ROLI — King's Cross Activation
End-to-end creative direction for an immersive live music pop-up in King's Cross Station. A high-footfall public environment designed to shift brand perception, drive social engagement, and make ROLI's product impossible to ignore.
Services
Role Overview
Creative Direction
Concept & goals
The concept tapped into a cultural moment that was already happening:
Spontaneous piano performances in public spaces were generating viral traction across social media. Rather than manufacturing a moment from scratch, we designed around one — giving it a ROLI frame.
The centrepiece was a grand piano with a hole cut into its lid, the interior replaced with ROLI's product. An unexpected, tactile interaction that stopped people mid-commute, invited engagement, and created an instinctive shareable moment.
Goals:
Build brand awareness through a physical environment people would stop for, interact with, and share.
Translate ROLI's playful personality into a space that matched the grandeur of King's Cross without losing the brand's irreverence.
Create assets and takeaways that extended the experience beyond the station and into social feeds.
Constraints & Tradeoffs
TfL venue regulations
King's Cross is a working station. Every design and build decision required TfL approval — restricting what could be fixed to floors and walls, setting noise and access limits, and dictating installation windows. I worked alongside the external agency managing the TfL relationship to ensure the creative vision stayed intact while remaining fully compliant.
Holding brand personality in a large space
The station's architecture is imposing. Too deferential and the activation disappears; too loud and it feels out of place. The design had to be confident enough to hold its own — using the grandeur of the space rather than fighting it — while keeping ROLI's cheekiness legible.
Aligning creative and social strategy in parallel
The activation was designed to function as a social moment as much as a physical one. That meant the creative direction and influencer strategy had to be developed in tandem — the space needed to be camera-ready, the interactions shareable by design, not retrofitted for content after the fact.
Maintaining creative control through a split build
With an external agency handling TfL logistics and the physical build, the risk was losing creative coherence in translation. I maintained full sign-off on every element — from the piano installation to the printed takeaways — to ensure the executed space matched the concept, not just approximately, but exactly.
Adapting quickly when things go wrong
With no practice run and a 4am build and take down. There was a high risk of at least one element not printing as intending. Below shows one such error. As a contingency I had a few sticky vinyls printed that could be used to cover any errors.
Production Process
I led production across every workstream simultaneously: spatial design and graphics, merchandise, printed collateral, motion assets for screens, and on day shoot logistics. I managed this using Notion to build support systems and Granola to document key decisions that could be agentically turned into tasks, keeping all parties in the loop.
For print, I coordinated across multiple suppliers — signage, large-format environmental graphics, leaflets, and a set of playful branded takeaways designed to leave the station in people's pockets: train tickets, luggage tags, and branded merch. Each supplier was briefed with final files and specs; I managed amend cycles and approvals directly.
For the build, I worked closely with the external agency to translate the spatial design into installation reality — reviewing site surveys, signing off on material choices, and attending the build to direct on-site. Nothing was handed off with the expectation that someone else would make the calls.
Brand photography was coordinated with Hue Media. Shot planning, location sourcing within the station, and on-day direction were all part of my remit. Whilst the production agency managed influences and talent.
Execution
The station plot was transformed into a fully branded environment:
environmental graphics, directional signage, a centrepiece grand piano installation, and a branded surround that made the space immediately legible as ROLI's — even to someone walking past at commuter pace.
The piano installation was the anchor. Cutting the lid and installing ROLI's product inside turned a passive object into an interactive invitation — people stopped, played, photographed, and posted.
The interaction was designed to be instinctive: no instructions needed.
Branded takeaways
Train tickets, luggage tags, leaflets — extended the experience past the exit. Everything was produced to the same quality standard as the main spatial graphics; nothing felt like an afterthought.
Influencer collaborators were briefed on the space and the moment, with the activation designed to give them something genuinely worth sharing rather than a staged setup.
