An Interface Story
Studio: Framestore NY · Agency: VML · Director: Dave Meyers
Role: 2D/3D Motion Design, lab UI design and animation
Background
Virgin Voyages and Jennifer Lopez made an ad about AI, by building one. "Jen AI" opens with J.Lo lounging on a cruise ship as Virgin's Chief Celebration Officer. Then she glitches. Turns out she's an avatar, run by a team of Virgin employees in a control room, taking turns at the mic.
The joke only works if the control room feels real. That's where I came in, designing and animating the lab's screens and UI, working with Framestore's team.
Problem
The interfaces had one job: prove there are humans behind the machine. Biometrics, tracking, body wireframes, all of it had to read as a real operation at a glance. But the reveal is also the punchline, and the performances carry it. If the screens shout, the joke dies.
:30 Spot
Challenge
Screen space. The lab is packed with actors, monitors, and motion-capture rigs, and the UI had to live in the gaps. My first pass was too detailed. It looked great up close and turned to clutter in the frame. The hard part of interface work isn't drawing the detail. It's knowing how much to take away.
Transitions
Approach
So I dialed it back. Simplified every element until it read clearly at a glance and got out of the way. Less-is-more was the team's whole approach: keep the design clean, support the reveal, never compete with the performances. I helped shape the look, the transitions, and the pacing, including one of the spot's key moments, the handoff from the cruise world into the lab.
The production matched the trick. J.Lo's scenes shot on a real ship in Miami. The lab shot later in L.A., with actors mimicking her locked footage, which made the whole illusion land even better.
UI Designs and Animations
Results
The spot launched a campaign that let anyone send a custom invite from Jen AI, and it traveled. Coverage from CNBC, Ad Age, and The Drum, plus a multimillion-dollar push Virgin funded at Super Bowl-ad scale and told CNBC was already paying off in bookings.
And the part I keep coming back to: an ad about AI, where the whole gag is that people are running the show. My job was designing what the humans see.