A Format Story
Agency: Huge
Role: Motion Design Lead
Background
Apple Card's Q2 2026 "Unlimited 2% Daily Cash" campaign ran as a DOOH takeover at premium retail, Forum Shops at Caesars in Vegas, Fashion Show, Aventura and Brickell in Miami. The message and the placement were the same idea: 2% back on everything you buy, right here, right now. The motion had to land that at a glance and hold Apple's bar across every screen the venues had.
Problem
Every venue had its own screen, vertical pylons, ultra-wide ribbons running over a hundred feet, overhead spans, kiosks, and dome-projected facades. Same campaign, wildly different canvases. Scaling the designs up to fit those screens is where things break. Type proportions that read cleanly at standard size lose their legibility once they're blown up; what reads as balanced shrinks to a sliver on a 12:1 ribbon. Gradients that look clean at smaller sizes start banding the moment they're stretched across the curved dome at Caesars, and the venue spec capped output at 8-bit instead of 16-bit, which is where Apple's pastel palette has the least room to hide. Easing that feels right at a small scale drags when it has to carry across a hundred feet of overhead display. And every fix has to be tested at full resolution; render times easily hit an hour on some machines. One bad call costs a day.
Challenge
Take the approved Apple Card static designs and bring them to motion across every venue's screen, vertical pylons, ribbons, overhead spans, kiosks, the curved dome at Caesars. Hold Apple's bar at every size. Ship to four premium U.S. retail destinations on a Q2 deadline. Over 50 outputs. Two motion designers. Two weeks.
Approach
I rebuilt the motion for each placement instead of scaling one master version. Timing got tuned to the size and the viewing distance, slower, longer holds on the big horizontal ribbons where the eye has to travel; tighter, snappier moves on the vertical pylons where people glance and walk on. Gradient renders were re-tuned for each screen size so Apple's pastel palette held its softness instead of banding. Type and the iPhone hero got re-spaced for every frame, so each composition felt designed for that placement, not adapted into it.
The motion language carried over from the original approved static designs. My job was bringing it to motion and holding the bar across every output.
Results
The motion ran at Forum Shops at Caesars, Fashion Show, Aventura, and Brickell, Apple's primary Q2 2026 DOOH placements at premium U.S. retail.