PROJECT
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Microsoft Overview
ROLE
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Creative Direction
Concept Design
Art Direction
Design
Team Creation
Team Leadership
Project Management
Pipeline Creation
Custom Tools
SYNOPSIS
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Concepting and creating animated content for Microsoft stores was substantial to say the least!
This project blended art and science in ways that reshaped how I approach creative work. Leading a team of creatives, technologiests, and producers on this years-long retainer--working in massive formats and evolving the Surface Brand--sharpened my skills in creative problem solving, branding, and compaign strategy. It was a huge undertaking made successful by many talented hands.
Sustaining a single global brand for over 7 years underscored the power of strong teamwork. It also demanded real expertise in design, strategy, and audience experience.
OVERVIEW
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Each core asset, the "Video Ribbon," started as a 30,000px-wide layout (15 HD screens), with separate left/right versions that scaled down to 7,680px or smaller for different store sizes workdwide--always preserved key messaging and branding. This required careful forsight during ideation to catch problems early.
Theater screens added more complexity, spanning rations from 1x1 to 16x9 and 9x16. We build custom automated versioning tool sin After Effects to generate first-pass edits, cutting production time by over 25%.
We also recreated stores in 3D and flew to a West Coast location for full-scale testing, spending weeks fine-tuning motion velocity to keep the experience immersive without overwhelming viewers.
PROJECT TITLE
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Surface Alcantara
ROLE
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Creative Direction
Creative Strategy
Group Lead
Designer
SYNOPSIS
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An example of a Surface project, Alcantara, was an important pivot toward luxury offerings from the Surface brand. We had the opportunity to present creative strategy that evolved the brand to allow space for luxury offerings which laid a foundation for future product launches. It was an initial lesson in "Brand as Experience" that heavily influenced creative thought and approach.
BREAKDOWN
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Custom Tools
ROLE
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Team Leadership
Efficiency ideation
Cheerleader for Smart People
QA
SYNOPSIS
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The team had many brilliant minds over the years who were able to create several custom tools to maximize efficiencies. It was a dream to be able to think of an idea and have people much smarter than I say, 'Sounds good—we can make that.'
With hundreds of deliverables for each project and often having several projects active at once, the flood of assets would overwhelm any team without identifying areas for efficiency and automation. After Effects revealed its true potential several times over as we created tools capable of automatically resizing content as well as versioning hundreds of items.
These custom tools saved weeks per project, totaling months saved per year of production time.
Below is a sped-up tutorial video we made to help other vendors utilize our tools. Ever wonder what 20 minutes of instructional content looks like in 15 seconds? Check it out!
TM™
Jason Salo
Husband. Father. Friend. Creative.