The music of Bad Bunny alone would have given us one of the most joyful Super Bowl Halftime Shows of all time. But it was the collaborative work of creatives across different fields that drove the empowering and uplifting message home. The production, led by creative director Harriet Cuddeford and show designer Yellow Studio, turned San Francisco's Levi's Stadium into a slice of Puerto Rico.
The team worked in collaboration with record label Rimas Entertainment, as well as art director Leticia Leon, to achieve something that felt less like a televised concert and more like a cinematic music video unfolding in real time. For this to work, the mission was to make the stage feel like a living environment, balancing intimate moments with an oversized spectacle.
The scenes play out in an immersive field of grass, evoking the rural landscapes of Bad Bunny's native Puerto Rico. Particularly, the area of Vega Baja, where he grew up, is surrounded by palm trees and sugar cane. Making this happen required ingenuity. The NFL largely prohibits large, motorized vehicles on the field to protect the integrity of the ground and caps the number of cards and large props to 25. The team, in turn, came up with a clever idea: dressing up 380 performers as trees, allowing them to exit freely and quickly on their own once the show was over.
One of the most poignant elements of the show was the everyday scenes of Puerto Ricans, whether it was an auto shop among elders, a failing power station, or even a lively wedding party. Yellow Studio provided the interconnected structures that provided a visual context for these moments. Scattered throughout the field, its clever design helped performers move between them as the performance progressed.
At the heart of it all was the iconic Casita (“Little house”), known for its shades of pink and yellow, evoking the colorful houses found in Puerto Rico. On top of serving as an emotional center, it tied into Bad Bunny's ongoing world tour, where it serves as a B-stage, bringing him closer to the people in the less pricey sections. On its back, it hid a series of shops evoking Manhattan's El Barrio area. At such, it was the perfect backdrop for the hit “Nuevayol,” regarded as an ode to the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York City.
“Together, they reference joy, labor, and resilience, including Puerto Rico’s ongoing power crisis, where communities experience frequent blackouts. These spaces form a continuous narrative that extends beyond the stage,” says the design team about these structures.
“By transforming the Super Bowl Halftime Show into a shared experience, the performance offers something rarely seen at this scale, a powerful celebration of community rooted in the belief that with determination and love, we can all reach the touchdown.”
