YOUTUBE

When I arrived at YouTube’s Art Department to work on YouTube’s rebrand, their partner agency, Saffron, already had a light strategic framework: YouTube as place.

I took that idea and ran with it. YouTube is not just a place, but a city. 

Just like a city, YouTube is whatever you want it to be. You create your experience by setting routines and preferences. You see exactly you want to see while the rest of YouTube’s 2.7 billion users see exactly what they want to see. For some it’s an entertainment center, for others a university, for some, it’s their livelihood. 

Just like the inhabitants of a city, YouTube’s users weave their experiences together to form one seemingly singular and spectacular place. 

I saw YouTube’s voice as the great facilitator of this sprawling city. A voice that shows up when necessary, but also know how to get out of the way of its creators’ brilliance.

We used this strategy to lead the design work and the creation of YouTube’s Voice & Tone guidelines, which I developed cross-cross-cross functionally over my time there.