Dan Picard is the owner and creative director of MDSX, a firm that creates immersive storytelling & design for theme parks, live entertainment, museums and attractions.

The company’s areas of expertise are digital and physical design, including motion graphic design, interactive design, and scenic design for branded settings, museums, resorts, and themed entertainment. Picard has brought together a varied team which is united by a passion for life, art, and inquiry, and a drive to create thoughtful and captivating experiences that are grounded in research and built on unique owner relationships.  MDSX’s award-winning creatives have over 20 years of varied expertise in fusing digital and interactive design with physical spaces.

MDSX has worked on projects for clients such as the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Disney, SeaWorld, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and many more. It offers creative direction, planning, concept design, design development and drafting, and on-site art direction.

A recent project for the firm is the new $8.5 million ‘Wondrous Space’ exhibit at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, which opened in November 2023. This immersive two-storey exhibit on space exploration features interactive displays and immersive simulations. It is the first of six upcoming experiences to replace the science museum’s 12 existing exhibits over the next few years. They will all be larger in scale and more future-focused, with themes including the human body, earth systems, the built environment, advanced machines and robotics, and computer science.

One person who nominated Picard says: “I have worked with a lot of design firms in my career, but Dan is one of the few people I have met who is truly pushing the boundaries of what experiences can do. Working across experiential design and media design, Dan is always thinking about the audience and looking to push forward ideas that take a modern approach to achieving guest engagement.”