Google Pixel 2 @ Selfridges Flipside

Radical Luxury at The Flipside

In spring 2018, Selfridges invited Google to take part in The Flipside, a multi-sensory exhibition inside The Old Selfridges Hotel in London exploring the idea of Radical Luxury alongside Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Byredo, Thom Browne, Gareth Pugh, and Mr Lyan.

While the rest of the exhibition looked at luxury through fashion, scent, and physical objects, Google Creative Lab asked a simpler, more personal question: What does luxury mean to you?

The result was Your Luxury Portrait, an interactive visual installation created by Google Creative Lab in collaboration with TEM and fabricated by MDM Props, built to showcase the low-light photography of the Google Pixel 2.

Stepping Inside the Camera Lens

Spanning a darkened gallery space, the installation was formed from a giant tunnel of concentric mirrored glass rings and projected light, a physical nod to the extruded camera lens on the back of the Google Pixel 2.

Stepping inside the rings to an interactive plinth, visitors selected a series of images representing the places, experiences, and moments that felt like true luxury to them. Those choices generated a bespoke projection-mapped backdrop and soundscape signature in real time, while a Google Pixel 2 captured their low-light portrait framed through the concentric mirrors.

The Oxford Street Window Display

Working with the Google Creative Lab team, I was responsible for envisioning and delivering the animations for the Selfridges window display right on Oxford Street.

Framed like a giant circular lens looking in from the pavement, the window connected the busy street outside to the darkened exhibition space inside The Old Selfridges Hotel. Using photographs shot on the Pixel 2, I played extensively with After Effects expressions to build an organic, procedural animation system: concentric rings, slices, and geometric apertures rippling and breathing continuously around the portraits.

From Take-Home Prints to London Billboards

Every visitor left the exhibition with their portrait printed inside a custom embossed Your Luxury Portrait sleeve, alongside a digital loop to share. Throughout the two-month run, a curated selection of visitor portraits was also broadcast across giant digital out-of-home screens in London, including Old Street Roundabout, and later reinstalled at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park.