Some careers move in a straight line. Others gather slowly, across cities and disciplines, until the shape finally appears. Noer Giovanda Poppy Haryadi, who goes by Poppy, belongs to the second kind. She trained first in interior architecture in Indonesia. Then she founded her own studio, studied entrepreneurship at Oxford Brookes, and completed a marketing degree at New York University. Finally, she retrained in graphic design at Shillington in New York. Because of that winding route, she now reads a brief from every angle at once. She thinks spatially, commercially, and visually in the same breath. As a result, her work carries a rare completeness. It holds up on a screen, yet it also feels right in someone’s hands. That simple test sits underneath everything she makes.
Her portfolio reads like a tour of contemporary brand culture. In New York, she worked on the American Express Gold Card x Luar launch at Rockefeller Center during Fashion Week. She also contributed to The Resy Lounge and Night Shift during Art Basel Miami, and she supported the Walmart Delivers campaign with Giant Spoon. Meanwhile, her packaging and gifting work has reached NARS, L’Oréal, Carolina Herrera, and Neutrogena. Today she works in London with Bespokely / Not Another Bill. There, she designs gifting, mailers, and merchandise for Netflix, Spotify, Tinder, Mubi, and Ministry of Sound. The scales differ wildly, yet one conviction runs through all of it. A room and a box are both containers for a moment. Her job, as she puts it, is to design the moment.
In this conversation with New York Art Life Magazine, Poppy talks about the years when her path felt like a detour, and about the night at Rockefeller Center when everything quietly clicked. She explains how she moves between luxury beauty and mass-market energy within the same week, and what AI can and cannot touch in experiential work. Throughout, the focus remains on her role within those rooms rather than on the builds themselves. Above all, she makes a case for the nonlinear route, because every chapter of hers left a skill behind. So settle in for an honest conversation about craft, cities, and courage. Her portfolio and her LinkedIn are open to anyone who wants to see the work behind the words.
The Long Way Around
New York Art Life Magazine: You started in interior architecture in Indonesia, then moved into business, marketing, and finally graphic design before landing in experiential design. When did you realize the detour was actually one career?
Poppy Haryadi: For the longest time, I feared that so many different paths would make companies see me as someone who did not know what they wanted. But the picture changed during my marketing degree at NYU. That is when I first realized my earlier learning was not separate, because skills carry over more than you would think. Then came Shillington, and design and marketing turned out to sit right next to each other.
However, the moment it clicked was my first design job at an experiential agency. Suddenly I had to think about a real person moving through a real space. And everything I had done before just showed up. The spatial thinking, the commercial instinct, and the craft all worked hand in hand. So nothing was wasted. That is when I stopped seeing it as a detour. In fact, it had been one career the whole time, and I finally saw its shape.
New York Art Life Magazine: You founded and ran HER Studio, working with property developers in Surabaya. What did running a business teach you that no design education could?
Poppy Haryadi: Running HER Studio taught me things a design education cannot, mostly because the stakes were real. A project does not end when the work is beautiful. Rather, it ends when you deliver it on budget, and when the client trusts you enough to come back. Developers think in timelines, unit sales, and returns. So I had to make the case for good design in their language, and that made me a sharper designer, not a compromised one.
I also learned my limits. Early on, I held onto everything myself, and it slowed us down. So I learned to delegate and to trust people. Finally, I learned resilience the hard way. When it is your own studio, there is no safety net. If a supplier falls through, you find the solution. That is the part no course prepares you for, and it is the part I am most glad I learned.
New York Art Life Magazine: You have described a stretch where you felt genuinely lost about your career. What did that uncertainty feel like, and what kept you moving?
Poppy Haryadi: The period I always come back to is my move to New York. That is when I first felt genuinely lost. New York surrounds you with ambitious people who seem to know exactly what they want. Meanwhile, I would look at my own CV and wonder why I was so different. Even during my marketing degree, something kept drifting toward design. So there was real uncertainty because the thing I was training in wasn’t quite the thing pulling at me.
The scariest decision was Shillington, and the job search after it was scarier. I faced rejection for months, and I blamed my winding path every time. Still, underneath the panic, I knew one thing for certain. I wanted to be a designer. What got me through was New York itself, plus my own stubbornness. Then an experiential agency took a chance on me. Once I was doing the work, the doubt fell away, because every part of my path proved useful.
New York at Full Scale
New York Art Life Magazine: The AmEx Gold Card x Luar afterparty at Rockefeller Center seems to be the night that answered that uncertainty. What was your role on a build of that scale, and what clicked when you stood inside it?
Poppy Haryadi: That night was my first project at my first agency job, and it answered everything I had been unsure about. My role sat alongside the Creative Director and a senior designer. I was in the room for the concept, and I carried the graphics across the build. So when I finally stood inside it, at full scale, during Fashion Week, I was standing inside my own contribution. After all the rejection, I was finally there, and I loved every single part of it.
The strange part is that the design almost ceased to exist for me while I stood in it. All the details I had obsessed over fell away. Instead, I kept noticing a room full of people having a genuinely good night, and I had something to do with that. That is when I came to understand experiential design. It was never about anyone noticing the design. Rather, it is about the design making something happen for other people.
New York Art Life Magazine: At Art Basel Miami, you supported two very different builds in the same week, Night Shift and The Resy Lounge. How involved does a designer get on projects like those, and what did that week teach you about cutting through?
Poppy Haryadi: My involvement changes from project to project, and that is worth saying plainly. Sometimes I own a piece end-to-end, from brief through concept to production-ready files. Other times, I support the wider creative team, as I did at Art Basel. However, most of my best work has come from exactly that kind of collaboration.
Even in a supporting role, that week taught me how work cuts through the noise of a loud moment. Everything at Basel shouts for attention. So if you shout over it, you disappear into the din. The Resy Lounge landed because it never tried to feel like a brand activation – it was even recognized as one of the top five dining destinations in Miami that week. Night Shift carried a different brief, yet the thinking was the same. Know exactly who the space is for, then give them something real. Identity is what survives the noise, so intention beats volume every time.
Reading the Brand, Reading the Customer
New York Art Life Magazine: In New York, you designed luxury beauty mailers while also supporting Walmart’s mass market activation. What does moving between opposite registers ask of you as a designer?
Poppy Haryadi: More than anything, it asks me to stay focused on the same truth in both worlds: a brand’s goal is only reached through its customer. Every brand wants the work to convert into engagement, sales, or feeling, but it’s the customer who decides whether it does. So the way I serve the brand is by designing for the person on the other end. Getting that right is how the brand gets what it wanted in the first place.
With luxury beauty, that person is very particular, so every decision carries weight, from the texture to the unboxing moment. Walmart sits at the other end, meeting people where they are, at scale, so the design has to feel immediate, warm, and unmistakably Walmart. Neither is the simpler problem; they’re the same discipline pointed at a different person. That’s where my marketing background does its quiet work, because it taught me to ask who the design is for before how it looks – and once you know that, moving between registers stops being a contradiction and becomes the same question asked twice.
New York Art Life Magazine: You have said the Walmart project changed an assumption you held, that the bigger the brand, the more locked down the creative. What surprised you?
Poppy Haryadi: What surprised me was exactly that, how brave a brand of that size was willing to be. My assumption had always been simple. The bigger and more mainstream the brand, the more locked down the creative. Many big brands stay close to their guidelines, because there is a great deal to protect. So the interesting ideas often stay inside a tight box.
Seeing a brand at that scale act in a more adventurous way than expected was the surprise, and it took real bravery from both the brand and the agency. It mattered because it worked. There is a fear that doing something different invites judgment. But often the opposite is true. Safe work is easy to forget, while courage, done right, earns attention and affection. So the boldness was not the risk. The boldness was the point, and that lesson now sits inside how I read every brief.
New York Art Life Magazine: You talk about activations and mailers as the same thing at different sizes. What is the shared question you are answering in both?
Poppy Haryadi: To me, they really are the same discipline at different scales. One you enter with your whole body, while the other fits in your hands. Yet the question underneath both is identical. How do I make someone feel something in the moment they encounter this? Both revolve around a threshold. With an activation, it is the moment you step inside. With a mailer, it is the moment you lift the lid, that half-second before the reveal.
In both cases, I am designing that threshold, choreographing attention and emotion through a sequence. And both are really about the customer, not the object. They exist to make a specific person feel invited, excited, and considered. Scale changes the tools and the logistics. However, it never changes the question. A room and a box are both containers for a moment. So my job is to design the moment.
Objects That Tell the Story
New York Art Life Magazine: Your Neutrogena Ultra Sheer mailer used UV-activated ink, so the message appeared only in sunlight. Where do ideas like that come from, and how do you know a concept is right?
Poppy Haryadi: That was a piece I owned end to end, from first idea through production, and it is exactly the kind of work I want more of. Ideas like that usually come from the product itself. I want the whole piece to convey the product’s idea before anyone has used it. So the mailer should tell the story, not just hold the product.
With Ultra Sheer, the defining quality is invisibility. So rather than print that as a message, I wanted the piece to behave the same way. That is where the UV-activated ink came from. The type stays hidden indoors and only appears in sunlight, so the box does exactly what the product does. And that is how I know a concept is right early. If one line describes both the idea and the product, the idea holds. After that, execution simply does it justice.
New York Art Life Magazine: You have designed for finance, retail, entertainment, and tech, but you have said beauty and lifestyle is where your heart is. Why?
Poppy Haryadi: It is beauty and lifestyle, without much hesitation. That is the work I light up talking about. Because beauty lives or dies on how something feels. The weight of a compact, the way a box opens, the finish under your fingers. That is exactly the part of design I care about most, so my instinct for the tactile has the most room to move there. It is also the closest thing to what pulled me out of interiors, the idea that an object can carry a whole mood before anyone reads a word.
Meanwhile, the lifestyle side pulls me just as much because those are the brands people actually live with day-to-day. The work has to feel like a natural extension of a world people already know. Ministry of Sound was a great example, translating decades of club heritage into pieces people genuinely want to wear.
Two Cities, One Standard
New York Art Life Magazine: You have worked across the Atlantic in both directions. What have you learned about the creative cultures that someone in one market would never see?
Poppy Haryadi: Honestly, the biggest thing is not taste. It is time. The cultures differ, but the thing you only understand once you have done it is how much of the job is time zones. When your team is spread across LA, New York, and London, there is often only a narrow window when everyone is awake. So the work becomes a relay, and that only works if everyone is willing to bend. Communication becomes everything, because if you miss the overlap, a small thing can sit unresolved for a whole day.
Working that closely with different offices also teaches you their creative cultures firsthand. New York felt far more expressive to me, and the pace moves so much faster. LA keeps its own rhythm, while London holds a more considered pace. None of it is better or worse. Above all, it taught me to adapt quickly and to match the register each team needs. That is what someone in a single market never has to learn.
New York Art Life Magazine: In London, you work with Bespokely’s in-house production, sometimes hands-on with the packing itself. How has that closeness changed the way you design?
Poppy Haryadi: Being involved in production has given me far more insight than staying purely a designer ever would. Once you are close to how things get made, you see everything the screen hides. So much comes down to material. Something that looks crisp on one stock can go soft on another, and you only learn that by watching it happen. On screen, you can convince yourself of almost anything. But in your hands, the truth is obvious.
Early on, I changed designs often once I saw how production would handle them. After a while, that knowledge moves into your hands, and now I design with it built in from the start. I have even been hands-on with the packing itself, because with a mailer, that final step is everything. So production has made me design for the object, not the file. I think about how something will be built, packed, and held from the very first sketch.
Instinct, Tools, and What Stays Physical
New York Art Life Magazine: You lead with moodboards and get a concept to where it feels right before it gets overexplained. How do you protect that instinct-first way of working, and when does a feeling need to be interrogated?
Poppy Haryadi: People often treat instinct and strategy as two separate steps, and for me they never have been. When I build a moodboard and chase what feels right, I am also developing the strategy. With every image I choose, I am thinking about who the brand is and who they are talking to. So the feeling does not come from my taste. It comes from the brand, through a stack of small judgments about audience, tone, and positioning.
However, I value the rationale too. Once a direction feels right, I flesh out the thinking properly, partly to pressure-test it and partly because an idea still has to make sense to a client. The instinct gets me to the idea, while the strategy proves it. And knowing when to trust a feeling comes down to who it serves. If it is right for the brand and their audience, I commit. If not, then I slow down and interrogate it.
New York Art Life Magazine: AI tools are now part of your early concepting. Looking ahead, how do you see experiential design evolving, and what remains irreplaceably physical?
Poppy Haryadi: The tools will change the front end enormously. AI already lets me explore ten directions in the time it used to take, and pressure-test them before committing. That is freeing, because it means less time proving an idea can exist and more time asking whether it should. Judgment also becomes more valuable, because when everyone can generate options, knowing which one is right becomes the scarce thing.
But there is a risk if we lean on it carelessly. AI can make something look flawless in a way the physical version cannot always match, and if the render runs too far ahead, you create an expectation the build cannot meet. So it has to be both: tools to imagine, grounded in what production can truly print and pack. And the physical side stays irreplaceable. You cannot AI your way into how it feels to walk into a space. In fact, the rare part is what people remember.
For the Ones Still Finding It
New York Art Life Magazine: For someone midway through their own nonlinear path and feeling behind, what would you tell them about the longer route?
Poppy Haryadi: Honestly, the easy thing to say is what everyone said to me. You are not behind; you will find it soon. Back then, I could not believe any of it. So I will not just repeat that. What I would actually tell them is simpler. Keep trying, and be willing to put in the work. For me, that meant doubling up, studying two majors at once while taking on different kinds of work. You do not think your way to the answer. You work your way to it.
I also know that not everyone can restart or study full time, so it does not have to look like mine. Chase what you are curious about in whatever time you have. And you are building far more than it feels like in the moment, because every chapter leaves a skill that transfers. So keep going, and trust that none of it is wasted. The effort is the path.
New York Art Life Magazine: For a student or junior designer dreaming of fashion week activations or beauty launches, what actually gets you into those rooms?
Poppy Haryadi: Almost nobody starts in those rooms, and I definitely did not. For me, the first real thing was the portfolio. At Shillington, I made sure my work was work I felt genuinely proud of, and importantly, it included packaging, because experiential is not just pretty ideas. It is knowing how to execute them. So build the portfolio that shows your capability in the specific world you want. Also, a passion project gets noticed just as much as coursework.
The second thing was reaching out relentlessly, because the work opens the door, but you still have to knock on it. The dream projects are the cherry on top, so point everything toward the space you want without gripping one job too tightly. And be intentional about your early roles, because they point you in a direction. Finally, so much comes down to someone taking a chance on you. Make the work undeniable, be easy to say yes to, and keep going until someone does.
You can explore Poppy Haryadi’s work at her portfolio and connect with her on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, for more conversations with the artists shaping the city’s creative life, visit New York Art Life Magazine.
