Chief Creative Officer of the Obama Foundation and the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Led the creation of a new brand strategy and architecture for the to guide all that the Foundation does; built on the Obama brand’s rich storytelling but future-facing for the Obama Presidential Center and the Foundation's many global programs.
Designed a process, driven by embedded brand strategists Myself & Others, that created alignment internally using inspiration and insights into the culture, category, audiences, and our organization.
Chief Creative Officer of the Obama Foundation and the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Led the creation of a new visual design system and "brand world" for the Obama Foundation; built on its diverse visual language and graphic history of the Obama campaigns but designed for a new era of engaging people to create change in their world.
This includes a flexible visual identity, a vibrant color palette, refinements to the iconic Sunrise logo, icon and pictogram sets, motion graphics and video idents, pattern and illustration kits, and designing new fonts that expand the Gotham typeface long associated with President Obama.
Design led by Manual Creative working with our Marcom and Creative teams to bring it to life across every aspect of the Foundation, internal and external.
Brand World Case Study:
manualcreative.com/obama
Chief Creative Officer of the Obama Foundation and the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Led the creation of a new digital strategy for the Foundation’s ecosystem of channels and media, as well as a vision and roadmap for the digital experience working towards the launch of the Center.
This work included the website, social channels, mobile strategy, QR code approach, digital screens on campus, visitor tools, audio guides, editorial content, email marketing, and an online store.
We launched a redesign of Obama.org in 2024 with this strategy.
Designed a creative team that included design and development by Work & Co, digital and content strategy by Myself & Others, and product management by the Foundation’s internal team.
FULL CASE STUDY FORTHCOMING
Chief Creative Officer of the Obama Foundation and the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Led the experience design of the Obama Presidential Center, which means working with all teams to creative direct, edit and connect the work to who we are as a brand and how a visitor will experience the campus as a unified whole.
This specifically included interior design, furniture and finishes, wayfinding and signage, environmental graphics, digital screens, restaurant experience, retail experience, art commissions, and how spaces are used and programmed.
Pulled together different design teams and vendors to create through lines across the Center to ensure the experience adds up to more than the sum of its parts. All guided by the vision of iconic architecture firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. Helping to shape the Experience Strategy was our embedded brand strategy team Myself & Others.
Chief Creative Officer of the Obama Foundation and the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Led the creation of new concepts for the Museum's flagship exhibits, as well as designing the ecosystem strategy and designs for the interactive exhibits throughout the Museum.
Designed a creative team that brought new perspectives and skills to exhibit design. This included experiential strategy by Myself & Others and creative concepts by Work & Co. All working in partnership with the curatorial team at the Foundation and the design team at RAA.
CONFIDENTIAL UNTIL THE CENTER’S OPENING
Led by Angela Ahrendts, I drove the concept, strategy and launch of Today at Apple globally working with teams across Apple as the “directly responsible individual”. One part I am very proud of was inspiring and building belief with the 75,000 store employees around the world.
Casey Sheehan of Work & Co was my talented design partner and really the other half of my brain. Karl Heiselman and Carol Monkowski were our creative coaches and masterful mentors.
The mission of Today at Apple is to inspire and educate people to be more creative everyday with Apple. This program was the cornerstone of the overall evolution of the Apple retail customer experience and store redesign.
Led by Angela Ahrendts, a redesign and evolution of the physical Apple stores globally was developed and driven by Stefan Behling and his team at Foster + Partners. This included the physical architecture, interior features and environmental innovation for local standard stores and new global flagship spaces in the top 100 major metros.
The Apple Store is Apple’s largest product. Like all Apple products, we design the hardware (the architecture) and the software (the programming) together.
My role worked with the Apple Real Estate and F+P teams to shape how the in-store customer experience worked with the physical design and vice-versa, particularly in relation to Today at Apple. I worked with the F+P team to bring their architectural vision to life in the experience and programs and content, and working with the Apple teams to make the architecture work with the business needs.
These store designs and the Global Flagship program was developed and delivered under Angela Ahrendt's time leading Apple Retail.
All photography copyright of Apple and Foster + Partners.
At the heart of the new retail experience is The Forum, a dedicated space for Today at Apple sessions that features an 8K video wall.
These multiple giant screens measure as big as 34 feet wide with high-resolution display technology. They are synchronized with custom software, publishing tools, and a global content distribution network. Some of these functions include live streaming capability, real-time device demos, dynamic scheduling, interactive art, and mural displays.
Our design partners at Work & Co, working closely with Apple’s Retail Technologies and Engineering teams, designed and developed the content, modes, and CMS for this new system we nicknamed “wallOS”.
In 2017 we introduced a new role in all Apple stores called the Creative Pro. The role is fully dedicated to helping people be more creative with their technology. These people are the face of Today at Apple and are teachers and practitioners.
There are over 3500 Creative and Creative Pros around the world specializing in various disciplines like art, design, music making, photography and video.
Apple has always worked at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. The Creative Pro is to liberal arts what the Genius is to technology.
Store Strategies led the scoping and creation of this role, and our team inputted and helped shape the job spec, use cases and way these roles would work as part of the Today at Apple program.
For the launch of his autobiography, hip-hop’s premiere entrepreneur turned marketing into interactive art. Jay-Z worked with Droga5, who conceived and executed the campaign with the help of Microsoft. The effort was led by David Droga and Andrew Essex, and I was the strategy lead on this campaign working with the creative team to develop the architecture for how it would be executed.
Harvard Business School Case Study:
hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=42809
Effie Award Effectiveness Paper:
effie.org/case_studies/case/2139
Jay-Z Decoded was an innovative way to help Microsofts search engine Bing create competitive advantage over its much more established and out-sized rival, Google. Bing needed to increase usage and position itself as a modern choice to a younger audience that was key to growing market share, but is highly suspect of advertising and product claims. We created a strategy that used demonstration of Bing products against a big canvas in cultural to achieve a real, quantifiable gain against Google and relevancy in the market.
At the same time we were approached by Jay-Z who was about to launch his autobiography, Decoded, and wanted to connect with his young audience in a new digitally driven way that would be on the scale of his album launches.
With one idea, we brought together two unlikely partners for mutual benefit.
Over the course of one month we created a real-life treasure hunt where 5-10 pages from the book would be placed everyday in a unique physical location around the globe that has direct relevancy to the individual page and literally have fans “walking the streets” from Jigga’s past. In addition to large scale posters and outdoor placements, we created many one of kind media places. Such as a Gucci leather jacket lined with a page, pages burnished on restaurant plates, a bronze plaque on Marcy Housing Projects where Jay-Z grew up, the bottom of a pool in Miami, etc.
We tied it all together online with a specially made Bing Maps and Search that allowed fans to find clues to reveal the exact location of the pages each day. The first to "claim" the page would win a signed copy of the page by Jay-Z and would be entered in a grand prize for lifetime tickets to Jay-Z's concerns.
The campaign only took a month’s time, but the resulting effects on popular culture are priceless.
My Role:
I was part of the core team from its initial development through its execution. I specifically worked on the brand strategy and media architecture for the program in close collaboration with our creative team and execs.
Thunderclap was the first product from DE-DE and was spun out as a separate company that became profitable with over 1 million users per month.
What it is:
Thunderclap helps people with an important message be heard better by synchronizing social media across a group of supporters to amplify their voices and cut through the clutter. Thunderclap was founded by David Cascino within the product studio DE-DE, which was led by Hashem Bajwa (CEO) and Andrew Essex (Chairman).
How it Works:
Anyone with a tweet-sized message about something they care about can create a Thunderclap campaign with that message. They can then invite their network to lend their voices and support the message on Thunderclap. If enough people support the message, Thunderclap will blast out the original message on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr from all of the supporters’ social media accounts at the same time, automatically creating a wave of activity that can’t be ignored.
Users:
Thunderclap is empowering a diverse audience from passionate individuals on a local level, to politicians on a national stage, to artists sharing work, to brands who engaging their consumers, to causes creating change around the world.
Many organizations and individuals are creating Thunderclap campaigns or supporting them.
The White House, United Nations, Kathryn Bigelow, Matt Taibbi, ONE.org, Stand Up To Cancer, Charity:Water, NAACP, Candie’s Foundation, Oxfam, Habitat for Humanity, World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Save the Children, Glenn Beck, Al Jazeera, HuffPo, Human Rights Watch
Barack Obama, Alicia Keys, Russell Simmons, Richard Branson, Piers Morgan, Gisele Bündchen, Carly Rae Jepsen, Stephen Fry, William Shatner, Mark Ruffalo, Tim O’Reilly, David Cameron
Revenue:
Thunderclap is free for anyone to use. There is a paid Pro version offering more content customization, supporter analytics, promotional tools and white label ability to embed their Thunderclap experience anywhere.
Origins:
The idea was inspired by the "Human Megaphone" from Occupy Wall Street, where an individual speaker would say a sentence and it would be repeated by concentric circles of people around him/her until everyone in the park heard the message.
My Role:
I led DE-DE, the studio that funded and produced Thunderclap. I also led the branding, marketing. launch and initial partnerships for the product with Droga5’s support.
"The Computer is Personal Again" was a global brand campaign created by Goodby, Silverstein and Partners in 2006. I was part of the strategic team and helped implement the campaign in digital channels.
Harvard Business School Case Study:
hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=36988
In 2006 computers were treated as commodities sold on speeds and feeds. Our campaign sought to put the "personal" back in "Personal Computers". We positioned HP as the company that understands how computers had become essential to our lives and truly the most personal thing we own.
The advertising highlighted how celebrities and notable people in culture use their computers in ways personal to them. TV advertising created mini-biographies of these people by using motion graphics to show the personal things they do with their computers, while obscuring their faces.
The campaign was deployed globally and adapted in every country that HP operated in and led to an increase in market share overtaking Dell to become the #1 personal computer maker worldwide.
My Role:
I was part of the strategy team that identified the early consumer and market insights. As the campaign came to life I led the digital strategy and ideation.
Began my career in 2000 working on how the UN tells its story in digital media. Located at UN Headquarters in New York, I began as an intern and then a junior officer working with the Secretariat, Research Institutes and Country Missions.
The UN is a forum for the world to gather and take action together on the issues confronting humanity. Global problems do not stop at national borders and require global solutions.
