A project I haven’t talked about yet: I was the projection designer for Gulf Coast Symphony’s recent production of 1776: The Musical at Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall.

The work reminded me how much of design is actually systems work.

It started as a cue spreadsheet. Scene, cue area, projection content, color palette, typography, painting reference, technical notes, status. Workable, until the cue count and the collaborator count both tripled. So I built VideoCue, a custom Mac app from scratch for this production, to keep the director, maestro, and lighting designer aligned across every visual moment. Alongside it: a concept document for the artistic through-line, and a font and image reference page so collaborators reacted to something concrete instead of guessing at my taste.

Generalists who can both design the thing and build the system that runs the thing have a real edge right now. The renders are what the audience saw. The scaffolding is what made opening night possible.