Snap AWE 2026 Keynote

Client: Snap Inc. Production: FutureDeluxe Role: Technical Director & Motion Designer

For Snap’s AWE 2026 keynote introducing SPECS, I designed and animated motion graphics, and build a multi-screen Keynote presentation for the Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy keynotes for a large-scale live event in Long Beach.

With dozens of deliverables across multiple artists, I built the pipeline the team depended on: a production spreadsheet unifying naming conventions, status, and asset links; Figma file architecture for team production; After Effects tooling and templates; AppleScripts automating keynote development; and render specs ensuring clean asset integration.

Production Pipeline

From script to screen, this diagram visualize how assets moved through production and onto the LED stage.

Production Tooling

With over 100 slides across two keynotes and multiple artists working simultaneously, a dedicated project setup was essential to keep design and client review in sync.

Production began with a single source of truth: a client-provided script, brought into Google Slides, then structured into a Google Sheet via Google Apps Script. From the exported CSV, custom tools (a Figma plugin, AE ScriptUI), Python, and AppleScript) automatically bootstrapped the entire project environment: Figma pages and frames, After Effects compositions, AI voiceover audio, and Keynote slides.

Figma Project Setup

I built a Figma plugin that ingests our production spreadsheet CSV and auto-generates individual slide pages with correct naming conventions, each linking back to the client’s script in Google Slides. Artists can immediately start designing within these pages and push finals to a Storyboard page, allowing the team to step through the full presentation in Figma prototype mode without ever opening Keynote

Cross linking between storyboard and individual pages

AE Project Setup

In the same vein, I built an After Effects script that ingests the production spreadsheet and automatically generates compositions for both center and side screens to specs, correctly named, organized, and ready for artists to work in.

Eliminating the manual process of parsing spreadsheet data and creating comps by hand removed a significant source of human error and saved approximately four hours of setup time per keynote. This was accompanied by a ScriptUI panel that helps artists upversion their stringout (a section-level preview of the keynote) along with individual screen previews in a 3-up layout, all with automated folder organization.

Optimizing & Splitting Renders for Keynote

A core challenge in our workflow was that artists animated to voiceover for stringout previews, meaning most renders came in longer than needed for Keynote. Replacing media in Keynote resets its existing programming ( transitions, trim points, loop settings) making iterative updates costly.

To keep the presentation lightweight and ensure smooth playback, I built the Queue Segments script, which automatically extracts only the essential in and out moments of each render. This was critical: it kept file sizes manageable, preserved Keynote programming across updates, and gave the team a repeatable, low-friction path from animation to live presentation.