Design and experiential leaders join to elevate creative across the studio as ASTOUND scales new venue work in Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ASTOUND Group today announced the appointments of Ross Guntert as Executive Creative Director, Head of Design, and Ivan Druzic as Executive Creative Director, Experiential. The two hires deepen the creative leadership at one of the world’s leading experiential design and fabrication studios, and they arrive as ASTOUND expands its venue portfolio with newly won projects for clients across Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League in both the United States and Canada.

The appointments continue a period of sustained investment in senior leadership at ASTOUND, following the addition of a new Head of Sports and a new Chief Financial Officer earlier this year. Where those moves strengthened commercial and category leadership, Guntert and Druzic sharpen the creative engine that turns ambitious ideas into built environments, giving brands, teams, and venues a partner that connects strategy, design, and world class fabrication under one roof.

Both leaders will work across the full breadth of ASTOUND’s business, from stadium and arena experiences and tradeshow exhibits to immersive brand activations, retail pop-ups, mobile tours, and architectural environments.

Ross Guntert Joins as Executive Creative Director, Head of Design

Guntert brings nearly two decades of architectural design and creative leadership to ASTOUND, with a career spanning architecture, fabrication, and experiential design. Most recently, he served as Northwest Region Design Director at Gensler, helping lead design across six offices while contributing to some of the firm’s most ambitious work, including NVIDIA’s flagship headquarters in Santa Clara. His career has consistently explored the intersection of architecture, brand, and experience, from his early work with Snarkitecture in Brooklyn to the design and leadership of complex environments at global scale.

At ASTOUND, Guntert owns the creative standard across architectural environments, exhibits, live events, and integrated brand experiences. His mandate spans three areas: creative systems, operational excellence, and new business growth. He is building the design systems and scalable workflows that enable consistently elevated work across teams and offices. He will also be an integral part of integrating AI into ASTOUND’s creative practice, expanding what the studio’s designers can create, accelerating how ideas are iterated, and elevating how concepts are developed and communicated.

That work is already in motion on ASTOUND’s newest venue commitments, where Guntert is helping bring new professional sports venues to life across North America, pairing architectural rigor with fan first storytelling.

Guntert holds a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, where he received the Gerson Memorial Prize for design excellence, and a BFA in Architectural Design from Parsons School of Design.

“The most powerful experiential design is not the most photographed, it is the most remembered,” said Guntert. “Space, brand, and experience are where my practice lives, and ASTOUND is one of the few places with the design ambition and the fabrication capability to carry an idea from concept to build without losing what made it worth doing.”

Ivan Druzic Joins as Executive Creative Director, Experiential

Druzic brings over 20 years of experience across live events, experiential, digital, sales promotion, and advertising, with a consistent focus on turning consumer insight and business intelligence into integrated brand experiences that drive results. His conceptual work has come to life for brands including Budweiser, Pepsi, Loblaws, Google, and XBOX.

During a long tenure at Mosaic North America, where he rose to Vice President, Creative Operations, Druzic led the creative direction behind Sensorium, the award-winning immersive dining experience for Stella Artois that translated a brand into a full sensory environment. That instinct for multi-sensory storytelling anchors his role at ASTOUND, where he will shape experiential concepts across the studio’s clients and verticals.

Working in close partnership, Guntert and Druzic pair architectural design leadership with experiential craft, giving ASTOUND a creative duo built to serve everything from Fortune 500 tradeshow presence to stadium sponsorship activations and immersive fan experiences.

“The investments we have made in leadership this year, across sports, category, and financial strength, showed what happens when strategy and expertise come together at venue scale,” said Dale Morgan, CEO of ASTOUND Group. “Ross and Ivan bring the creative firepower to match. Ross is a rare design leader who thinks in systems and builds at architectural scale, and Ivan turns brands into experiences people actually feel. Together they raise the bar for every client we serve.”

With this creative leadership in place, ASTOUND continues to connect physical environments and digital touchpoints into experiences that build lasting relationships between brands and their audiences, and to deliver measurable outcomes across sports and venues, retail, events, and beyond.

About ASTOUND 

ASTOUND Group is an experiential design studio with world-class fabrication and production capabilities, delivering end-to-end solutions by seamlessly integrating design, technology, and fabrication. ASTOUND creates full sensory environments and experiences that build lasting connections between brands and their audiences. From tradeshow exhibits and immersive brand activations to stadium experiences and retail pop-ups, ASTOUND serves major brands including Microsoft, Las Vegas Raiders, Nike, LVMH, and more. With locations in Las Vegas, Toronto, Burlington, and Milwaukee, ASTOUND confidently leads the way in experiential marketing innovation. Learn more at www.astoundgroup.com

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SOURCE ASTOUND Group