CNN | Turner / WarnerMedia
COMMERCIAL BRAND EXPRESSION: THE CNN EXPERIENCE, UPFRONTS, AND NEWFRONTS
Governing Visual Identity and Commercial Narrative Across a Multi-Year B2B Program (2016–2020)
Multiple Promax Awards
From 2016 to 2020, I owned the creative direction for CNN and WarnerMedia’s most important annual commercial touchpoints — the premium invite-only programs where the brand’s identity met its highest- stakes audiences: advertisers, agency leadership, and media buyers making nine-figure allocation decisions.
The CNN Experience
The CNN Experience was an annual invite-only event for premium advertisers, held in the weeks before the Upfronts, designed to showcase CNN’s offerings for the upcoming year and deepen relationships with the partners who mattered most. Each year required a full creative refresh; a new strategic theme, new visual system, new films, new spatial and environmental design, while maintaining the continuity and authority that made the program recognizable as CNN.
I directed the annual evolution of the visual identity across the full range of touchpoints: keynote films, environmental and spatial design for Time Warner Center and later Hudson Yards, interactive kiosks and digital experiences, presentation decks and collateral, photography direction, signage systems, and premium physical takeaways. Every element had to function as part of a single, coherent visual argument about why CNN was the essential investment for the coming year.
The design challenge was consistency without repetition. Each year’s system needed to feel fresh and forward-looking while honoring the brand equity that made the program premium. That meant making deliberate decisions about what carried forward (typographic hierarchy, spatial principles, the CNN mark governance) and what evolved (color palette, motion language, thematic visual direction, environmental treatments).
Time
A Universe Of Content
Connect To What Matters Most
Ad Sales Deck Elements
Presentation Collateral
The Throughline
Across four years, the work evolved from directing a single brand’s annual commercial expression to governing a multi-brand commercial narrative that needed to hold across venues, formats, audiences, and corporate transformations, while every piece maintained the visual standard and strategic coherence that made these programs effective business tools, not just events.
Role: Creative Director
Visual System Design and Annual Refresh
Commercial Narrative Strategy
Environmental and Spatial Design Direction
Film Direction and Content Development
Cross-Functional Alignment (Ad Sales, Marketplace Image, Content Partnerships, Studios)
Campaign Assets: Films, Digital Interactives, Photography, Signage, Print Collateral, Premiums, Kiosks, Event Documentation, Presentations, Decks, Sizzles, Spatial Design
Locations:Time Warner Center, Hudson Yards, The Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, Agency Road Shows
