HMGE: Homecoming

Bydia Wilson was a Morehouse man from Philadelphia who came to New York to build something. He called it HMGE, a brand showroom for independent designers, a platform for creative culture, a vision he worked on relentlessly. He was a creative director, a fashion mind, a connector. He passed away in September 2023. HMGE: Homecoming was the event his community built to honor him, blending music, art, and the collective energy of everyone he brought together during his life. The design had to hold all of that. Not just look good. Actually hold it.

Therum led the complete visual and creative direction for HMGE: Homecoming, event branding, social media rollout, motion graphics, print materials, on-site signage, projection, and spatial design for the venue. Everything the audience saw before, during, and after the event came through us.

The hardest design briefs are the ones where the stakes are human. HMGE: Homecoming wasn’t selling tickets to a party. It was gathering people who loved Bydia Wilson and giving them a space and a visual language to do that in. Every design decision had to carry warmth without sentimentality, edge without coldness, and celebration without erasure of what the evening actually was.

We leaned into the language Bydia himself operated in, independent culture, community aesthetics, the visual vocabulary of people who build things from the ground up. Community flyers. Record culture. Independent print. The textures and line drawings that come from artists who make work because they have to, not because they were asked to. Nostalgic but not dated. Personal but not private.

The identity was built to feel like something his people would recognize immediately, that sense of “By would have been into this.” Bold type that doesn’t apologize for itself. Motion that has warmth in its rhythm. A visual system layered enough to feel rich without feeling overproduced, because the most honest tribute to someone who built things independently is work that carries that same integrity.

The social campaign was designed to pull people in slowly, teaser assets with subtle animation and intentional mystery, building toward the event without revealing everything at once. On-site, the brand extended through the physical environment: signage, projection, and staging that transformed the venue into something that felt like a homecoming in the truest sense of the word. Not a memorial that asks you to be sad. A celebration that asks you to remember.

Event identity and visual system. Social media rollout and teaser assets. Motion and print materials. Signage, projection, and spatial design for the venue. A visual toolkit built to carry future HMGE events forward, because the brand Bydia built doesn’t stop with one night.

The event’s design system unified its audience and message, creating a recognizable visual identity that connected online storytelling to the physical experience. The cohesive rollout generated strong engagement across social channels and positioned the event as a creative benchmark for independent cultural activations in Philadelphia.

The design gave the community a visual container for something that’s hard to contain. People showed up, the room felt right, and the work held the weight of the evening without announcing itself.

HMGE: Homecoming is the kind of work that reminds us why design matters beyond aesthetics. Bydia Wilson spent his life building creative culture and giving independent work a platform. Therum showed up for his memory the same way he showed up for the work, with full attention, real craft, and genuine respect for what was being built. There is no brief for grief. You just have to care enough to get it right.

This project reflects Therum’s belief that great creative direction lives beyond the screen. By combining digital storytelling, visual language, and experiential detail, we built an event that didn’t just look good, it felt alive. Our process always ties design to human connection, ensuring every moment resonates beyond the visuals themselves.