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Christian Pugsley

Product Design & Strategy +




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The Future Happened:

Designing the Future of Music




TLDR:
A digital museum exhibition that examines how design and art deepens our relationship with music and the artists that create it.
Press:
It’s Nice That
Recording Academy – Grammy.com
Fast Company Info:
Client: Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA)
Role: Lead Web Designer, Producer, Developer
Date: opened April 2021 - April 2024







The Future Happened is an exhibition that examines how design and art deepens our relationship with music. Exploring how design can be key in sharing our stories and amplifying our power to make a difference in the world. Examining innovation and technology that enhances connections and opens doors, reinforcing our capacity to spark change.

This exhibit was built over the course of the COVID19 Pandemic starting April of 2020, collaborating remotely from across the world to make it happen.


Attendance

20,000+ Online exhibit visitors



Digital Concert Series

3,500+ Atendees



Production Timeline

8 Months



Lifespan

3 Years







I was asked by Lawrence Azzerad + LADDesign (now  in early 2020, as the COVID19 Pandemic was ramping up, if I wanted to be a part of the team that would design and build the first ever entirely digital exhibition to be put on by the Museum of Design Atlanta. We worked remotely over the course of the year to plan, design, execute, and launch the exhibition in April of 2021. Working with over 40 different independent exhibitioners from around the world, the Future Happened: Designing the Future of Music was a celebration of all things music and technology, with interactive experiences, interviews with the artists and designers, and a live concert series held entirely online over the course of the first few months the exhibit was open. 



Design



Our goal throughout the course of the design process was to find a way to encourage visitors to explore. Unlike in a physical exhibition where visitors are free to walk and wander around the space, websites can be fairly limiting with only one screen to see at a time. And when our overarching goal was equally showcase all of our exhibitioners, this challenge became our main focus to solve for.

Our solution was a combination of guided experiences through the content, following one of a select number of themes: Healing, Power, Community, Tech, Timeless, and Atlanta. Each theme contained a collection of artists and exhibitioners from the entire group, but many exhibitioners overlapped categories and themes which helped take visitors across from one side to the other.

Additionally, I designed the homepage to be a collection of tiles filled with images or text, one for each exhibitioner in the exhibit. But with the help of a little bit of code, each time a visitor lands on the homepage of the site, the order of the tiles is randomly assigned, giving you a different view everytime you hit the page.







Curation Team

Lawrence Azerrad – Lead Curator
Ruby Savage – Curator
Floyd Hall – Curator
Marlon Fuentes – Curator


Production Team

Sarah Panzer – Producer, Associate Curator
Christian Pugsley – Lead Web Designer, Producer, Developer
Harika Adivikolan – Education Initiative Author, Producer, Web Designer
Omar El-Sabrout – Exhibit Text Author / Editor
Seetharaman Subramanian – Web Production
Daniel Karaj – Web Production, Lead Interview Editor
Oriana Ren – Graphic Design
MODA

Laura Flusche, Ph.D. – Executive Director
Veronica Klucik – Exhibitions Manager
Ross Landenberger – Marketing Manager


Support

Aileen Farshi – Social Media
Austin Aubry – Interview Editing
Ayana Enomoto-Hurst – Interview Editing
Blue Hominy : Hadley Bazemore – Public Relations / Publicity
David Pugsley – Technical Drawings
David Onwukeme – Interview Editing
Kevin Lee – Interview Editing
Marco Da Re – Interview Editing
Thomas Pugsley – Interview Editing, Music Production


© 2025 Christian Pugsley.