Designing for Wonder: Storytelling, Immersion & The Future of Experiential Design | PI Apparel

Hello everyone and welcome to another Seamless Chat. Uh, today I'm delighted to be sitting down with Eric Cruz, a creative director, designer, and educator with a background in fusing design, film, music, art, and technology. Eric brings a unique mix of storytelling, innovation, and user experience in this connected age. Most recently, Eric has worked as group creative director for the Vegas Sphere, but his journey also includes global agencies and companies like Amazon, Airbnb, and TEDx Shanghai. So with all that said, welcome, Eric. It's really, really great to have you here today.

Pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you, Michael.

So let's jump in. For those that don't know you, I'd love for you to start by giving us a little bit of background as to who you are, what it is that you do, and what your creative journey has been so far.

Are you sure you want to hear that story? Because it's going to be a long one. That intro. Yeah, I consider myself a kind of hybrid designer and storyteller. Is maybe the best way to put it. And I think the career has spanned a couple of decades into exploring design and how that word has kind of evolved over the last 20 years or so, foraying into things like motion, title design, moving image at places like Imaginary Forces where I started here in LA. But my career sort of grew more into brand storytelling and advertising, for lack of a better word, and working with places like Wieden Kennedy in Portland and predominantly in Tokyo and London. And it's an interesting journey because I've always been interested in this thing called cultural advertising, which is sort of what Wieden Kennedy does best, right? So I spent about 12 years with them. A decade of that is in Tokyo itself, where funny enough, my day job was doing sort of the normal things with brands, such as ads and digital storytelling, but I ended up founding and running a music label for Wieden Kennedy in the early 2000s, and it was called Wieden Kennedy Tokyo Lab. And in many ways, it was a way for us to create from within, to help make culture happen from the inside out in an incubator such as Tokyo, right, where a lot of sort of beautiful thinking and design really kind of is born and spearheading sort of global culture making, if you will. So in many ways, the day job was designing ads and experiences and things like that and digital things. But the music gig was sort of my night job, right? I wanted to simply rock out, make music videos, design packaging, even tour with a band. So I did that for about, I'd say, 7 out of its 9-year existence. And it was quite a journey in that, you know, kind of two sides of the spectrum. Right? I think what's quite interesting about working at a place like Wieden and in a brand like Nike is that it allows you to be involved with culture, youth culture, in a very distinct way across different markets worldwide. And I think that's kind of where a lot of the exposure into kind of creating culture, creating ads that don't look like ads, or ads that are very non-traditional and much more diving deep into experiential and new ways of brands communicating is sort of where that whole thing kind of came about. Um, so I did that for about 10 years or so across a couple markets, predominantly Asia. Um, I then kind of jumped into, uh, Malaysia of all places, uh, and, and spent about 4 years there. And it's, um, sort of a way for me to give back to the part of the world that I came from. I'm Filipino by birth, American by upbringing, uh, but Malaysia being a neighbor to the Philippines kind of enabled me to coexist and kind of be and work in a part of the world that was near to my heart, you could say, right? But it wasn't— I think in many ways it was also kind of a platform for me to teach because I teach a college level, university level, but in some ways it's like teaching a region how to kind of evolve and do things in a different way. So exploring things like world's first music videos that are never the same twice for brands like Samsung using a Samsung Galaxy Note to be able to co-create, enable the public to co-create a kind of music experience for brands, right? And then sometime around 2015, I reconnected with Nike as a brand and this time around in Shanghai, right? And it was a very interesting time to be in China in that China in many ways is a leapfrog economy. Meaning they digitalized during the mobile era, right? And why I think that's a very good context to kind of put in is because this idea of rapid evolution, of kind of being able to kind of be in the front row seat of how mobile and digital technology are changing the world, we got to experiment with a lot of sort of digital activations via mobile that were mobile first by, by thought. And also kind of help create other kinds of activations such as the world's first LED basketball courts or kind of AR e-commerce shops, basically virtual AR shops that were kind of in and of themselves immersive experiences, right? That instead of shopping inside a brick and mortar, you're shopping with your mobile phone through an AR layer, right? And we created some campaigns that are actually quite interesting in that could we enable people and kind of fans of the brand to shop using sweatcoins, for example, right? Being able to kind of change the way that you buy something through the actual currency that you buy it with, right? So instead of paying with money, you're basically kind of doing physical things, working out, having fun, playing ball and such, and earning those Sweatcoins in order to unlock digital experiences or kind of other experiences or even limited edition merch drops and things like that. And then finally, within the time that I was there, I was involved in helping launch this thing called Nike's sort of flagship store in Shanghai called the Shanghai 001, which was one of the best examples of retail immersion to where the actual sort of basement floor of it is really kind of covered in LED, right? And to where that enabled you to kind of really change the way that people could interact with your brand in the sort of shopping experience, as it were. So I told you it's going to be a long story and it's not even over yet because in 2020 I decided to move back to LA, right, after sort of a 19-year backpack, as it were. And just in time for COVID to hit, right, the pandemic hit. And why I think that's a very interesting time to move back is it forced us again to kind of rethink the way that we, you know, create experiences for brands. There's a lot of sort of things that you would maybe be normally used to in a place like Comic-Con or E3, but we couldn't do those sort of physical activations at the time. So One of the projects I got involved with was kind of helping reinvent this thing called E3 and Comic-Con, but do it in a virtual way for Warner Brothers. I was fortunate enough to kind of create this thing called the Joker's Escape, which is essentially kind of a fully immersive digital escape room, right? Where it's similar to how you would maybe build a real, real life digital physical experience, but really kind of making it something that people could engage with using sort of new platforms and emerging technology like Unreal Engine and Unity, right? So being able to kind of recreate when you're sort of locked down, how do we still kind of create brand stories in that way? And most recently, obviously everyone's kind of trying to figure out how to use generative AI within platforms, within how we create storytelling. And so being able to kind of explore some of that with some brands that I was helping create products with, right, before joining here at Sphere. And so really through this concept of how do you utilize large language models and tools like Runway to be able to kind of prompt new types of experiences was sort of what I was doing a couple years back. And then ended up joining this place called Sphere at the very sort of beginning of its journey to where it's a kind of new canvas, obviously, that's kind of taken the world by storm in that it's this conflation of music, art, and brand experiences all rolled into one. And that's kind of where I'm at at the moment.

That's amazing. What an incredible story. I mean, you've worked across so many different parts of the— well, so many different industries, so many different kinds of tech all over the world. That's amazing, but I'm glad you brought up kind of working with different kinds of canvases, because what I wanted to ask is, you know, throughout all of your experience, as you said, you've tried different things, you've launched different activations. When you're going beyond a traditional screen, how does that impact the way that you have to rethink the narrative of the story that you're telling and also how you want to engage with the audience?

It's a very interesting question to ask because I think to me, the beauty about evolution and progress is the uncertainty behind it, right? You never know sort of where you're going to go to next. And that's what I'm interested in, is sort of carving out where the road ahead gets to. And the best way to go through that is to kind of just simply try to help define it, right? Necessity sort of being the mother of invention. I think this philosophy that everyone who goes through widening Kennedy has learned kind of this concept of walking in stupid is the best way to put it, to where you check your ego at the door and kind of bring your collective experiences, but ensure you leave things open enough for new ideas to kind of come in and infect you as you go through your day. I think in many ways we live in such an interesting time where so many rules of the game are being broken and reinvented. And design and storytelling itself has evolved over the last 20 years that the medium and the tools are fast changing. So I think in many ways what you know or what we know or what we think we know is being upended by new ways of thinking, new ways of making, new ways of creating. So it forces us to rethink the way that we move forward or how we go about approaching anything. And obviously with creativity and AI as a multiplier, I think that is sort of helping us leapfrog into another new chapter that I think none of us are quite well-versed in. And we're all trying to figure it out as we go. As we go along. But one of the things I thought a lot about as we are kind of going through what we're going through is, you know, one of the most pivotal moments of my life was sort of seeing the movie Blade Runner and the storytelling that went along with that and how that helped change my world. But I think obviously it helped change a lot of things of how we think the future will be, how we will engage with our environments, And I think we're living right now in a kind of reality where that has become our new reality, right? So creating immersion has a lot to do with sort of architecting new worlds that confound us, new worlds that are beyond belief. I think the way buildings have evolved are kind of helping engage in new ways that weren't possible before, right? So I think in many ways there's kind of new stories that we can we can experience and tell because the surfaces have changed. If you're familiar with sort of Christa Kim's takeover of Times Square, that whole moment kind of taking something that is normally sort of inundating as a piece of medium but helping transform that into a kind of mesmerizing moment that even for a few minutes or a few, you know, a few moments can really help transform how we perceive the city, right? Or something like what Universal Everything has kind of done with the buildings in Seoul, South Korea, and how the sort of showcase that they've done with putting art into urban environments, or even how Las Vegas Sphere itself is helping reinvent the game in some ways, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I love, I love all of that. It's so funny that you said about Blade Runner 2. I was I was actually thinking of a film that I, I should watch tonight, and that, and that could be a good, uh, a good one to put at the top of the list. I haven't seen it for a while. But, uh, yeah, look, I think a lot of what you're talking about as well is about how do you really also create awe. I think the attention span as it is for the majority of us at the moment is how can you create these kind of short, powerful bursts of awe. And what I also would love to ask you is how do you kind of, uh, keep the spectacle and the awe alive whilst not overpowering the emotional connection that people have to those experiences?

I think in many ways designing for awe means designing to create moments of wonder, right? And I think that notion of creating wonder and this challenge of being able to confound people's curiosities is sort of what I aim for on a personal level. Because when you can truly captivate someone's emotion through a very transformative moment and elevate their reality and confound it, that's kind of where designing for awe really kind of helps come to life, right?

Absolutely, 100%. And, you know, in your view, what makes an immersive experience kind of truly unforgettable?

That's a very hard question to answer.

Yeah, it's a big one.

Yeah, we're inundated with so much sensory overload today that I think the ability to engage becomes harder and harder. This sort of thought of how do you move people, right, and stop them in their tracks to engage with you. And I think that has a lot to do with the thought of engaging the senses through something that is unexpected, that they didn't see coming. And to me, the best experiences are those ones that you didn't see coming, ones that really kind of create an unforgettable memory that stays with you forever. So, but with so much stimulus out there, it's hard to break through is sort of what we think about on a daily level. So when you see an experience that is so profound, whether it's like, you know, seeing the Northern Lights, in Scandinavia, or seeing kind of even something as simple as the cherry blossom, hanami season in Japan, or something more man-made or artificial like Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project, right, which simulates nature at the Tate Modern, or even hearing transformative music live. I was at ANIMA in Sphere, kind of going through that Afterlife show where it's this 4-act cybernetic opera Those are the moments that I truly think like have the power to kind of move you and kind of stay with you because they're just so visually arresting that it's the things that people really seek out these days. And I think when you can create that moment, that's when it's truly golden.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, I think you've probably already answered this, but I will ask it anyway. You know, I think nowadays a lot of brands are trying to kind of leverage technology to deliver more of a per— personalized experience to people. But obviously, when you're talking about a huge canvas like the Sphere, how do you accomplish that emotional resonance at such a big scale for something like that?

I think to me, the idea of creating something with such huge resonance is about creating an emotional feeling or experience, or simply put, a beautiful moment, a moment that has the power to transform, whether that's for an audience of one or an audience of many. But creating that moment at scale, when you can create something that is a shared collective experience, that's kind of where it truly becomes transformative because it halos out into the world. And what I love about, you know, examples like TeamLabs experiences, which I'm sure you're aware of, is that they've taken this concept of design and designing an experience into a proper business model. Right? To where I don't recall of a time, with maybe the exception of designing video games, to where an experience is something that people will pay for, as opposed to design being a service that people will hire you for. Right? So I think this notion of design that makes you feel something, that engages with you, is sort of a way of kind of connecting with people on an emotional level.

Yeah, absolutely. So really, no matter the size, it's all about the connection and the emotion that goes behind it, whether that be on a phone screen or a huge canvas like the Sphere, essentially.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just this idea of breaking through, right? Breaking through and really touching someone in that regard. And that's simple as it sounds, it's very difficult to make happen.

Yeah, I bet. I think, you know, working on large-scale experiences as you have, how has that changed your perception of how people engage specifically with space and story too, but particularly with the space around them?

Well, I think no matter what, storytelling is storytelling, right? In many ways, it's the oldest form of how we are able to kind of pass on information or pass on sort of, experiences or transformative moments. You know, storytelling has the ability to make you feel, to engage the senses, to come out transformed, right, is sort of the power behind that. And that's been universal since oral traditions, since the passing down of legends and folklore, since the invention of cinema, and now onto podcasts and more recently immersive environments at the scale that we've never seen before. Right? So I think in many ways it's sort of a modern-day equivalent of how storytelling is evolving. But at the root of it, it's about creating the sensation of, again, feeling something, being transported through immersion, whether that be through something that's very physical or virtual or, these days, both physical and virtual. So the game for me just keeps changing and the bar keeps getting higher, the experiences keep getting better. But when you think about something like what we experienced through VR a couple of years ago, now that VR doesn't even need hardware. It's now kind of in the lived environment as we're seeing, and again, kind of going back into transporting you into new worlds, but through real spaces, right? You know, again, going back to that sort of Blade Runner effect, right? To where it's now kind of out in the open, it's out in the real world. Those are the kind of things to where it makes you seek out what's next. I don't know if you're familiar with this place called Ultraviolet, which is an immersive dining experience in Shanghai, right? Oh, I don't know. It's one of those things to where you're surrounded by an LED experience, but you're dining, and even the projection mapping on the table and this immersion around you. Or examples like Sleep No More. Right, which is a kind of immersive theater. I think all those kind of enable you to become part of the story, right? And I think with sort of large-scale experiences, like again, what teamLab has done, it's about immersing you into those moments, immersing you into sensational storytelling. And the sum of all of those really kind of helps raise expectations of how we live inside the story these days. We consume the story, but we also get to live in it and step inside it. Absolutely.

Um, I'm actually going to Shanghai in June. I've never been, so I definitely will look up that place. It sounds amazing. And here as well in Amsterdam, I mean, now they're, they're all over the world, I think, but it's called, uh, uh, Lumière, where they kind of, they translate artists' work into this huge kind of engaging immersive experience. And it's just a totally new way to engage with it, and it's incredible. Incredible. Of course, it's still great to see the original work— works of art on a wall, but being able to kind of like lie on the floor and it be projected all around you just makes it, you know, just super, super different and way deeper in the way that it, uh, it resonates. So that all makes sense. Um, is there anything, you know, across all of your years of experience, is there anything about humans or human behavior that has surprised you when it comes to immersion or immersive environments?

It's a hard one, but the one thing I've found amazing is how willing people are to be transported, to be engaged in disbelief, right? And that's what fascinates me the most, the willingness to be suspended in disbelief. And I think it all stems back to the fact that we're naturally born curious, right? We are explorers at heart. This will to find out that, you know, whether the Earth is truly flat or round has been ingrained in us since, you know, since way back when. And again, it stems out of our ability to satisfy curiosity, at least for me. How far can we go, right, is sort of like the, the thought behind that. Or even, uh, a movie like The Truman Show, right, which kind of compounded your concept of reality, right, uh, the world that you exist in, this bubble that you exist in. So I think it kind of all goes back to that sort simple concept of curiosity and how far are we willing to go to experience the new and simply find out for ourselves.

Absolutely. The Tru— Truman Show is another great film. You're giving me a good list of things to watch over the weekend. Um, so talking a little bit more about your role as a creative director, um, what part of that creative process do you find, uh, energizes you the most these days, and has that evolved over time?

Yeah, after 25 years of kind of exploring stuff within visual storytelling, design, digital experiences, you think you've been around the block enough to kind of know stuff, but things are being upended and turned upside down. Uh, there's so much new evolution, so many new tools, And to me, just the new world requires new rules and new tools to be able to kind of cope with it or help invent it into the next chapter. So you soon kind of realize how malleable the truth and sort of truth constructs are. And you kind of come to a realization that everything that you know is wrong, right? And, and, and, you know, that the concept of ideas can be reshaped and that nothing is sort of permanent in its state. So you have to kind of, in many ways, walk in naked. Again, kind of check your ego at the door and know enough to be dangerous, but also be the most ignorant person in the room, right? And as I said earlier, from the Wyden Kennedy alums out there, walk in stupid.

I love that. It's a great phrase. I think there's a lot of talk nowadays, especially as technology continues to advance as quickly as it is, that people are worried that it's going to take over, you know, creativity, craft, art. How do you go about kind of creating, kind of keeping your creative instinct sharp when working with very, very technically advanced environments?

I think to me, the beauty about innovation and having an innovator's mindset is that you constantly get challenged with inventing or reinventing the new. So you have to be simply comfortable with building the plane as you fly it, right? It doesn't get more— it doesn't get deeper than that, because I think there's, there's a lot of that happening right now, that we are stepping into new grounds, new territories, and therefore new beginnings, uh, and, and new realities that carve out a new future. So I think that's, to me, again, kind of keeping your antenna open, but having a very sort of wide eye that preps you ready for the future, ready for what's next. And I think the only way to do that is to invent it as you go along.

Yeah, I love that. It's a good mantra to live by. And again, you've already kind of mentioned a lot of the technologies you've worked on over the years, and you mentioned AR, VR, AI. How have advancements in technology expanded your sense of what is possible creatively?

I think for me, I always look at it as the opportunity and the responsibility we have is to always live up to the moment and whatever that moment presents to you. Because I mean, to me, it's about creating the new, the now, the not yet, and being present to respond to that. So I think It's about having the duty to live up to what's possible now, right? And you look back and kind of 20 years ago, if we didn't have that same sort of mentality, we wouldn't continue to step forward. We wouldn't continue to kind of move into new spaces and new places. And that's what really kind of keeps it interesting is to pave new roads where ones don't yet exist.

Yeah, absolutely. And when thinking about the future of storytelling, what excites you the most?

I think we're living in what is perhaps the most exciting moment in history where so many things are being upended, so many things are being rethought. Even the concept of work is being rethought. So where there's a lot of things sort of converging, whether those are new forms, new surfaces, new potentials, and those all kind of just equate to new possibilities. So the convergence of things like AR meets VR meets physical meets digital meets generative AI. They all start to kind of collide into each other. And the new roads for me are the most exciting, right? This concept of propping up new realities through AI, through prompts, I think is quite confounding at the moment. To see it, how it can change the game and kind of force us into new ways of creation, new ways of thinking. And it's going to be both easier and harder to tell stories is what that equates to. Easier to realize because it's much easier through generative AI, harder to be more compelling, right? We'll, we'll never run out of new stories to tell if we simply live up to the potential of that moment. And I think it's about utilizing those new tools to help us evolve into new ways of storytelling.

Absolutely. Um, I'd also love to talk a little bit about your inspirations. You obviously work at the very forefront of of tech advancement and creativity, but are there any other industries or fields that you look to for creative inspiration?

Yeah, it's a rather funny answer, right? When I was young, beyond Blade Runner, Indiana Jones was one of the other movies that kind of helped shape who I am, right? In many ways, I wanted to become an anthropologist simply because I was very interested in civilization, studying cultures, and whether that be old civilization or creating new culture, I think they're to me one and the same, and I kind of see them on the same plane. So this, this thought of how anthropology, or even kind of studying cultures and human behavior, um, and, and helping create new culture, helping add to it from the inside out through things like the music label, through, you know, several different jobs and sort of projects that I get to be fortunate to be involved in, uh, is, is to me kind of the biggest inspiration is people.

That's, that's great. It's amazing to have that at the center when all of this tech is going on around you. Heart and people in the center, because at the end of the day, they're, they're the ones that you are delivering for. So that's, uh, that's lovely. Um, you've already mentioned quite a lot of projects out there that, um, have inspired you, but have there been any specific, uh, creative collaborations or crossovers that you've seen of late, uh, that you have thought are particularly meaningful or forward-thinking?

There's so many things going on right now that it's a little bit dazzling, right, in many ways. But I think obviously AI and generative AI and kind of new ways that companies and brands and creatives are experimenting with it are probably the most interesting things that are happening right now. Just last week we saw speech-enabled generative AI films, right? If you saw what Google and Google VO3 has been up to, I think the idea of voice and kind of sound syncing to picture and how even sound effects can trigger visuals, I think are quite groundbreaking moments. And I'm most excited about what's happening there because again, the best thing about evolution is that it forces you into new spaces of discomfort, right? And when you think you know stuff and you suddenly find out, wow, there's a whole new generation that's gonna grow up in this whole new way of thinking, of making, of creating. You not only have to kind of catch up to that, but sort of figure out how do you yourself get to be at the forefront of that, right? Be the one who's kind of helping define what that can be. And that's what I find most exciting.

Absolutely. In terms of immersive futures in the next decade, how do you see physical spaces and digital storytelling continuing to evolve together?

I think the best way to answer that is even the question itself. In the next decade, I wonder if it's even going to take a decade, because if we pay attention to the law of exponential returns, right, that has proven the rate of change is going to accelerate, uh, with each iteration that we have. And what was possible 50 years becomes possible in 40, gets cut down to 30, into 10, into 5, into 2 years. And now we're kind of at this annual level of acceleration that just becomes faster and faster, right? Just as fast as your phones evolved is how the world is evolving with each sort of phone iteration. And with that in mind, it's only a matter of years, maybe even months, to where things like the virtual and the physical become inseparable, become one and the same, right? But I think what remains in all that is this concept of what we think is real, right? And what that personally means for how we absorb storytelling. So we will always be flesh and blood, or so we think right now. So even if we end up simulating reality, whether that's virtual or physical, there will always be a version of us that exists for real, right? And I think this immersion into both of those realities realities where we coexist will become the new experience economy that we're going to be existing in. And so having things like avatars of ourselves that we can step in and out of is quite interesting, right? And that's already happening now, but will become even more indistinguishable in the future to where it's, you kind of have two versions of yourself, right? And I think that's, that's, uh, I don't— I'm not sure that that's going to take a decade, to be honest.

No, you're right, you're right. I mean, look, even on a small— smaller scale in gaming, right, people already are playing as different avatars. They can style them and dress them and make them look exactly how, how they want. Sometimes it's exactly how they are in, in real life, but a lot of times it's not. So that is— I think you're right— going to just continue to scale, and it's exciting to see.

But even Even this thought of AI getting to know your personality, how you would behave, how you would respond, and therefore in your sleeping hour, being able to handle all of your emails while you're resting is already an interesting thing. Obviously, you want to be able to police that moment, but it's exciting.

Yeah, 100%. I'll end with this then. What's one hope that you have for the future of immersive experiences?

I think the best way to answer that is to simply say, fasten your seatbelt, because we're definitely in for a new ride.

Absolutely, we are. Well, Eric, thank you so, so much. I know you're a busy guy and it's first thing in the morning there, but this has been great. Very, very inspiring. I love the mantra that you live by, and it's incredible to hear the journey that you've been on. So thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks for inviting me, Michael. Appreciate it.