FanDuel Kentucky Derby Party
Led creative direction for a 600+ person, 6-hour live experience, translating the brand into a cohesive system across environment, motion, and print.
Year
2025
Role
Senior Designer, Creative Lead
Scope
30,000+ sq ft environment
60+ integrated deliverables across environmental, digital, and print
Cross-functional collaboration across events, production, and leadership
Challenge:
Create a premium, cohesive brand experience that balanced FanDuel’s identity with the tradition of the Kentucky Derby across a large-scale event.
Approach:
Led end-to-end creative direction across 60+ deliverables, building a modular system that scaled across environmental, motion, and print. Partnered with production (Episode.1) and internal teams to ensure consistency from concept through execution.
Impact:
Delivered a fully immersive, on-brand experience that scaled across the entire event and positioned FanDuel within a major cultural moment.
Video content for the LED wall behind the Christy Garden Bar. The film-style montage was designed to extend the atmosphere of the Derby into the environment, adding movement and depth without competing with the space.
Concept
The goal wasn’t just to brand an event, but to design how it felt to move through it.
Rather than centering the experience around a single moment, the environment was structured as a sequence of connected interactions. This created a sense of flow and discovery, allowing the brand to support the experience without overpowering it.
The Details
I approached the event as an experience to shape, not just a brand to apply.
Spacial Flow
The environment was intentionally designed without a dominant focal point.
Guests moved fluidly between moments, from photo opportunities to custom hat stations to food and drink, creating a more balanced and immersive experience.
Experiential Moments
Each activation was designed as part of a larger system. Visual consistency was maintained without repetition, ensuring the space felt cohesive while still offering variety.
System Through Details
Larger elements like hedges, lattice structures, and florals established the overall atmosphere. Smaller touchpoints carried the system through.
Rose-themed projections, custom napkins, and hat accessories reinforced the visual language in subtle ways, shifting the experience from a branded event to something more considered and complete.