Microsoft Surface

Whatever “business” means to you, there’s a Surface that was made for you.

BDMs, ITDMs, and SBOs are busy during the holiday season. They’re wrapping up the year or managing an influx of holiday customers. Standing out during Holiday required Microsoft to showcase how their devices will help business year-round.

Our LinkedIn campaign drafted on the buzz of new product announcements by connecting our products to our key audience’s industries and use cases. Over a phased approach of posts, we showcased that every business needs a Surface. And Microsoft has the right one for your business.

Role: Creative Direction

TaxJar: Vendor Evaluation Guide

Sales Tax is an incredibly complex topic for a business to manage. Software can help you – but what’s the right vendor for your business?

Sales Tax is complicated. Selecting the sales tax vendor that’s right for your business shouldn’t be. This guide spoke directly to financial & technology leaders in mid-to-large size companies, helping to explain the important features of sales tax software. And ultimately, how TaxJar is the right solution for a company’s sales tax compliance needs.

The guide was created as a fully-responsive interactive piece, including internal page-navigation and subtle animations, as well as a standard PDF downloadable document. The launch of the guide was supported with paid and organic posts across multiple social networks.

Role: Design, Art Direction

Development/animations: Joel Farris

SALES TAX CALCULATOR

TaxJar, a Stripe Company

Analytics provides insights into user behavior; design can yield positive results.

The sales tax calculator is the number one most trafficked page on TaxJar.com with about 8k visitors per week. Despite this traffic the conversion rate of the page was lower than the rest of the site. Analytics showed the majority of the visitors were small businesses, who indicated that they were using the calculator to know how much to sales tax to charge on an item they are selling; this led TaxJar to understand that while the page may never increase conversations, there was an opportunity to better serve these potential customers with relevant content about sales tax.

To more prominently expose visitors to the page to our offerings, we began by moving the calculator to the upper left of the page, fully exposing the calculation button above the fold for increased engagement. The unfilled form shows the user that there will multiple results, which underscores the complexity of sales tax. Once the address has been filled in, the results are displayed, along with new content: To the right of the calculator, we highlighted our trial offer as well as linking to relevant education content.

Results

Since the redesign, engagement rate of the page has risen 21%. Conversion rose slightly. But more critically, we could track that users coming to the Sales Tax Calculator were spending more time on the TaxJar site than previously. In addition, TaxJar moved up in search results when searching for “sales tax calculator” on Google.

Role: Design, Art Direction

F5

“I @#^&* love it. I feel like we finally have a website” – Client, in final presentation

When F5 was ready to move their corporate site off an older platform and move onto AEM, they turned to POP as their trusted partner. Working across all business groups, the F5 creative team, and an outside development partner, we dug in deep. We hosted multiple fact-finding discovery sessions and pressed hard on what was important and what wasn’t. We wireframed and site-mapped and architected carefully and thoughtfully, until all parties were bought into the solution. Only then did we begin to push pixels. We designed and crafted and prototyped special sections of the site. In then end, we created a user experience, design, and style guide that set F5 up for success to build out the entire site, repositioning F5 as a leader in the application security space.

Role: Creative Direction, Design

Microsoft

Creating a path to new learning

As Microsoft undertook relaunching their Certifications program under the new Microsoft Learn brand, they turned to us to help create a new design system to bring different solution areas (Azure, Dynamics, Modern Workforce) into visual alignment. We began with Azure, creating a suite of materials to advertise their full portfolio of Certifications. This build of materials launched at Build 2020, with a video promoting the full range of Azure Certifications, as well as social posts pointing to journey and role-based materials.

Role: Creative Direction

F5 Networks

Designing the common thread

Two business units at F5 needed new campaign concepts which would launch on concurrent timelines. Both would cover three altitudes: awareness, solution area, and product. While the Cloud and Security clients were separate, and the content and goals of the campaigns were different, we quickly recognized that the campaigns needed to have the same visual language. We worked closely with both teams to arrive on a system that was flexible enough be distinct for each audience while still unquestionably being from the same brand family. The final output were comprehensive campaign guidelines that provided the internal F5 design team a full suite of rules and assets to build out materials from digital banners to web experiences to trade show spaces.

Role: Creative Direction

Microsoft Surface

Much more than just business as usual.

Astute strategy, carefully planned editorial calendar, elegant design, sharp copywriting. Bring it all together on a weekly basis to produce multiple LinkedIn posts per week. Feature products, tips & tricks, customer stories, thought leadership, and more. In 10 months, grow the follower by 10,000. That’s a solid return on investment.

Role: Creative Direction

Microsoft Azure

APIs are magic.

To help Microsoft Azure increase awareness and drive trials of their latest cognitive APIs, we created an infographic that was centered on our audience’s intersection of interests: technology development, and science fiction. We referenced some of the world’s most famous magical objects to show the magic Microsoft APIs can bring to apps; search, vision, and speech APIs = the hammer of Thor. Working with a conceptual artist, we used illustration to capture initial interest, then linked to APIs to spur conversation and drive trials. 

Role: Creative Direction

Illustration: Shane Molina

RETAIL & FINANCIAL SERVICES VIDEOS

Microsoft

Bringing the power of Cloud to Business

To announce their new offerings for Retail and Financial Services, Microsoft Cloud needed videos that were both “sizzle” and “product demo.” Over a very short timeline, we worked directly with the client to craft the stories, select the correct product flow, and highlight the key features of each service. Eight total videos were created, demonstrating everything from in-store traffic monitoring powered by AI, to onboarding new customers to a bank’s loan offerings.

Role: Creative Direction for Indigo Slate

Microsoft

Visualizing the future of manufacturing

Microsoft came to us with a dense, information-packed research deck about the future of manufacturing supply-chain, created by a third-party subject-matter expert. The problem: it was so dense that it wasn’t audience-friendly. We dove in, deciphered, rewrote the content, and redesigned the diagrams. Then we added custom illustrations to make the entire experience more visually-stunning and digestible. The result? The client was so pleased, they asked us to create companion, industry-specific infographics.

Role: Creative Direction

Microsoft Education

Lights. Camera. Class, let’s begin.

After working with Microsoft Education to create several photoshoots of K-12 students, POP was asked to direct Education’s first higher-ed photoshoot. Over two days at the University of Washington campus, we shot nearly 20 scenes with a cast of students, teachers, and other staff. Centering on Microsoft’s unique position of strength in security for education, the shoot focused on situations where students and teachers alike were sure to feel ‘safe and secure’ on campus. In addition to directing the shoot, we expanded the marketing guidelines for Microsoft Education, creating a full style guide for field and agency partners to leverage.

Role: Creative Direction

Production: Kontent Partners

Photographer: Candy Kennedy

Gap Inc.

All the news that’s tailor-fit.

The challenge: transform an infrequently updated PR blog into a full newsroom site for Gap Inc, which encompasses 6 distinct consumer brands. The twist: Gap Inc had a completely-new style guide which had not been applied to web yet. Working in a small, nimble team, we architected, designed, developed, tested, and launched the site—on a completely new CMS—in 6 weeks. The newsroom site set the foundation for the corporate site redesign which was completed the following year.

Role: Creative Direction, Design

F5 Labs

Every 9 hours a critical vulnerability is released.

In an industry where security breaches are rampant—every 9 hours a critical vulnerability is released!—the need for a trusted source of information and solutions is essential. F5 Networks created their F5 Labs group to bring the latest and deepest information on application security to the world. With 20+ years of experience in the application delivery space, F5 Labs had already established themselves as trusted news source for the information security community. To clearly dilneate themselves from the commercial F5 Networks brand, Labs created a “walled garden,” a distinct look and feel, as well as being free from promoting any products and services. This information-dense approach earned Labs followers from the most famous of White Hat researchers to members of the infamous Anonymous.

Role: Creative Direction, Design

Target

A dramatic site fit for a signer of dramatic songs.

To promote the arrival of Adele’s long-awaited 3rd album, we took the “clean white aisles” of Target.com and turned down the lights. The all-black site takeover featured behind-the-scenes videos of her unreleased songs, as well as a countdown timer until the Target exclusive version of the album (with extra songs, of course) was available.

Role: Art Direction, Design

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to work on logos and identity systems, from small local businesses to the Seattle International Film Festival.

SIFF

Capturing the essence of film in a static mark.

Seattle International Film Festival is one of the largest film festivals in the United States, regularly showing more than 400 films in a month. Their mission is to create experiences that bring people together to discover extraordinary films from around the world.

In 2008, SIFF approached POP to re-brand their identity and help set the festival up for their next phase. Working closely with their Artistic Director, we came up with a mark that captures the essence of film in a static mark. The system was created to allow for multiple variations on the SIFF name (SIFF, SIFF Cinema, SIFF News). The bold word mark allowed for the identity to be used as a projected image and even created as a neon sign for the SIFF Cinema theater in Lower Queen Anne, Seattle.

Role: Designer, Art Direction

Dawn Clement

Long-distance artistic collaboration during the time of a pandemic

In early 2021, fellow Cornish ’00 graduate Dawn Clement was working on an album of pandemic-produced music. After seeing my drawing project on Instagram, she reached out to me to create the artwork for this forthcoming album. Over the course of a few weeks, we collaborated on her themes, tone, and artistic intent: expressing feelings of isolation, dreams, relationships, and connection during these tumultuous times. Listening to prerelease versions of her tracks, I created several pieces for her consideration using Procreate on iPad. The final composition was chosen, a back cover with credits was crafted, and the album was released in October of 2021.

Role: Creative Direction, Design