Charting a New Brand Course

Windstar Cruises’ brand experience had been neglected over the years. It was clear that in order to thrive as a boutique luxury cruise line in a competitive travel market, a bold shift was necessary in how to tell their brand story. Windstar needed an interactive design partner who could help revitalize their image.

Windstar approached RedTech Studios for help. As Creative Director, I took lead on the account. My team was tasked with developing a new creative framework that would capture their unique brand promise and could be leveraged across the full landscape of marketing media.

We started with a full website re-design that would be used as global brand direction for all creative executions and campaign initiatives. The result was an elegant and compelling online experience that speaks to target demographics while supporting key messaging pillars. With the website complete, we drove brand consistency with other vendors and led on all creative executions, from web banners and email campaigns, to iPad apps and print advertising.

Making Online Training Fun

Atlas Solutions provides digital media technologies for advertisers, agencies and publishers. Their tools enable the unified management of digital marketing campaigns across display banners, rich media, search, video and websites. The Atlas tools can be complicated. There was an existing online training platform, but customers were lost and confused by the delivery mechanism and bored by the content itself.

My team at RedTech Studios was given 3 challenges: 1) Design and engineer an all-new, rich interactive platform that allowed various user profiles to browse and consume role-based learning content. 2) Produce a high volume of video-based learning content. 3) Make the experience fun and interesting

The team delivered. We designed a robust Silverlight application that is beautiful, intuitive and fun to use.  We also engineered a content production system that provides a scalable, customizable, and cost effective solution for developing video-based learning assets.

The Supes Last Stand

We all know what became of the Seattle Supersonics. But in the fall of 2008, the Sonics marketing organization was fighting hard to keep them in town. Cypress Consulting, where I ran the Creative Services Practice, landed an opportunity to help the Sonics.
The mission was clear. Help the Supes create a groundswell of support for their 2008/2009 season and fill seats in Key Arena.  The “Be Part Of It” campaign was a multi-faceted effort involving several design agencies across media. My team worked with RazorFish to design and develop a completely new, all-Flash website.

We worked on new ways to promote awareness, drive fan loyalty and sell tickets. My team created several Flash mini-movies, narrated by Kevin Calabro, the “voice of the Sonics”. Sadly, in the end we couldn’t keep the Supes here. I have hope they’ll return one day.

Embrace Your Windows Phone

Microsoft Windows Mobile had a couple problems. They couldn’t shake a “business user” image and were rapidly losing consumer market share to iPhone. Moreover, customers experienced a steep learning curve for use.  A push was needed in the retail environment for sexy, yet educational digital content that promoted a fresh brand experience while helping users understand the features.

I ran point on the Mobile account while managing the Creative Practice at Cypress Consulting. My team worked with Microsoft to determine which pieces of their messaging framework were most relevant to their retail audience based on overall awareness goals. We identified key customer pain points that presented barriers to product satisfaction and formed an all-up digital retail strategy.

We rolled out a series of in-store marketing videos that combined rich brand imagery, consumer-focused feature messaging and sequential product screenshot visuals. We also designed and deployed touch-screen kiosks that provided step-by-step tips and tricks videos from Product Experts. We worked with regional subsidiaries to localize and deploy the program in retail worldwide.

Confuse Less. Sell More.

Microsoft Hardware designs, develops and delivers mice, keyboards, webcams, and gaming devices.
As a global distributor of several distinct webcam models, the MS Hardware group wanted an online tool that helps consumers cut through the static and choose the product that best fits their life.

My Creative team at RedTech Studios was asked to design a scalable Silverlight application that lets online shoppers easily filter features, technical specifications and price to help them make the right purchase. Making the user experience simple and intuitive was a major requirement; as was engineering a system extensible enough to support an entirely different type of product groupings, such as mice or keyboards. Microsoft also wanted the ability to roll this solution out to OEMs and allow them the ability to apply custom branding.

We designed an application that allows shoppers to visually filter, then drag and drop the models that interest them and compare all the data side by side. Clicking details exposes all product information and lets them browse image galleries. Once a decision is made there’s a purchase path for final transaction.

Please Identify Yourself

While my primary focus in recent years has been in Design Management and Creative Direction, I am a graphic designer at heart. Like most designers, the opportunity to help a company, organization, or friend develop a fresh brand identity system represents the creative spirit that got most of us into this business.

The process of understanding the strategic intent of a business and translating that into a relevant, impactful visual identity helps establish a strong brand message. My approach for these projects is to develop a highly memorable, easily recognizable, visual brand signal that triggers an association between a company’s brand and its positioning framework.

Approaching visual identity as an aesthetic system bridges the gap between brand position and brand image. Once an identity is developed, consistent presentation of this visual aesthetic across marketing communications reinforces customer expectations and builds brand equity.

Girls Kick Grass.

Woman’s Professional Soccer (WPS) is the premier woman’s soccer league in the United States. The organization needed a technology and design partner to re-launch its web platform to coincide with the beginning on league play in March 2009

Cypress Consulting had a large portfolio of professional sports websites under their belt and was asked to drive the effort.  As Creative Director at Cypress, I managed the team responsible for delivering information architecture and interface design that would sit on top of a robust and feature-rich CMS being built by the Cypress Development team. Because the league planned to expand, we were asked to develop components for a solution that would carry WPS well into the future.

Because the league consisted of several independently managed teams, a key front-end design requirement was brand flexibility. Our UX design solution allowed each team to skin their property with a unique look without compromising global WPS brand consistency, enabling WPS to maintain style guidelines across all of its sites.

Gaming Goes Hollywood

Exponential Entertainment is a casual gaming company that produces titles centered around Hollywood film trivia and pop culture. They wanted to produce a series of re-usable flash-based game templates with back-end engines that supported quick updates for games with ever-changing content.

As Creative Director at Cypress Consulting I managed this account and led the team of designers and flash developers. We worked with Exponential to thoroughly map out the user experience of each game based on high level game-play concepts and business objectives. Multiple wireframes were produced and iterated on to solidify final game UX specifications and drive visual and functional requirements.

Next, designers and flash developers worked together to merge front-end visuals, animation, and back-end functionality for a variety of games templates, each with uniquely different game play mechanics. The resulting suite of highly flexible game engine templates allowed Exponential to create volumes of new titles and quickly scale their library of games as new movies came out.

Experience Re-Branding 2.0

Having a compelling web experience that reflects a company’s mission, capabilities and unique value proposition is a critical component to most marketing strategies. This was particularly the case at Cypress Consulting, where the core business is interactive design and technology services.

Cypress’ legacy website was showing its age and was no longer a good snapshot of their business value or great potential as an industry leader. As the Creative Director I was tasked with coordinating and driving the effort to establish an entirely new web experience that would drive business growth and help legitimize Cypress as a top tier interactive agency.

We with a new messaging framework, setting up clear market positioning for our brand promise. Next I challenged my UX/IA lead to push the experience envelop while paying attention to industry leaders and new UX thinking. When it came to design, we took the opportunity to make bold identity system updates, evolving the entire aesthetic of Cypress’ brand experience.

The Persuasive Powers of Cartoon

When T-Mobile asked RedTech Studios to create a series of storytelling videos to help sell new product ideas to corporate executives we embraced the challenge. Since much of T-Mobile’s market positioning centers around the Family Network, we pitched a fun, friendly, animated cartoon approach that could speak to everyday family scenarios.

The project required that very detailed stories be told to help execs understand the value of the new product ideas and how they would potentially support business goals. As Creative Director, my team wrote, designed and produced two 3-minute cartoon vignettes that were both entertaining and informative.

Once we had an approved script and storyboard, we defined a consistent visual style and motion design that could be leveraged across both videos. Next we produced a large library of custom character and environment illustration assets. Setting these characters in motion produced a unique corporate presentation format that won acclaim from our client.