NBMBAA

Creative Director on Pernod Ricard USA’s presence at the National Black MBA Association conference. The brief was a 10x10 booth in a career-fair hall, and the problem was posture: at a professional conference Pernod needed to read as an employer and an investor in the room, not as a brand advertising at it.

The answer was Craft Your Legacy — a career line rather than a drinks line, an arched portfolio wall lit like a display case, leather and navy instead of bar graphics, and a QR code going to open roles rather than a product page. Directed the environmental design and the artwork through to production files.

Renders, floor plan, the TV stand graphic and the counter wrap production spec — what the fabricator built from.

Set the creative direction and designed the environment: the arch, the portfolio wall, the material palette, the signage and the artwork files that went to the fabricator. Worked the install with the vendors on the floor and walked the finished booth with the client before the doors opened.

The visuals were made by hand and AI-assisted, mine throughout. Every stock element in the artwork was generated in Midjourney rather than licensed, so the bottles, textures and backgrounds are original to the build.

Concept to convention floor in under three weeks. The client turned down the first pitch as too corporate on September 5; the new direction — a lounge in place of a trade-show wall — was approved on the 9th, print files went to the fabricator that week, and the booth was standing in Houston on the 24th.