Westworld Season 3 Interactive Experience
Art Direction | Creative Lead
2019-2020
Outstanding Interactive Extension Of A Linear Program | 2020 Emmy Nominee
Social, Television & Film (Video) | 2021 Webby Nominee
Westworld Season 3 returns after a two year hiatus. This time the story takes place mostly outside of the parks. The audience is finally introduced to the seemingly perfect world of LA 2058. HBO saw Incite, a conglomerate that uses our data and promises a better future, and its underground counterpart RICO, as the centerpieces for an eye opening digital narrative. A phased approach brought people from 2019 into 2058, and told an interactive story through a myriad of websites, video, social media, and real-world experiences, sparking discussion around data and destiny, prompting fans to ask: is free will ever truly free?
CREATIVE STRATEGY
With the multiple fictional companies that make up the narrative of the Westworld universe, Miro lead the team through a plethora of design rounds creating and art directing various design identities to represent each different narrative explored throughout the season.
Moodboard and Inspiration
Pre Season Activations
The story of Westworld season 3 does not start where season 2 left off. Instead the story start in 2019 where a data driven start up is first seen in two major tech conventions, Wired25 and CES.
To kick off this narrative within the Westworld universe, HBO’s marketing team and Kilter Films partnered with Giant Spoon to create mind bending activations that would catch the attention of attendees and create buzz within the both the tech and tv social media space.
Wired 25 Booth
As the first introduction of this fictional company, Incite, a booth during Wired25 2019 was launched teasing prototypes of fictional products that would be later be seen during the season.
Incite Anthem
Following the introduction of Incite, an in-story anthem video was released to further tease and create anticipation for this not so distant fictional future.
INCITE AT CES
In this strictly invitation only event guests from tech media were greeted by experience managers, trained actors with a full briefing of each guests with data data gathered from guests’ social media accounts and networks. These managers with Incite pins were able to give guests a taste of a possible near future by having specific insights into guests lives, which included many details from dietary restrictions being accomodate into personalized menu’s to pet names and recent life events being brought up in conversation by people they have never met before. Having these personal insights being naturally brought up during conversations by strangers triggered conversation between the guests and within social media.
Further more the keynote included teases of the upcoming season by giving offering a trade. "If you give us your data, we'll give you certainty. If you give us your information, we can erase all doubt.”
Social videos were created during the live event teasing the tag “Welcome to Destiny”.
The most insightful vision of the future – Mashable
Can a company tell you how to live better? Welcome to Incite – Adweek
In Season Campaign
Following an in-story theme of “Data Is Destiny” set by the narrative of Rehoboam, a quantum AI computer system that is used to social engineer the whole of population. The design of the social campaign is set to be a peak into the perspective of this quantum AI.
Episodic Tune In
Teasing the upcoming episode with a glimpse of what’s to come. A visual interpretation of big data is used in a way that feels infinite and a little foreboding.
Pixel Sorting Portraits
With each passing episode characters start deviating from the destiny set by Rehoboam AI. To show case these significant beats and the AI having to upgrade its system this pixel sorting effect was used to show a versioning back/rebooting.
Frame Hold Footage
This treatment evokes a sense of simulates scenes and deep machine learning. As data is always collected and analyzed in every second and frame of the characters’ lives these social assets really showcase the monitoring of the season’s all seeing AI, Rehoboam.
BTS Instagram Content
INCITEinc.com
With the introduction of INCITE throughout the pre-premiere push a micro site which follows the story with updates reflecting major changes within the series was developed for fan interaction.
Pre Premiere Site | 2019-2039
During pre premiere marketing push the Inciteinc.com was launched giving fan a small tease of what the season has on hold.
Season Premiere Site | 2058
With the season premiere the conglomerate Incite has become a major big tech company in 2058. To reflect the time jump the Incite website was updated with a full redesign featuring a showcasing the company’s products seen in the series.
In Season and Finale | 2058
Following the narrative of season 3 incite takes a down turn with a mid season hacking of the system causing malfunctions which were reflected through a minor glitch within the site.
Mirroring the finale Incite and its machine learning AI being completely destroyed. Updates were pushed during the finale showing a completely broken site where the viewer was presented with an encrypted message from the show’s protagonist.
RICO
RICO is an app, introduced in season 3, used by individuals to accept short term and illegal work - such as robbing ATMs, kidnapping, and more. Users of the app are alerted to work that they may be qualified for.
Makemoneymotherfuckers.com
Similar with other companies within the show a microsite was created to give users a tease of what a RICO like app would feel like.
Graphic Treatment
With the nature of RICO being loud and extreme a bold typographic style was develop to show case the character of the in story app.
Social Promotion
Through a “hacking” stunt of the @WestworldHBO account on twitter Giphy stickers and an Instagram AR filter was introduced for fans to partake on the finale revolution.
