Bloomberg Government
Painting Washington in Data
By 5:30 a.m., inboxes across Washington are already lit. Aides skim amendments between Metro stops, lobbyists rehearse talking points on curbside calls, CEOs land at DCA craving a read on the Hill. Dropping a new insight platform into that noise should have felt impossible—unless the launch itself proved the product’s value.
In my role as Motion, Projection & Interactive Director, I was handed a delicious challenge: turn Bloomberg Government (BGOV) into moving, glowing proof—culminating in a moment where Union Station’s century-old façade became my canvas.
Ride-along research showed that the heaviest information exchanges happen in transit—Metro tunnels, security queues, five-minute walks between buildings. Our visuals had to earn notice in the seven-minute ride from Gallery Place/Chinatown to Union Station, deliver value, then vanish.
Sunrise: for 12 straight hours Union Station’s façade carried a 95-foot live dashboard. iPad-equipped staff stood by to walk commuters through an instant-trial sign-up.
Morning rush: full-motion panels inside Gallery Place/Chinatown ran a two-phase animation—data spike to stop the scroll, QR reveal to start the trial—conversion completed before riders cleared the escalator.
Midday: newsletter GIFs obeyed a three-frame limit, mirroring Bloomberg’s clipped cadence—one insight, one action.
Dusk: QR codes blanketed walls, pillars, and way-finding screens; and more iPad-equipped staffers supporting sign-ups.
I led a six-person projection team, aligning 4 laser projectors to millimeter tolerances so infrastructure spend could ripple across ionic columns. The station’s marble concourse became a pop-up command center, and for one commuter cycle the entire neighborhood glowed Bloomberg green.
A strict motion grammar held everything together: acceleration on data spikes, deceleration at insight moments; gradient shards slicing through sandstone; copy stripped to verbs and nouns—no fluff.
Metrics
Site sessions up 12×
Page depth up 5×
Average cost-per-lead down 50%
Give data the right tempo and the right canvas—even a granite landmark—and Washington’s most saturated commuters will look up, engage, and act.
Team
Steven Kostant
| Creative Strategist
Marc Dionne
| Creative Director
Allen Hopper
| Associate Creative Director
Andrew McClellan
| Motion, Projection and Interactive Director
Will McHenry
| Motion and 3D animator
Yan Goldshmidt
| Motion designer
