selects
lightovation
visual trend
displays
As Creative Director at Dallas Market Center, my challenge wasn’t merely to fill the floor—it was to galvanize it. At Lightovation, North America’s largest residential lighting show. I led a two-pronged creative strategy: inspire buyers while empowering exhibitors.
Partnering with Global Trend Ambassador Patti Carpenter, we created a 40-page trend report, “Beginnings, Beauty, Balance and Belonging,” exploring how design reconnects us to heritage, material honesty, and emotional resonance. I then translated each of its four key trend narratives into immersive, physical environments—living sets where light became both subject and storyteller.
VISUAL MERCHANDISING + TREND INTERPRETATION + SET DESIGN + AI BACKGROUNDS + BUYER & EXHIBITOR MARKETING
THE CONCEPT
Each display embodied one of the report’s guiding themes:
BEGINNINGS • BELONGING • BALANCE • BEAUTY
THE BUILD
Each of these four environments was curated from dozens of exhibitors and installed as miniature stage sets inside the trade floor.
Products were selected not by brand, but by story—arranged like characters within each trend narrative.
Custom AI-generated backgrounds (developed before generative tools were widely available) extended each theme beyond its physical walls, creating depth and atmosphere impossible to achieve with standard fabrication.
The displays became editorial theatre—buyers stepped inside the trends they’d just read about; exhibitors saw their products contextualized within design’s future. Dallas
Market Center wasn’t just hosting Lightovation—it was staging it.
beginnings:
heralding our heritage
Rooted in craft and nostalgia, this display celebrated the handmade. We mixed vintage-inspired fixtures, gilded edges, and tactile surfaces that nodded to global craft traditions, past informing future.
belonging:
a reset to reality
This set leaned forward—glowing color, mirrored surfaces, and iridescent finishes reflected the blurred space between the real and digital. It was a conversation between craftsmanship and the Metaverse, tactile and virtual.
balance:
the artisty of nature
An ode to renewal and creative reset. This space used soft diffused light and organic forms to evoke calm—a physical meditation on empathy, equity, and connection.
beauty:
“We built the story first—then let the light tell it.”
modern maker moments
Here, form met function with sculptural precision. Tubular structures, circular silhouettes, and responsible sourcing created a modernist palette that honored both maker and material.
REFLECTION
The 2023 trend collaboration established Lightovation as a benchmark for how trade shows can function as trend laboratories—bridging analysis and artistry.
For me, the work was about transformation: turning data into emotion, research into rhythm, and light into language.