This is the first in a new series where Founder & Creative Director, Michael Mastrodimos unpacks the principles behind what we call Intentional Experience Design – how we think about building live experiences at Peanut Productions. This one starts with the principle everything else sits underneath.
At Peanut Productions, we believe every event should be intentionally designed to create meaningful outcomes. We call this Intentional Experience Design – the deliberate shaping of every environment, interaction and moment to help people better understand, connect with and act on an organisation’s message.
It didn’t come from a workshop. It came from over 25 years of designing live experiences, and from one belief that has held up longer than any other:
Every decision should serve a purpose.
That sounds obvious. A recent project tested whether I actually practice it…
The Canopy
Earlier this year, my team and I spent months designing what I believed would be the defining visual feature of a major conference for 7-Eleven Australia – a striking architectural canopy inspired by a 7-Eleven forecourt, suspended above a 32-metre LED wall and stage. It was bold, iconic, beautifully resolved. The client loved it. The team loved it. I loved it. It became the hero asset of the conference.
As the project evolved, hard calls had to be made about what would stay and what would go. I argued to keep the canopy. I believed in it.
Then someone on the team asked a simple question: what does the canopy actually represent?
Fuel. Obviously.
But this conference wasn’t about fuel – it was about 7-Eleven’s future as a food and beverage destination. The story we needed to tell had moved on, and the canopy hadn’t moved with it.
That’s the moment discipline matters more than instinct. It’s easy to defend an idea you believe in. It’s harder to ask whether the idea still belongs – and to act on the answer even when you’re the one who has to let it go. So we removed it.
In its place, the Experience Center became the real focus: 52 key suppliers and 12 of 7-Eleven’s own activations, built around hands-on engagement – games, tasting, touch – that let people experience the food-forward direction the conference was actually about. It did more for the story than the canopy ever would have.
Function Over Form
I’ve always been drawn to the idea that purpose should determine design, not the other way around. The best products, buildings and environments aren’t memorable because they contain more – they’re memorable because every decision earns its place. The same principle applies to live experiences.
Exceptional events aren’t built by accumulating ideas. They’re built by making better decisions, most of which are invisible to the audience: which door people enter through, what order the agenda runs in, when hospitality happens, whether a piece of technology genuinely improves understanding or is simply impressive. Individually these look small. Together, they determine whether an event achieves its purpose.
Every project at Peanut Productions starts with one question: what needs to be different because this event happened? Once that’s clear, everything else gets easier to decide – technology stops being the hero and starts serving the story, spaces are designed to influence behaviour rather than impress, and even a coffee break becomes an opportunity to create conversations that wouldn’t otherwise happen.
“…the true measure of any event isn’t what happens while people are there. It’s what happens because they were there.”
Constraints, Not Budgets
One of the biggest misconceptions about our industry is that memorable events come from bigger budgets or more elaborate production. In my experience, the opposite is usually true. Some of the strongest creative decisions I’ve made happened when budget forced us to stop asking “what else can we add?” and start asking “what matters most?” Constraints reveal clarity. They force you to remove distraction and put investment behind the ideas that actually move an audience toward the outcome you want.
Events rarely fail because of one major mistake. More often they lose coherence gradually, because purpose gives way to preference – teams get absorbed in individual elements and stop stepping back to experience the whole journey. The best event designers keep shifting perspective: zoom in to perfect the detail, zoom out to experience it as a delegate would, then zoom back in.
None of this happens without a team that understands not just what they’re doing, but why. When people believe in the purpose behind an event, they make better decisions without being told to.
What This Means for Your Next Event
Great events aren’t remembered for one spectacular stage or one clever activation. They’re remembered because hundreds of thoughtful decisions came together to create one meaningful experience.
Before you plan your next one, three questions worth asking:
- What do we want people to understand?
- What do we want them to feel?
- What do we want them to do differently because they were there?
Because the true measure of any event isn’t what happens while people are there. It’s what happens because they were there.
Next in this series: how my start in event intentional design began in fashion and film.
About Michael Mastrodimos
Michael Mastrodimos is the Founder and Creative Director of Peanut Productions and the creator of Intentional Experience Design – a way of thinking shaped by more than 25 years of designing live experiences and now central to how Peanut Productions approaches every project.
His career began with an ambition to become a filmmaker before taking an unexpected turn into fashion, where he discovered the power of combining storytelling, design, music and environment to create experiences around people. As his career moved into corporate events and brand experiences, that creative foundation became increasingly connected to a more strategic question: not simply what should an experience look like, but why does it exist and what does it need to achieve?
Michael founded Peanut Productions in 2011, bringing together his experience in storytelling, creative design and live events. Since then, Peanut Productions has grown from a small, founder-led business into a full-service experience agency spanning strategy, creative, event production, content, incentive travel and delegate management, trusted by organisations including 7-Eleven, BMW Australia, Jaguar Land Rover, Stockland, TCS and Coca-Cola EuroPacific Partners.
Michael continues to lead the creative and strategic direction of the company’s most significant projects, working closely with clients to translate business objectives and brand stories into experiences that connect people, communicate with purpose and inspire action.
Over time, the lessons from thousands of creative, strategic and operational decisions have evolved into Intentional Experience Design: the belief that every decision should serve a purpose and every element of an experience should earn its place.
Through The Intentional Series, Michael shares the experiences, observations and lessons that have shaped his thinking – exploring event strategy, creativity, storytelling, brand experience and the discipline behind designing live experiences that create meaningful outcomes.
