BRAND CREATIVE
HBO Max Brand Creative
From the initial global launch of HBO Max through multiple multi-billion-dollar corporate merger integrations and global rebrands, creative leadership shaped and sustained a premium visual identity worthy of the HBO legacy. The mandate focused on driving global fandom, establishing a unified streaming destination, and seamlessly protecting core brand equity across generations of content.
Behind the creative, enterprise-grade brand systems, automated production workflows, and highly scalable design frameworks eliminated production redundancies and optimized deployment velocity across global design teams. Bridging design, engineering, and global business strategy, these solutions insulated the core visual identity from heavy organizational turbulence and empowered international teams to execute campaigns at scale.
2020 - 2023: HBO Max | 2023 - 2025: Max | 2025 - Present: HBO Max
Brand Key Art Quilt
One brand. An entire world of entertainment.
Developed as a high-utility, dynamic asset framework, the Brand Key Art Quilt integrated hundreds of individual intellectual properties into a single, unified visual ecosystem. The system engineered a careful equilibrium, providing baseline structure to allow the parent streaming platform to remain the hero while allowing individual blockbuster titles to showcase their distinct characteristics.
Designed to scale flawlessly across variable digital formats, physical OOH installations, and international UI interfaces, the modular architecture created a universally recognizable expression of the brand layout.
The Geometry of Brand Governance.
No matter the environment, whether it be amplified corporate restructuring, successive rebranding cycles, or heightened industry volatility, the core objective remains steadfast: Architecting synchronized systems that seamlessly align with strategic trajectory, channeling pure, uninterrupted velocity directly into enterprise pipelines while maintaining a premium brand identity.
Template Systems
Precision. Consistency. Speed.
True enterprise creative systems eliminate operational repetition without restricting creative execution. These automated, highly modular template frameworks established a rigid structural logic that allowed global teams to deploy assets instantly, safeguarding brand governance and visual hierarchy across every touchpoint.
Optimized for cross-platform digital campaigns, complex social delivery, and fast-turnaround marketing initiatives, the system translated disparate deliverables into a singular, highly efficient production engine.
Tentpole Campaigns
Fusing brand and titles.
Enterprise-scale global campaigns must do more than promote an individual title; they convert cultural momentum into sustained brand equity. By fusing distinct content identity with parent brand messaging into a singular cohesive layout, each title preserves its unique character while contributing to a highly scalable, recognizable global ecosystem.
Barbie is everything.
As one of the most anticipated global theatrical runs, Barbie required an expansive, high-velocity marketing approach. The creative strategy blurred the boundaries between media, fashion, and pop culture, transforming a high-profile streaming release into an omnichannel brand experience that dominated digital, social, and out-of-home (OOH) media marketplaces.
Black Friday.
When user acquisition and commercial offers define the campaign objective, conversion-driven clarity takes precedence. Stripping the design language down to robust typographic systems, the layout centers entirely on high-impact consumer elements: value, urgency, and immediate call-to-action. A disciplined visual hierarchy ensures these performance marketing creative assets scale flawlessly across multi-format digital networks.
Social strategy.
Creating for the platform to retain the buzz and engagement.
Creative Exploration
One brief. Mulitple worlds.
Prototyping, ideation, and visual exploration create the analytical sandbox required to stress-test creative directions before scaling production pipelines. Developing distinct visual territories allows global design systems to test variable compositions, typographical weights, and brand integration parameters while keeping the overarching core campaign objective completely constant.
Communication Is the Code to Success.
Elegant design and optimized frameworks are only as effective as the systemic communication connecting them. Professional fluency across Python, Linux, PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and shell scripting provides a strict operational understanding of asset limitations, eliminating engineering bottlenecks at the architecture level. Bridging creative vision and engineering execution relies on translating design objectives directly into raw production requirements and synchronized workflow strategies—speaking the language of development natively to streamline asset deployment, protect bottom-line velocity, and force highly ambitious creative concepts into pristine functional realities.
Engagement Development
StreamRoller. From concept to working prototype.
Selected for development during an internal HBO Max Hackathon, StreamRoller evolved from an original conceptual pivot into a fully functioning, AI-assisted content discovery prototype. The project served as a cross-functional proof-of-concept, uniting creative direction, rapid team building, UX gamification, and back-end data architecture to solve a critical user retention challenge.
Pitch
The Business Problem:
In a world of infinite content, users often fall into option paralysis - spending 30-60 minutes browsing for something to watch, only to give up or settle. This isn't just a UX flaw; it's a cognitive drain that turns entertainment into effort.
Solution:
StreamRoller - a gamified, slot-machine-inspired content picker that transforms decision fatigue into playful discovery.
How It Works
Three Selection Containers:
- Stream Type: Movies or Series
- Genre: Comedy, Horror, Action, Suspense, Comedy, SciFi, etc.
- Selection Type: Relevant, Random, Most Watched, Latest Release, Legacy, Best/Worst Reviews, etc.
Action Button:
Clicking Find My New Favorite delivers a new curated trio of streaming options based on user-selected parameters, blending randomness with relevance.
Feasibility and Technical Approach
Achievable MVP:
- Front-end: Lightweight UI with drop-downs and a roll button (React, Flutter)
- Back-end: Basic filtering and weighted randomness using mock or sample data
- Gamification Layer: Simple animations and feedback loop
Advanced Integration:
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for personalization
- Pulls from user watch history and internal meta-data
- Enables contextual filtering (e.g., “something like what I watched last Friday”)
- Data Access Needs: Streaming meta-data, user watch history (privacy safeguards), internal APIs
- Complexity Considerations: Balancing randomness with relevance, performance optimization, feedback loop design
Conclusion
StreamRoller isn't just a solution - it's a re-imagining of the streaming platform experience. It turns a draining, indecisive process into a moment of joy. By blending gamification, personalization, and intelligent retrieval, it makes content discovery feel like entertainment again.
Platform Preview
Frictionless Conversion Architecture
The Business Problem:
Traditional subscription paywalls create immense consumer friction. Forcing unauthenticated users to pull out a credit card or complete a complex registration flow before experiencing premium content leads to high bounce rates and inflated User Acquisition (UA) costs.
The Strategic Solution:
Platform Preview functions as an automated top-of-funnel conversion engine designed to lower the barrier to entry. By offering unauthenticated traffic immediate, high-fidelity access to a controlled sample of premium content—the first episode of top-tier series or the opening ten minutes of blockbuster feature films—the platform transforms cold users into highly motivated leads at the exact moment of peak engagement.
The Mechanics & Transition Logic:
- Friction-Free Onboarding: Users stream introductory content instantly without initial authentication boundaries.
- The Intent-Driven Paywall: At the exact moment the content sampler concludes, a contextual, high-conversion paywall unlocks to capture account registration and payment credentials while user interest is at an absolute maximum.
- Data Hook Integration: The platform tracks anonymous preview engagement metrics, feeding immediate personalized data into the user profile the moment registration is completed.
The Conversion & Engagement Framework:
- Frictionless Conversion Architecture: Potential subscribers experience full platform functionality, complete a streamlined sign-up layout with no credit card required, and authenticate via email verification to instantly eliminate bot traffic.
- The Intent-Driven Paywall: Stream samplers are strictly limited to the first 10 minutes of series or 15 minutes of feature films. Upon reaching the limit, the video playback pauses with a high-impact contextual overlay: "You'll never guess what happens next. Subscribe now to continue watching."
- The Automated Retention Loop: If a preview account becomes inactive, automated triggers engage the user: a targeted title recommendation alert at 3 days, and an offer for one complete full-episode unlock at 7 days to incentivize platform return.
Advanced Predictive Data Pipelines:
Unlike standard subscriber tracking, the unauthenticated preview layer acts as an advanced data-collection engine, mapping early-stage consumer intent with surgical precision to optimize ad revenue and acquisition costs:
- Content Attribution Models: Captures the exact title, genre, and demographic metadata that inspires the initial conversion from a cold lead to a paid subscriber.
- Behavioral Auditing: Tracks user interaction paths to analyze whether prospective subscribers naturally discover content via algorithmic suggestions or manual catalog exploration.
- Surgical Marketing Precision: Supplies marketing teams with predictive data on which specific titles to advertise to precise outer-funnel demographics, maximizing return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Friction Points & Exit Analytics: Isolates exactly where users hesitate on the platform or bounce, identifying catalog gaps and UX friction points before users abandon the funnel.
