Concept Design & Development

With the project vision as our guide, we develop guest narratives to map the emotional beats and thematic core of your story. We give life to the stories developed in conjunction with your team, speaking to the heart of your experience through impactful visual art, allowing the first tangible representations of your project to shine through.

Starting with inspiration and research, the Concept Design and Development team crafts unique stories that speak to the guest journey at the heart of your experience.  

Concept Development Services

Conceptual Design + Development
Creative Direction
Art Direction
Executive Production
Narrative Strategy
Narrative Development
Guest Journey Mapping
Story Writing
Storyboarding
Illustrations
Renderings
Key Art Production
Character Design
Exhibit Design
Preliminary Technology Solutions
Preliminary Media Solutions
Stakeholder Alignment

…and more

Narrative Concept Strategy

Our team identifies the guest journey moments, creative intent, and artistic inspiration to form and craft your story-driven experience.

Before we write stories and create spectacular art, we strategize how your vision translates into emotional impact for your audiences. Through research and deep analytical questions, we carve out the core themes of your experience and gather input from your stakeholders to remain committed to your brand and mission. All of this crucial information gives our writers and artists a bank of knowledge to develop creative direction, guest journeys, and key art. Pulling from history, art, and culture, we develop and refine aspirational mood boards to capture the earliest version of what your experience will be.

Writing and Storyboarding

We put pen to paper and establish the creative direction for all disciplines, ensuring the emotional and thematic core comes through in all project decisions.

Most people think any good story starts with “Once Upon a Time.” In our world, a good story starts with writing… lots and lots and lots of writing. We write guest journeys to understand how different archetypes of people will experience a particular environment. We write scripts and narrative treatments to understand characters’ voices and motivations. We write branding material to help identify and embolden a project’s identity, tone, and language. We write guidelines for technology, media, fabrication, and other teams to perform their respective roles. All of this writing culminates in a series of themes, core principles that act as guardrails and guiderails to all later creative phases. For the right emotions to hit at the right time, this writing is applied to narrative beats through storyboards that connect visual indicators of the experience to the story-driven emotional impact we want your guests to feel.

Concept Design and Renderings

Dynamic and custom art gives a visual definition to the stories we define, inviting all project stakeholders to share in the vision together.

To begin crafting the look and feel of an immersive experience, our creative directors and concept designers partner with our clients to create key art. Our artists produce beautiful artwork, rich in detail and rooted in story, that excites and sells the project idea to potential partners, internal stakeholders, and the general public. These illustrations and renderings serve as a visual representation of the project goals and help align all stakeholders on what the project ultimately will become. While this phase is certainly aspirational and pushes into uncharted territories of new ideas and creative exploration, we are constantly looking at the parameters of reality, like schedule and budget, to make sure what we propose is achievable. It doesn’t do us – or our clients – any good to design something that isn’t attainable. We work closely with our project managers, design managers, and producers to track ideas against cost and project timelines and ensure that all stakeholders have buy-in on the various parts and pieces represented in our conceptual designs.