Leading AI driven experiential design for Walmart Marketplace
Walmart Marketplace
Integrated brand and experiential system
Walmart Marketplace is a young business within Walmart, operating with the pace and ambiguity of an early‑stage startup inside a much larger organization. The brand is still forming and the team is exploring how it should show up across digital and experiential channels. I am leading an exploratory phase that tests two major components of the evolving identity: 3D brand objects and a new gel‑lighting portrait style. Both are new to the brand and require learning what translates well at scale and what needs refinement. The work is helping define how the brand performs across digital, print and large‑format environments and how the portrait system can support clarity and consistency as the brand continues to grow.
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Jennifer Wanderer, Senior Designer, Brand and Experiential
Chris Adkins, 3D Designer
https://marketplace.walmart.com/ -
Walmart Marketplace is still in an early stage of growth and the brand is evolving as the business expands. The team is defining how the identity performs across digital and experiential channels, with new visual elements being tested in real time. This includes 3D brand objects, gel‑lighting portrait styles and large‑format event applications that introduce new behaviors for the brand.
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Build clarity and consistency across high‑visibility seller‑facing moments while exploring how new brand elements scale. This includes understanding how 3D objects function across surfaces, how gel‑lighting portraits support storytelling and how the evolving identity adapts to large‑format environments used for summits, trade shows and multichannel campaigns.
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The work centers on an exploratory design process that tests new brand components at multiple scales. 3D objects are evaluated for clarity, legibility and motion potential, while gel‑lighting portraits are refined to support a cohesive photography system. These explorations inform environmental graphics, booth layouts and digital touchpoints, creating a more unified brand experience across Marketplace events and campaigns.
AI gel lighting photography system: Developing the gel lighting approach
The new Walmart Marketplace brand introduces a studio‑quality portrait style inspired by Mamadi Doumbouya, with sculpted lighting, rich midtones and brand‑driven gel color. These portraits appear across landing pages, social content, presentations and webinars. Without access to a studio or lighting equipment, I recreate this look using AI while keeping each seller’s face, clothing and expression the same.
Early experiments
I began by testing whether AI could apply the brand’s sculpted gel lighting to an existing portrait without altering the person. I started in Midjourney using a studio photo I had taken years earlier and tested countless prompts to preserve his pose, clothing and expression. The lighting worked but the model kept changing his face and proportions. These tests showed the limits of generative tools for identity‑preserving edits. The breakthrough came when I discovered Nano Banana, which finally allowed me to keep the original photo while adding controlled gel lighting.
Midjourney got the gels right, but the identity drifted
Nano Banana preserved the real photo and added gels without altering the person
Building the AI photography gel system
I created 15 portraits that became part of the global brand library for the Walmart Marketplace brand. They appear across keynotes, landing pages, webinars and team presentations, so the workflow needs to be fast, consistent and easy for others to use.
I start with the original photo, then use Freepik’s Nano Banana to apply controlled gel lighting without altering identity. I refine lighting in Luminar Neo and finish in Photoshop for final consistency. After extensive iteration, I wrote a reliable Nano Banana prompt that produces clean results with almost no drift. When Photoshop released its own Nano Banana version, I created a second prompt that works within its more limited controls so the system can scale across the team.
Gel portraits, reimagined through Midjourney
I used Midjourney image-to-video tools to animate the gel portraits, adding controlled motion without altering the original photo.
AI accelerated 3D concepting
I built a workflow that combined Adobe Dimension object captures with a custom ChatGPT system configured with our brand guidelines, accent colors and 3D requirements. This let me generate consistent, brand‑accurate 3D objects at the exact angles I needed, which made it easy to explore layouts quickly and give the 3D designer clear direction for final renders. This work established the foundation for how 3D objects would behave within the evolving Walmart Marketplace brand system.
Before: Screen capture of an Adobe Dimension 3D helmet
After: AI‑rendered, brand‑accurate helmet
Before: Mockup built with AI‑generated 3D objects
After: Final booth built using the fully rendered 3D objects
Bringing the brand to life across events
Event environments for Walmart Marketplace are built through an integrated design approach that combines AI-assisted workflows, environmental experience design and cross-channel execution. This section highlights a selection of booth builds created for key industry events, along with supporting digital banners and assets that show how the system scales across different footprints and audiences.
