MICROSOFT WINDOWS

Supporting the release of Windows 10, in Q3/Q4 2016 Microsoft partnered with Mic to sponsor our editorial coverage in style, food, tech, travel, including branded articles and a gift guide that ran from Thanksgiving through the end of the year.

The gift guide is one of my favorite projects, from concept to execution I was creative lead, overseeing art direction, functionality, and writing all the copy throughout. The idea was to create a gift guide that didn’t follow the conventions the thousands of others do; namely, focusing on the same broad categories: girlfriend, mom, brother, whatever. This is a gift guide tailored to the kind of people who have “INNOVATE” tattooed on their knuckles. It’s about specific personas in the tech community—whether that’s some suit who actually writes posts on LinkedIn or someone who’s played enough video games to know that the real “open world” stuff is what you dream up in D&D.

Microsoft was a great partner for this execution because they gave us almost full creative control over the gift guide, allowing me and my team to craft content that spoke authentically to our audience and aligning Microsoft’s voice with them.