Lightspeed
DEPT® · 2021 to present
From a single machine to a platform
Lightspeed is an After Effects rendering platform. A designer builds the template, the data team fills in a feed with the client's copy and images, and Lightspeed renders one asset for every row.
The designer names the layers so Lightspeed can find them, and sets them up to take copy of any length and images of any shape. The feed is built in Google Sheets with custom functions that generate the rows. The queue, the render fleet and the storage all run on AWS.
- 9,500
- assets a month on average
- 2,000+
- in five minutes at peak
- 92%
- of the codebase written by me
TypeScriptAWSAfter EffectsTerraform
Uber Eats, Super Bowl LX
Uber Eats let its users build their own Super Bowl commercial in the app. Lightspeed rendered all 1,000+ combinations in advance. Each is stored under a filename built from the choices, so the app fetches a file that already exists.
Media Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2026. One Yellow Pencil and four Wood Pencils at D&AD 2026.
Campaign case study ↗