We believe in mentoring the next generation. As two of our employees went to SCAD, we often mentor students and volunteer to speak on campus and in classes. Our Founder & Chief Creative Officer returned to the amusement park where he started his career as a teenager to speak to 250 of Lagoon’s frontline managers. Its HR Director said after the speech: “Geoff’s enthusiasm and creativity were a perfect match to engage, encourage, and inspire our leadership team.” Our mentorship extends to speaking to IAAPA Show Ambassadors and supporting the TEA Club at the Savannah College of Art & Design. We also regurarly donate tickets to students and young professionals at industry events.
We believe it's important to be thought leaders in the industry and so we regularly speak at industry events. In fact, all of our employees have spoken in he last year at industry events on everything from getting inside the mind of GenZs to the organic success of the Savannah Bananas. Here are just a few of our speaking engagements over the last several years: 7Experiences Summit, Advisors Excel Crumpfest, Airline Historical Association, Babson College, Brigham Young University, EntertainTech Abu Dhabi, GACEP, Georgia State University, Heritage Rail Alliance, IAAPA, Lagoon, PDMA, Savannah College of Art & Design, Themed Entertainment Association, TEDx, Weissman Dance and the World Experience Organization.
Creative Principals was hired by the Coastal Heritage Society to masterplan and design its new "Savannah STEAM" experience inside the historic 1925 Storeroom at the Georgia State Railroad Museum. While we can't share visuals or details of the concepts yet, the work kicked-off with a series of three engaging full-day charrettes with educators, stakeholders and staff. The input from these charrettes then informed the master plan and designs. Creative Principals recruited some great partners to assist us in this work, including MuseumEXP and Boss Display.
Whether it's launching the web site Ask.Buzz in collaboration with the family of the legendary Harrison "Buzz" Price or publishing books like The CEO's Time Machine and Voyage to King's Cove, the team at Creative Principals believes in the power of writing and publishing. In fact, our Designer & Illustrator Mia Thatcher just signed a book deal with Shadow Mountain for a graphic novel. We are also active in sharing our thoughts online in both a Substack and in articles for The Federalist and other online publications. We're even working on a children's book about careers in the theme park industry!
Creative Principals, in partnership with Haskell, RWS and Black & Veatch, led the creative development and design of the visitor experience inside the JEA H2.O Purification Center in Jacksonville. This visitor center inside a new water purification plant is designed to educate visitors about the water cycle, aquifer and how this advanced technology works. The overall project team is led by Haskell with architect Yves Rathle and engineering partners Black & Veatch. Our scope included creative direction, writing, design and branding. As with all of our projects, a kick-off charrette with JEA and the other partners helped to bring the project team together to inspired a shared vision. The project is in the final stages of construction and soft opening with a grand opening scheduled for the first quarter of 2026.
Creative Principals has been working with FM's brand experience team since 2018 on a variety of projects, from the FM Science & Technology Centre in Singapore to its Research Campus in Rhode Island. In fact, we worked closely with its executives to develop a brand experience framework in 2020 that has helped guide all of the property insurance company's experiences around the world. We've also worked with the company's Learning Academy and Claims Department to elevate workshops and training. through experiential design. Over the last seven years, we've partnered with a number of firms such as Exhibit Concepts, 3Stage Design, Boss Displays and Elevation3D to create everything from a virtual escape room in the FM Innovation Studio to a mobile flood table in its mobile experience touring inside a semi-truck in both North America and Europe.
Since its launch in 2017, Creative Principals has worked on 19 projects with Miral, the company leading the rapid evolution of the leisure and entertainment sector on Yas Island and throughout Abu Dhabi. While we cannot share details of the projects we've worked on, we can say that they range from theme parks and museums to festivals and mixed-use developments. And every single one of these projects kicked-off with an immersive and engaging charrette. These charrettes can be done in-person or via Zoom. Either way, they focus on four key things. First, finding the story. Second, exploring ways to translate that story into experiences. Third, brainstorming how to visualize these experiences. And fourth, quick bubble planning and design studies on how these experiences might work and look within a real space.
The Chick-Fil-A College Football Hall of Fame's new GAME ON! AI Experience is getting rave reviews as a "revolutionary, wild, must-see, amazing, fantastic, wonderful, next-level and A+ experience." More importantly, the experience is generating results with attendance up 22 percent, length-of-stay up 28 percent and customer scores up 13 percent. GAME ON! is doing this by putting fans directly into the game with its new AI experience. We started working directly with the Hall of Fame in September 2023 and put together the partnership with Creative Principals, The Producers Group, HyperCinema, 3Stage Design, Forward Thinking Designs and Project Workshop that moved our concepts into final design and production in April 2024. The GAME ON! AI Experience, along with other work such as a new military exhibit, opened on the the 10th Anniversary of the College Football Hall of Fame on August 24, 2024.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum re-opened April 2, 2025 to rave reviews calling its new design "Breathtaking" and "Emotional." Axios reported that "The change was so staggering that four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears was stopped in his tracks when he laid eyes on a new gallery." Creative Principals first started working on the project in 2021 and spent two years on the initial vision, master plan and final concept design in partnership with RWS, Shiel Sexton and the staff of the museum. We delivered creative direction, story, the initial conceptual illustrations along with detailed creative treatments with sample scripting for all exhibits and media. Joe Hale, the museum's executive director during the project, praised our work, saying, "From the initial presentations with our board to facilitating workshops with key stakeholders, Creative Principals was able to help us inspire a shared vision for the museum’s future."
Creative Principals served as creative director for the launch of this new theme park in partnership with Dubai's HQ Worldwide Shows, which is part of Balich Wonder Studio. The project included everything from staging and costumes to a Batmobile and live show with fireworks. One big highlight was producing a grand opening video with YouTube Director Devin SuperTramp and Parkour Influencer Dom Tomato that went viral—generating more than 20 million views...and counting!
How does creative speed help a client like the not-for-profit J. Kruse Education Center? Well, speed can save time and money. Instead of the usual eight weeks, Creative Principals partnered with Unrivaled to deliver a visioning package in three weeks. This included a quick one-day site visit and charrette, storyline, concept plans and renderings. The J. Kruse Education Center offers programming created to help students discover the career they are passionate about and so we embraced this story of passion in every concept. The vision package we produced in 2021 was used for fundraising and since those initial brainstorming sessions, the J. Kruse Education Center's Discovery Maze is now open along with the first of 16 career PODS. In fact, since 2021, we have returned to Indiana to lead charrettes and develop concept packages for another six career PODS with a seventh scheduled for December 2025.
Kaiser Permanente turned to Creative Principals in 2022 to help with its planned move to a new location. As our Founder & Chief Creative Officer led the creative on the original experience, we helped the healthcare company put together benchmarks, budget estimates and a strategy for the move in three days to meet the internal KP deadline from the facilities team. This is yet one more example of our "Yes If" approach to work. It was the legendary Harrison "Buzz" Price who wrote about the "Yes If" mindset in his book Walt's Revolution By the Numbers. It's the idea of always saying "Yes If" instead of "No Because." He also once said, "Speed can increase quality. Work fast." And we believe in creative speed!
Delta celebrated its 100th Anniversary in April 2025 with the grand re-opening of the newly renovated Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta. Creative Principals worked closely with Imagine to develop the initial concept and vision for the new experience. This included a kick-off charrette inside the Museum's Lockheed L-1011! The renovation, produced by Imagine, includes new exhibits, media and experiences. In a review on Georgia Public Radio, a reporter said, "I was impressed by the museum’s ability to captivate visitors both young and old."
Working in partnership with JRA and Cortina Productions, Creative Principals is serving as creative director for the Ozark Mill tour and museum experience inside this new attraction being created by the Morris family from BassPro Shops. The Ozark Mill includes a general store, restaurant, bar and museum. We worked with local historians and mill experts on crafting the story, design and scripting all the media inside. While it opened in 2023, the kick-off charrette we facilitated was held in February 2021 during the tail end of the pandemic.
We've worked on three projects with the Yokogawa Corporation of America since 2020, including concepts for customer experience centers in both Sugarland, Texas and Newnan, Georgia. In fact, our concepts for the company's manufacturing facilities in Georgia are progressing with a groundbreaking in April 2025. The company’s CEO described our work in one of the kick-off charrettes as “energetic, authentic, relevant and engaging.” Most importantly, he said we “helped align everyone to move the project forward.” Most recently, we have been using AI to help take the company's Yokopups viral with a series of social media videos.
Creative Principals was hired by Miral to lead the creative on an inter-disciplinary team developing a new vision for the Al Ain Zoo in Abu Dhabi. We worked with LDP, Deloitte, SeaWorld and the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism to craft a new direction for the zoo. This work included research, benchmarks, site visit, a week-long charrette that we facilitated along with concept plans and renderings. While we can't show the details of our work, we do look forward to seeing this vision implemented over the coming years.
Creative Principals worked directly with DOPMO and Granaroli Design and Entertainment on branding the Quest Themed Experience Centre and Doha Oasis mixed-use development. This included brand guidelines, uniforms, merchandise, signage and other elements. From its animated logo to tagline, everything you see advertising this indoor theme park began with our branding work.
Creative Speed means working fast and daring to pull off the seemingly impossible. In late February 2018, Executive Producer Thinkwell Group called Creative Principals and asked a simple question: "Can you put together a team and produce an event on the Future of Entertainment in Saudi Arabia in two months?" After pulling together a team that included Peak XV handling production, David Messinger on strategy and outreach and DKC on public relations, we delivered a packed house and incredible news coverage of the Summit on the Future of Entertainment in Saudi Arabia in April 2018. As one attendee put it, "Hearing officials from Saudi Arabia come to Hollywood and declare their country open for business is big, big news."
