Ten years ago, Live Design talked to Michael Fullman about his creative design firm, VT Pro Design. The company had recently worked on a wide-range of projects including a European tour for Linkin Park, performances at Coachella, and an interactive sculpture installation. This year we revisit Fullman as VT Pro Design rebrands as ACRONYM.
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Live Design: Ten years ago you told Live Design that you started out by learning to program an ETC Express – what advice would you give young people starting out in the industry? What technical skills should they master and is there one part of the industry that you would recommend getting experience in?
Michael Fullman: I started out learning everything. The ETC Express was one part of it — but it was just that, one part. Programming, focusing, paperwork, scenic build, media creation — I wasn't trying to specialize, I was just trying to understand how it all worked. And honestly, I think that's what shaped everything that came after.
There are really two paths when you're starting out. You can go deep on one thing and become a specialist. Or you can learn a medium amount about a lot of things and start to see how they all connect. I took the second path, and I'd recommend it.
What I figured out pretty quickly was that the technical skills and the design skills aren't actually separate. They're in conversation with each other. The more I understood about how something was built, the more clearly I could design it. And the more I developed a point of view conceptually, the better I understood what tools I actually needed.
So if I had to boil it down — learn conceptual design first. Develop a way of seeing and thinking about things. Then learn as many ways as you can to express that intention. The tools will keep changing. That thinking is what carries you.
LD: In 2016 you had recently designed a kinetic light sculpture and a Linkin’ Park international tour. Now you are designing immersive experiences and spectacles for Netflix and immersive experiences for conferences and keynotes like Figma. How would you say audience and client expectations have changed in the last ten years?
MF: Ten years ago we were doing ambitious things. Today we're still doing ambitious things — just at a completely different scale and with a much deeper understanding of why they actually matter.
Audiences have changed. People crave in-person experience more than ever, but they're also a lot more discerning about where they spend their time, their money, their attention. The bar has gone up. An experience has to earn its place in someone's life. It has to cut through the noise and mean something when it does.
Clients are starting to get that too. They're recognizing that meeting an audience through experience is one of the highest-value things they can do right now. A lot of the marketing activity that worked ten years ago just doesn't hit the same way anymore. And the brands that are paying attention know it.
For us, it's meant really committing to experience as a discipline — not tied to any one medium or format, just committed to the craft of it whatever shape it takes.
LD: What technology is now part of your toolbox that was not around in 2016? How did you stay on top of the learning curve?
MF: The honest answer is AI. And it's taken more forms for us than I ever could have predicted.
We use it directly inside projects. We use it behind the scenes in how the company actually operates. We use it as a creative tool for ideation and development. It's become a genuine part of our creative technology stack in a way that past me could only have dreamed about — and honestly probably did.
What it's unlocked most meaningfully is hyper-personalization at scale. The ability to build experiences that respond to and reflect each individual audience member in real time. Last year we did a project with HBO for Welcome to Derry — we used combinations of voice agents, video generation, and personalized takeaways, all generated in real time for every single person moving through the experience. We just flat out could not have done that ten years ago. Not even close.
That one's still the project I point to. It was technically complex, creatively demanding, and it worked. And it felt like real proof of where all of this is going.
LD: Where do you see the industry going next? What technology is coming down the pipe that you are eager to see?
MF: The industry keeps evolving. And I think the only way to stay relevant inside that is to be genuinely willing to reinvent yourself — not as a survival tactic, but because the work demands it.
What I've been thinking about lately isn't actually the next big emerging technology. It's the democratization of what already exists. Hardware and software that were inaccessible ten years ago — too expensive, too specialized, too hard to get your hands on — are now available, learnable, and playable. The barriers are lower. And that changes what's possible, especially for teams willing to experiment.
LD: Tell us about the rebrand. What does it indicate about the evolution of the industry, your place in the industry, and the direction you are headed in?
MF: We spent a long time as VT Pro Design. That name meant something — it carried our history, our roots in live production and touring. And we're genuinely proud of that.
But names have to mean what you actually do. And what we do has changed.
We're Acronym now. And that name reflects something true about where we are and where we're headed. We're less defined by a single medium or format and more defined by a way of working — the craft of designing experiences, whatever shape they take. Live events, brand activations, immersive installations, content, technology-driven environments. All of it.
Ten years ago we were sub-30 people. Today we're close to 100, across two offices, with some of the most talented people I've ever worked with. The company grew because the work grew. And the rebrand is really just an honest acknowledgment of that — a reflection of who we've actually become.
Being willing to reinvent yourself matters. It lets you evolve without losing what made you who you are in the first place. And honestly, that's the part I find most energizing — the continual learning, the continual change. That's what keeps this whole thing interesting.