Softbank Vision Fund
A digital publising ecosystem for an exclusive audience
Overview
SoftBank Vision Fund asked Message Lab to reclaim its media narrative, particularly among founders of late-stage, high-growth startups. Our team at Message Lab built an ambitious publishing ecosystem that answered this problem with storytelling that highlighted the fund's new investments and success stories. This digital experience (which we named Sōzō – Japanese for “imagine” or “create") includes a publishing hub, a newsletter, a robust data visualization interactive, multimedia features, and new article formats.
My role
The Softbank design team at Message Lab included myself, a Creative Director, and two other designers. Our highly collaborative efforts included concepting the pitch, developing the Sōzō brand, multimedia feature design in the low-code tool Vev, and UI/UX design for publishing hub and newsletter.
View the work
The prototype & the pitch
When Message Lab conceived of this content program, the design team illustrated it with an interactive map of live prototypes. We imagined the publishing homepage as the primary intersection of user journeys that led into features, articles, data analyses, and newsletters. We presented these prototypes to the client and won a greenlight for the entire project. The version seen online today is quite close in structure to our original vision.
Wireframing the experience
We drafted wireframes of the entire experience, including the ambitious Sōzō Pulse data tracker. The fidelity of the wireframes increased with each iteration until we were working with high-fidelity designs.
Building a brand
The Sōzō brand was conceived in a series of Miro moodboards. Using examples from the wild, we proposed multiple conceptual directions to the client before proceeding to identity design drafts. We ultimately discovered a 'pixelated' grid motif that formed visual connective tissue between all of our deliverables.
The results
The program has been a ringing success, boosting the SoftBank Vision Fund’s overall web traffic by more than a third. Sōzō content has averaged more than 90 seconds of engaged time: well above the 35 second average for North American publishers. The content program won big at the 2023 Content Marketing Awards, including Best Interactive Feature.
Winner at 2023 Content Marketing Awards:
Best content-driven website (Softbank Sōzō)
Visual storytelling – Best feature