually got to be live and talk face to face and sort of share your experience or meet some of the creators you were interested in. So that was great. And I remember we won an award for that. It felt like a gift. Right? You’re not, you weren’t sitting there saying like, oh, we want you to do this, or we have a message to you. It just felt like we were actually giving something to, to the audience who at that time, it was something to do when no one could do anything and just, a way of sharing experience during a really complicated time.

 

Brenda: I’ve got like so many thousands of thoughts and responses now and what I love about listening to you talk about Unbothered Wash Day, right, is that you talk about it, from the perspective and for the perspective of the audience, right, it’s all about the audience. It’s all about the person who’s going to engage, who’s going to get something out of it.

 

It’s not about your personal brand, right, and it’s probably why you’re able to work with so much speed is if you take that, if you’re taking that approach, are you taking that approach like with every project, like do you, you know, start with, okay, the end user and where are they coming from? Who are they? What do they want? What are their expectations? What are they desiring, you know, and then how do we craft towards that?

 

Abby: I’m going to build on that just for a second and say, yeah, like how do the projects come to you? Are they, help we need, this is our problem as a brand, you know, this is our community, like how is the process of the way the jobs come in and then how’s the process of the way that you’re ideating and who for, the client or the customer?

 

Monica: Well, first of all, it’s always for both, right? So, it’s not binary. And that’s a great, but it’s a great task to say that is it for the client or the, or the customer. You do start with the business problem, right, and that’s, that’s what we’re in, right, like we’re not there just to do cool things because it’s cool.

 

We’re there because we’re addressing something, whether that’s awareness, no one’s ever heard of this brand or perception, it’s maybe a big box brand that wants to look cool and culturally relevant. You’re really thinking about kind of, what is it this business needs to sort of accomplish, you know, it’s viewership, it’s sales, it’s whatever, and you, you start there and we’ve got strategists who come in and they, and they come up with that approach and you sort of figure out what it is that you’re trying to say. And then this is really, really important. And we can talk about this when we get into House of the Dragon or something else, you then craft the medium coming out of that, right, so you never if you’re, you know, you don’t approach it being like, okay, we’re going to do a screening, we’re going to do a pop-up. You can, but that’s not the work I’m interested in doing now.

 

So, it’s like, and I’m talking about this in the ideal state, right. So it’s identifying that and it’s identifying for me a hook, right, and I think like one of the things that is, can be a pitfall both for creatives and for brands is this desire to accomplish or say, every single thing you’ve ever felt about sort of your brand, you know, through the lens of like an experience or something like that. And I get that impulse, like I really, I sympathize with, I empathize with it, you know, so my job is to sort of guide people away from that because I’m like, you know, let’s take, for example, a television show, right? You know, you’re like, I don’t need to recreate the story that your show does that, my job is to not take that and then replicate it out in the world. My job is to just get people excited and wanting to learn more, wanting to do that next step.

 

Brenda: Well, this is, I mean, it’s the perfect timing to just have you talk about House of Dragon. You know, I’m excited and just want to sort of introduce the question by talking about the physicality of House of Dragon, that campaign, which I, I think it was mind boggling in just the best possible way, and not just because of all of the various media elements, but because, you know, there were so many physical, you know, monumental physical attributes to it.

 

And, you know, maybe it’s just like a personal thing for me or whatever, but there’s something about taking over the Manhattan Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, right, and seeing that and driving past that every single day or walking down the block from it. And it would be wonderful for you just to share with our listeners, how did you come to those, and if you would just describe a little bit about what the physicality was, in particular?

 

Monica: We had done House of Dragon Promotion season one, and in that, you know, HBO had come to us and they’re so smart, like, our clients at HBO are great marketers. So, they knew sort of for season one that they wanted to reach the sort of all existing fan base first, people who love Game of Thrones, bring people into the world of the show.

 

So, when we did that, we created an immersive experience at Comic-Con. It was a standalone recreation of the Red Keep, in which we invited fans to actually line up and experience hatching a dragon for themselves, right, so it was very theatrical. There were literally actors there, you know, you are recreating sets in some ways and bringing this to life and tapping into that, like true fantasy element for people who already were sort of invested in that, or we knew we could kind of reignite that.

 

Now, season two, right? They’ve got a foothold and now they want to go big. So right, I said season one, we bring people into the world of the show, season two, we brought the world of the show into our world, and we’re doing that in service of what they had asked us to do, which was kind of tease the narrative structure of season two, which is that basically there’s two warring factions, right? You have two, kind of, competing queens, you have a green council and a black council, and the whole sort of, all of season two is built around the idea that all must choose, right, and like there are two sides, everyone must choose them. Like everyone’s going down, but they’re going to go down fighting and there’s sort of no middle ground.

 

So, in doing that, you know, we’re like, okay, but how you do that, I’m not going to get there and I’m not going to make a billboard experience that’s like, so Queen Rhaenyra did this and Queen Alicent did this, and this is why she—no one gives a shit, right? I’m going to lose people right away. But if I can tap into, if we can tap into people’s sort of existing affinities that you’re already familiar with: Mets versus Yankees, this bagel shop versus that bagel shop, your competing housewives, you know, whatever it is that you already—everyone loves competition and rivalry, you know, whatever that is. If we can find a way to bridge those affiliations suddenly without doing anything at all, we’ve got you, right, and this was a multifaceted campaign.

 

So, you mentioned The Dragon. That was a big stunt. And then we made it really, really simple, right? You know, it is just kind of like green, black, green, black, all must choose, and these inciting messages. So, it was this combination of meeting people where they are and doing it in a very simple and visually ownable way, right, so just saying like green and black banners like, that’s it. And that’s one of the things you’ve got to really think about is, you know, what is the ownable sort of visual symbol for the show.

 

Brenda: Why do you consider season two House the Dragon, one of your best, your very best projects?

 

Monica: Yes. I love it in its simplicity, and I love that it defies categorization in some point. So, I’m very careful, like people say it’s an experiential campaign, I’m like, no it was not. It was a 360 integrated campaign. It’s not a, you know, whatever you want to say about it, it wasn’t, it was totally unique in that respect. So, they didn’t come to us and say, okay, we want necessarily a massive stunt. They just said, what is the best way to get people to raise their banners? World’s your oyster, any canvas you can think of. So that was competing trailers on YouTube. That was the sports partnerships, like I said, we did do the bar nights of sort of competing cocktail bars that, you know, different places in Manhattan, you know, competing pizza spots to the stunt to that—

 

So, it’s like when you. when you really look at the breadth of all the ways we brought that message to life and showing that that simple concept of just sort of assigning allegiances, right, is infinitely scalable. We just, we went wild and that was very fun. So that’s, that’s what’s interesting to me. I’m always looking to build, to break medium.

 

You know, we could talk about this idea of like, what experiences, you know, are or can be, and I think the idea of pushing medium and it’s not always like a pop-up, there’s not always, you know, 6 to 100 pallets of plywood, you know, in a built thing going into this, it really can be everything from a social experience to the sort of shared awe that comes when, you know, all these millions of people in the city walk out and they’re on their commute and they see a dragon on the Empire State Building, and I’m getting texts from people I haven’t heard from years, like, oh, I work on 27th Street, and we looked out and we could see it. So that was really sort of incredible. And I think the one other point you brought up was that mix, and you said this of what was real.

 

And Brenda, you asked about, you said physicality, what was real and what was not real, you know, what was CGI. And that was very important to us too. And we knew, like, okay, we wanted to do some things or show up in places we know we’d never get the permits for, even though if anyone can get permits, it’s Giant Spoon, but we knew if we went like pure CGI, like it wouldn’t land, right? So, what we needed to do is actually mess with people, right? And not in a, like a manipulative way, again, like you’re, you’re trying to trick people, but to just say like, whoa, like this is incredible.

 

Brenda: It’s playful, in a playful way.

 

Monica: It’s playful, you know? So, when you look at that, like those banners on Grand Central, Rockefeller Plaza, the New York Stock Exchange, like all of those were real, right? The dragon was real. So, you see that, and then you’re like, but the bridges, they’re not, you know, and everything, it was just like a total, so people were actually, they didn’t feel tricked. They were having fun. They were having fun, kind of understanding, like what they were seeing.

 

Brenda: If you could have anything that you wanted where, in terms of experiential, where do you hope things go five years from now?

 

Monica: I hope they’re sustainable. Right? That’s going to be a really interesting challenge and one I don’t have the answer for. Everyone’s been trying for years and years. But it’s you know I think substituting you know sustainably sourced MDF versus not is not the answer, right, like it’s going to take like pretty wild innovation to think about what that means. Right? Like it’s not just recycled materials. So, I think it’s a sustainable industry in which we can find ways to bring these stories to life that are low impact, and doing that through technology, through sort of social invitations versus maybe built environments as much. I love built environments, so it’s a tricky—makes me nervous to even say that because I love a built environment, you know? But I’m thinking, well, how could I do that sort of absent of materiality in some ways and just kind of invite people to experience things different?

 

So, I would say in five years I want to define that, and I want to find a way to always keep doubling down on relationships of people in real life. You know, that’s what inspires me is to see kind of what people are, what they’re doing in the world. There’s a reason I’m in experimental and that, you know, I just love that. So, I don’t know, I think it’s that and it’s, it’s making sure that the technology, while that will advance and we’ll find different ways of kind of creating environments, that they’re all in service, of just making things feel more human than they were ever before.

 

Brenda: You just have such an insightful way of thinking about, really, the whole world of experiential and the nature of people, and which gets back to your, right, origin with your interest in psychology.

 

Abby: And community building. A lot of your work brings communities together virtually or in person. So, you’re building communities, which essentially is what we all try to do, whether it’s exhibit design or in all the advertising that you do. Yeah, you bring together these people, so they keep this human connection, and the delight and all that you bring, we don’t have enough of that in the world.

 

So, thank you for all the work you do. I think it’s absolutely incredible and really excited to see what you can do next in New York City, what’s around the corner.

 

Brenda: I don’t know, I see you hitting rural areas next.

 

Monica: I would love that.

 

Brenda: I see that in your future.

 

Monica: I can’t stop dreaming about crop circles. I hope that’s not a hint.

 

Abby: Oh, you heard it here first, crop circles.

 

Brenda: No, I’m seeing you do major earthworks. Okay.

 

Abby: Thank you so much, Monica, for joining us today.

 

Monica: Thank you so much for having me.

 

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. See you next time!

 

Brenda: Thank you everyone!

 

[Music]

 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

Experience as a Catalyst for Connection with Monica Herman

February 5, 2025
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Meet your hosts

Abigail Honor

Abigail Honor

Abby is a founding partner at Lorem Ipsum, an experiential design agency, and has over 23 years of experience in storytelling through physical and digital design. She has crafted dynamic and inspiring narratives for global brands, companies and institutions, using cutting-edge technology to communicate compelling and thoughtful messages. Abby has won multiple design, film and directing awards such as the SEGD Honor Award, HOW International Design Award, Muse Award, to name a few, and maintains affiliation with associations including SEGD, AIGA, and the American Advertising Federation.
Brenda Cowan

Brenda Cowan

Brenda Cowan is a professor and former Chairperson of Graduate Exhibition & Experience Design at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology. Brenda is a Fulbright Scholar in the disciplines of museums and mental health, and her theory of Psychotherapeutic Object Dynamics (2015) has been presented for the American Alliance of Museums; Museums of Hope; MidAtlantic Association of Museums; National Museums of World Culture, Sweden; and has been published with the National Association for Museum Exhibition; Society for Environmental Graphic Design; O Magazine; and Huffington Post Science. She is currently co-editing a volume on the subject of flourishing in museums.

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