Jean-Michel Basquiat:
King Pleasure
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure brought more than 200 paintings, drawings, and personal artifacts from the family's collection to The Grand LA. Beyond selling tickets, the exhibition needed a consistent design partner for a steady stream of events, drops, and programming.
- Challenge
- Keep the exhibition's identity consistent across OOH, broadcast, and digital while producing a constant flow of event-specific creative.
- My role
- Over six months, I was the exhibition's primary design partner. I directed campaign work across OOH, airport placements, and a 30-second NBC spot, plus unique flyers and ads for three to four special events a month.
- What changed
- Every new event got its own creative while still feeling like part of King Pleasure. Virtually every special event sold out.
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 the City
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.
As the exhibition’s sole design resource in Los Angeles, I got to carry the work from the first ticket-selling campaign through a constantly evolving calendar of events and programming. King Pleasure welcomed more than 300,000 visitors across its New York and Los Angeles runs, with virtually every special event selling out.
