MAKE.EXE 2026

Huge’s AI-powered creative battle comes to New York.

Overview.

AI-powered design.
Campaign design.
Motion design.

Reclaiming the craft.

Pushing what’s possible in creative design by combining commercial AI models with custom-made harnesses.
Celebrating creativity by producing campaigns in real time, with no redos.
Helping to raise and promote the next generation of creatives by partnering with Huge designers.

The concept.

What is MAKE.EXE?

In 2025, the creative team at Huge was asked to come up with ways of educating designers to adopt and use the rapidly emerging AI tools. The mandate was to teach and demystify the new technologies; to make them fun and exciting.

Being an avid gamer, Group Design Director Eric Vienna came with the concept of MAKE.EXE: an e-sports style competition in which designers would battle each other to deliver AI-produced ads in response to surprise briefs—on the spot, against the clock, in front of a live audience.

After the success of the first MAKE.EXE in Los Angeles, on October 6, 2026, the competition came to New York City—the birthplace of Huge.

SHiFT Midtown, with its immersive 360º projections, was the perfect place for this celebration of the creative craft at Huge and in New York City institutions. More than 150 people packed the room, with guests representing 50+ brands, and the designers in competition responding to briefs provided by Nestlé Purina and NBA Take-Two Media.

The competitors for MAKE.EXE 2026 came from four different sources: Huge, the AI creative suite KREA (which sponsored the event), and design schools Parsons and SVA.

Huge: Ken Frederick, Executive Creative Director; Jude Gay, Group Design Director; and Eric Vienna, Group Design Director.

Krea: Tiyé Pulley, Creative Lead.

SVA: Wonji Jung and Tiffany Wu.

Parsons: Gabriela Cabanelas and Makayla Fredericks.

The competitors used platforms that included Krea, Claude and Astra AI, with a host of tools plugged into them, plus harnesses they built themselves—“bespoke battle tools.”

The briefs for the first two rounds of competition were provided by Nestlé Purina and NBA Take-Two Media.

Round 1 - Nestlé Purina (myPurina): Produce a roughly 10-second AI video ad that shows myPurina as a personalized pet-care companion, not just a rewards app.
Round 2, NBA Take-Two Media: Create the brand identity for Offshoot, a new storytelling brand that humanizes NBA and WNBA players for an 18-to-34 audience.

By numbers.

8
Designers in competition, coming from Huge, KREA, Parsons and SVA.
20+
AI-powered tools used, between commercial models and custom-made harnesses.