Dan Vanderhei
Creative Leader
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Microsoft NEO

Overview

For decades, Microsoft’s New Employee Orientation (NEO) has been an exciting in-person event, complete with live presenters and tables full of eager new colleagues. However, with the global shift to remote work, the Microsoft First Year Learning team sought to reinvent NEO as a virtual event. They trusted us to help shape NEO into a new brand with exciting learning content and an entertaining series of world-class training events, all fully remote.

Approach

After a six-month deep dive into Microsoft’s mission, brand, culture, and mindset, we helped the First Year Learning team define the event, its themes, and learning content. Primarily, however, we were tasked with developing and implementing NEO’s new visual identity. We drove a managed service of committed creatives, strategists, and learning professionals alongside our production teams to position learning as entertainment for a global audience of new Microsoft employees. From session design to template construction, we created the look and feel for the event. We also concepted and produced multiple video assets, including the opening, closing, and welcome from Satya Nadella and global employees.

Solution

A key goal of this exploration was to develop an exciting design system that shares a point of view around the human experience of growth and learning while resonating emotionally with individuals across all geographies. To meet this challenge, we crafted a design system around the idea of the inner light—the spark and energy within each person in the organization. By using this building block in a simple and elegant way, the theme of each session comes to life in abstract constructions or metaphors that give the visual identity cohesion and structure while accommodating individual interpretation by NEO attendees.

When it all came together, we had developed a digital event in four parts: Taking care of you, Working together in a thriving culture, Empowering the world together, and A platform for your purpose.

Results

Through hundreds of still and motion experiments, we discovered NEO’s visual identity. Reinventing NEO as a singular virtual event, we’ve aligned all materials under one distinctive graphical look and feel—a modern expression of fluidity and technology that evokes a sense of wonder in the moment and a curiosity for the future. Illumination adds vibrancy and meaning, representing the learner and their journey of growth. Motion and atmosphere offer dimension and a sense that the learner’s world is expanding to something greater. The layers themselves are warm and human, joining to demonstrate how we come together to achieve unthinkable wonders—allowing each of us to truly make an impact.