This a little bit of shameless self promotion (I have always loved that category from threeminds.com).

For the past few months a small, dedicated team here at McCann San Francisco has been redesigning Microsoft’s Student Experience (their name not ours). http://www.microsoft.com/student.

We were originally briefed to make it a “cool” student portal; but we flipped that idea on its head as a result of an insight into how a brand like Microsoft can really help young people actualize their ambition and developed a solid strategy built around the positioning that “The Future Looks Different”.

That thought was brought to life by a developing a strong user experience platform, a visual interpretation of the Microsoft brand and a beautifully built CSS/HTML site.

Last week the site was picked up organically by some sites like ZDnet:

“The website now looks what it actually is, Microsoft’s central portal for students. Not only does it have tutorials in how to get things done (naturally with Microsoft’s products), it has a wide variety of content for all kinds of students, needing all kinds of things.

“It has input from students all over the world, studying at all kinds of universities, offering advice, thoughts, knowledge and stories on many-a-topic. The interesting thing, before when it was just a self-promotion, arrogant-almost website, this really is a valuable resource for students.”

It’s always nice to have your work noticed especially for the right reasons. I am also happy that we made it useful as opposed to a flashy hollow experience that some student sites seem to be.

Visit the site here.
Read the full ZDNet article here.