Jean-Michel Basquiat:
King Pleasure
Campaign direction, environmental motion, and digital partnerships for the Los Angeles run of Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure.
- Role
- Lead Designer / Art Director
- The brief
- Make the exhibition identity feel vital, immediate, and native to Los Angeles. Its new run needed to land as a living local cultural moment, not a traveling show.
- What changed
- A citywide campaign that moved from concourse takeovers and broadcast spots to events and digital drops.
- Platform
- Airport concourses, OOH, broadcast & e-commerce
Inside King Pleasure
King Pleasure transformed The Grand LA into an immersive look at Basquiat’s life and work, bringing together more than 200 paintings, drawings and personal artifacts from the family’s collection. The exhibition—and the identity created for it—became the starting point for the campaign work that followed.
Across Los Angeles
Taking the identity outside the exhibition meant adapting it to a very different kind of environment. Airport and out-of-home placements needed to work at architectural scale, while motion extended the system across digital displays throughout the terminal.
From Storyboard to Screen
The exhibition’s 30-second NBC spot started as a sequential storyboard, establishing the pacing, transitions and visual direction before moving into production. I carried that direction through the final edit, translating the campaign into a short-form broadcast piece.
Beyond the Exhibition
The campaign also had to flex around special events and limited releases throughout the LA run. Legendary Halloween and the Beat Bop Drop each became their own moments, with dedicated creative extending across motion, digital and commerce.
King Pleasure brought Basquiat’s work to life at monumental scale in Los Angeles. From the gallery floors to broadcast and digital, the campaign let the work speak clearly across every medium.
