Immersive Event · 2022

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stranger

A Cold War–themed immersive party exploring apocalyptic anxieties.

Roles: Creative Director
Skills: Creative Direction, Production Design, Graphic Design, Experience Design
Venue: Historic San Francisco venue
Scale: 1800 attendees, live performances throughout, sold out in advance

Goal & Strategy

A world where the bomb already dropped and the party kept on going.

Goal

Process a collective trauma through communal celebration.

Strategy

Build the alternate nuclear history, then let guests live inside it.

The Project

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stranger was a participatory immersive party inspired by the paranoid optimism of the atomic age. Held in a historic San Francisco venue, the event transforms guests into citizens of an alternate history—complete with its own government, its own propaganda, and its own ideas about what survival should look like.

As Creative Director, I developed the core concept and visual identity for the party. I worked with ~25 teams of artists creating 2 main theatrical events, a newspaper, a working live television station, 20+ interactive installations, and an alternate reality game. I also created the party's internal structure and designed much of the party propaganda, including posters and buttons that encouraged guests to carry the fiction home with them.

Graphic Design

Fonts