XLIVE is proud to present its second annual list of Emerging Leaders. Our group of 2022 winners includes young event professionals — across both B2B and Fan Experience — whose innovation, creativity, and drive are pushing the industry forward. We will be featuring all of the winners on XLIVE over the coming weeks, so be sure to check back!
Laura Hernández’s journey to the event and entertainment industry was relatively unexpected — 10 years ago, she never imagined the role she’d be in today. While studying industrial design engineering, Hernández quickly discovered an interest in motion graphics and went on to work at Spanish production company VISYON, where she further honed her skills in immersive content and motion graphics design.
“This was back in 2015, when virtual reality, extended reality, 360-degree video — all of this innovation — was just becoming mainstream,” she says. “I think about this experience as my lucky strike, because I had the opportunity to work with all these technologies that were still in kind of a beta mode.”
Last year, Hernández started working at Fever, where she has been able to craft experiences for a wider audience and with a more global perspective, which she really enjoys. She recently moved into the role of Creative Studio Coordinator, which is part of a new division within Fever that focuses on the design and execution of original experiences, as opposed to producing experiences that are designed by other agencies and creatives.
As the manager of the Creative Studio, Hernández coordinates the team of creative and artistic directors but also likes to take part in the creative direction process, particularly for experiences that include innovative technologies like extended reality.
While she is fascinated by these technologies, she also notes that they present a challenge when it comes to the lack of widespread adoption by certain new technologies like virtual reality. “We try to figure out how we can include small bites of technology within the flow of the experience so people in the audience will be more comfortable with a more technological approach in the future,” she explains.
One of Hernández’s short-term goals is to continue to grow the Creative Studio and be able to bring on more team members, including designers, illustrators, and screenwriters. She also focuses a lot of her time on researching and continuously learning about emerging technologies and experience design, and she aims to continue to do so and share more of her ideas at conferences and lectures in the future.
Although the world is no longer as focused on digital experiences as it was during the height of the pandemic, technology will continue to play a role in engaging audiences, and Hernández notes that more interactive experiences will be key moving forward.
“What makes immersive experiences impactful is that they involve the user,” she says. “It’s about making the audience part of the show. I think that will be the most important part of experiences in the future. They are going to be more focused on what the audience wants to do, and interactivity is going to be key.”
In her everyday work, Hernández draws inspiration from artists and designers such as Es Devlin and Olafur Eliasson, who she notes are capable of transforming a space and evoking feelings just by playing with light or with colors. She also admires the work of companies like AREA15 and Moment Factory that are working to democratize immersive technology and bring it to a wider audience.
When she’s not thinking about creative ways to implement the newest technologies, Hernández extends her creativity to food — she loves cooking and plating meals in an interesting way to make an experience out of the food. She also enjoys studying art history, reaching, and dancing.