Twenty years. Every room.
Every world.
The work is serious.
Aren't we lucky to do this?
Photography available on request
Twenty years. Every format, every scale, every category of the creative and production world. If it needs a vision and a skilled hand to realise it, James has probably done it.
At NBCUniversal, James served as Production Designer — working his way up from assistant art director over the course of a career built season by season, project by project. For over a decade he defined the visual identity of Access Hollywood and Access Hollywood Live, and led the creative direction of NBC's Owned & Operated Television Stations digital and streaming division with a team of creatives. He designed Emmy Awards Arrivals Carpets for NBC and FOX (one year), as well as the multi-network arrival environments broadcast simultaneously by NBC, E!, NBC News, and Access Hollywood.
The awards season circuit — Emmys, Grammys, SAG Awards, CMAs, Oscars — is a specialized, recurring discipline James has practiced for twenty years, starting as an assistant art director and building into the person who owns the room. Broadcast positions, set environments, talent greenrooms, holding spaces. Every major show. Every year. For two decades.
Beyond broadcast: Formula 1 opening ceremonies and VIP experiences at Circuit of the Americas. International press junket environments for Amazon, Universal, Illumination, and Nintendo in Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo. A complete broadcast facility designed for beIN Sports. A Showtime talk show with the creators of The Daily Show. Retail environments at Westfield LAX and Whole Foods. Interiors for producers and talent. Landscape. Apparel. Ad campaigns. Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.
Now permanently based in Nice on the Côte d'Azur — bringing that range, that calm, and twenty years of trust built in the rooms that matter, to Europe's most compelling creative market.
Five disciplines. One creative director. Organised by the worlds James designs — because the range is the point.
For over a decade, Production Designer for one of American television's most iconic entertainment franchises — defining and continuously evolving the visual world of Access Hollywood across hundreds of episodes, every awards season, and every major entertainment moment. A sustained, living creative relationship with one of the most recognized brands in entertainment journalism. The show is still on air today.
The major awards season circuit is a specialized, recurring discipline — and James has been working it for twenty years, starting as an assistant art director. Emmy Awards Arrivals Carpets for NBC and FOX (one year). Broadcast presence, set positions, and talent greenrooms across the Grammys, SAG Awards, CMAs, and Academy Awards. A People's Choice red carpet in Las Vegas. Every year the circuit comes around — James brings two decades of compounded expertise to every inch of it.
Production design for a Showtime talk show produced by the creators of The Daily Show — a project that demanded wit, political intelligence, and visual sophistication in equal measure.
Design of live broadcast environments across multiple iconic Los Angeles locations — Santa Monica, the Universal Studios backlot, news set and studio design at the NBC News Brokaw Center at Universal, and a broadcast studio designed within the offices of People Magazine.
Design of a complete broadcast news facility for beIN Sports — from studio environments through on-air graphics and presentation. A broadcast world designed from the ground up at international sports news scale.
Set design for SNL cold opens — the most watched minutes of weekly American comedy. Built overnight, struck within hours, flawless on camera. The same precision as the grandest red carpet, compressed into hours.
Full-spectrum creative production for Formula 1 at Circuit of the Americas — set and environment design, brand activation design, production design for broadcast coverage, VIP event experiences, opening ceremony design, flyover coordination, and entertainment programming during ceremonies. One of the most complex live event environments in sport, executed across every creative dimension simultaneously.
Creative and production design for the MTV Video Music Awards red carpet. Louder, bolder, more viscerally designed than any other awards show. The VMAs demand a different register — James delivered.
Bespoke event design for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs — intimate, personal productions that demand the same creative attention and execution precision as any broadcast or live event, scaled to the most meaningful moments in a family's life.
Press junket set and environment design for international film premiere events across four of the most powerful entertainment and IP brands in the world. Productions executed in Berlin, Rome, and Japan — each demanding cultural fluency, creative excellence, and the logistical precision of international production. When studios trust the press event that introduces their film to the world's media, they trusted James to design the room it happened in.
Immersive guest experience design for Universal Studios — physical environments where beloved television and film properties come to life at theme park scale, designed in close collaboration with Universal's broadcast and studio divisions.
Set and environment design across multiple original series for BET — each production its own visual world, built to serve the story, the talent, and the audience of one of American television's most culturally significant networks.
Retail space and store environment design for Westfield at Los Angeles International Airport and Whole Foods — two of the most demanding retail contexts in America. LAX Westfield is one of the highest-footfall retail environments in the world. Both required visual thinking that serves commerce, brand, and customer experience simultaneously.
Interior design for the private residences of entertainment industry producers and talent — warm, eclectic spaces collected over time. The most personal application of design thinking, where the brief is someone's life.
Landscape design extending James's spatial practice into the outdoor environment. The same principles apply everywhere: space, light, texture, and story. The design doesn't stop at the threshold.
Set design for MSNBC and NBC's live daily news programming — environments communicating authority, credibility, and visual clarity under the unforgiving conditions of live news broadcasting.
Overseeing studio set builds for Quibi, Rotten Tomatoes, and Snapchat at the frontier of short-form and digital streaming. Two Quibi productions were fully built when the platform collapsed. When COVID shut down studio production, James pivoted to designing at-home broadcast environments for Rotten Tomatoes talent — a discipline that became essential across the entire industry in 2020, and that James was uniquely equipped to deliver.
As Creative Director and Production Designer for NBC's Owned & Operated Television Stations digital and streaming division, James shaped the visual identity across NBC's national digital infrastructure — original streaming series, live streaming events, and digital brand content. Where broadcast ends and digital begins.
Collaborated with HBO on the testing and development of flying camera technology on an airfield — an experimental R&D initiative exploring new possibilities for aerial cinematography and live production capture. The kind of work that happens at the edge of what television can do.
Art direction and production design for advertising campaigns across apparel and automotive brands — extending James's visual practice into commercial persuasion, where every frame must earn attention and communicate brand identity with precision.
Twenty years across every format, scale, and category — now available to the brands, agencies, festivals, and productions of the French Riviera and beyond. US-trained. Riviera-based. Ready.
Immersive brand experiences for Cannes Film Festival, Cannes Lions, Monaco Grand Prix, and the Riviera's luxury event circuit. Designed to perform live and look extraordinary on camera.
End-to-end creative leadership for large-scale live events, opening ceremonies, galas, festivals, and corporate productions. The vision and the execution, unified — with network television standards.
Production design and art direction for film, television, broadcast, and live performance. Environments that tell stories — at any scale, under any deadline, in any country.
On-the-ground production support for international film and television in the South of France. US-trained creative direction. Deep local knowledge. Established Riviera crew relationships.
Most creative directors speak one visual language. After twenty years across every format and category, James speaks all of them — and stays calm the whole time.
Questions first. Always. I ask until I understand your world, not just your brief.
Sketches, mood boards, references — the first unfiltered language of creative thinking.
3D renders, physical models, photorealistic visualisations — until the vision is undeniable.
The thing nobody mentioned in the brief. That one too.
On camera. On time. The show goes out. It always does.
Most creative directors own one discipline. James has spent twenty years mastering five — and moving fluidly between all of them. The range is the differentiator.
NBC · FOX · Emmy Awards · Golden Globes · Access Hollywood · SNL · Showtime · HBO · BET · MSNBC · beIN Sports
Formula 1 · COTA · Opening Ceremonies · VIP Experiences · MTV VMAs · Bar & Bat Mitzvahs · People's Choice
Amazon · Universal · Illumination · Nintendo · Berlin · Rome · Tokyo · Universal Studios Theme Park · BET Series
Westfield LAX · Whole Foods · People Magazine · Talent Interiors · Landscape Design · NBC News Brokaw Center
NBC O&TS · Quibi · Rotten Tomatoes · Snapchat · AOL · Yahoo · HBO R&D · Apparel · Automotive Campaigns
The Riviera's creative season isn't a few weeks in May. It runs twelve months — and James is here for all of it. Not flying in. Not a consultant from London. A permanent creative partner, on the ground, in the market.
Whether you're a global agency looking for a trusted Riviera creative partner, a brand planning your next Cannes or Monaco activation, a studio with a press event in Europe, or a production needing US-standard creative direction in the South of France — let's talk.