Michael Villaseñor

Design Leader and Strategist

I am an award-winning design leader with 12 years of experience who is eager to solve complex problems within digital media and platforms. My strengths are developing organizational vision, creating scalable design solutions and cultivating strong team culture. I lead teams by providing ample room to challenge norms, test hypotheses and focus on cumulative performance as a greater community. My expertise spans digital advertising, user experience, core product design, marketing and brand design.

I believe that the best design experiences come from the combined effort of critical eyes, data performance and more than anything, team culture.

For me, successful creative work is solutions-focused, simple, and clearly articulated by way of elegant design and clear messaging. Core to the success of that is a highly functional team that understands the importance of collaboration and feedback loops. My aspiration is that everyone who works with me or around me, is energized to change the way people interact with products, brands and technology.

Noteable Recognitions

Winner 2016 Cannes Lion Grand Prix NYTVR

Winner 2016 Clio Award Bronze The New York Times, Google, GE, Mini

The work featured on this page is to showcase a level of breadth and depth of understanding in not only systems of design but also a sophistication of problem solving for a wide range of fields of work: advertising, brand, product, and user experience. This is a testament to not only my leadership but frankly the teams I’ve had the chance to work with and how they’ve enlightened me along the way.

Curious about any of the following projects? Contact me for a full walkthrough

The Work

Hearst Newspapers

New York, New York

Hearst Newspapers is comprised of roughly 2000 employees spanning over 60 properties in the United States. The largest properties include The San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, SFGATE, Albany Times Union and the San Antonio Express News.

My role at Hearst Newspapers is to oversee the vision, strategy and results pertaining to all avenues of design within the Product, Marketing and Brand organizations. I lead an extremely talented team of designers who have core focuses in either Visual or User Experience Design.

I began working at Hearst in Fall of 2017.

Key Projects

NewspaperOS
: Led a team of ten to develop a single design framework across all properties; redesign yielded a 20% increase in page views per session across The San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle.
Brand Marketing
: Developed key brand initiatives for each property; most notably the ’Close To Home’ campaign for the San Francisco Chronicle showed a significant increase in brand recall and improved subscription starts by 35%.
Covid-19 Television Spots
: I have worked directly with the CEO, CMO and President of Hearst Newspapers to communicate strategic direction and generate buy-in from key stakeholders across the organization. In order to further advance our marketing design efforts including the most recent television and OTT spots in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

June 2020

SFGATE Relaunch [In Cohort Test]

Completely revamp the SFGATE brand alongside a fresh, new editorial vision and site experience. This project encompassed all aspects of the SFGATE editorial product including photograhy, voice and marketing.

File Under

Brand, Core Product, Editorial

April 2020

COVID-19 Television Spots

Developed a multi-market strategy and creative execution in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We focused on our newsrooms continuing to report on the front lines with coverage that was necessary during an unconventional time.

File Under

Brand, Video, Campaign

January 2020

TimesUnion Digital Product Rebrand

Worked alongside the newsroom and brand director to overhaul the digital presence of Times Union, elevating the brand and improving key metrics.

File Under

Brand, UX, Core Product

Ongoing

NewspaperOS

Develop a complete design system to unify the front-end product experience across all of the newspaper brands. This transition also involves improving key metrics, reader experience and media support.

File Under

Core Product, UX, Research

October 2019

Houston Chronicle Digital Product Rebrand

Completely overhauled the digital brand style book focusing on modern, sleek and boldness for the third largest newspaper in the United States. The style book repositioned their digital product, marketing and subscription experience.

File Under

Brand, UX, Marketing, Core Product

September 2019

Unified Payment System

As part of migrating our payment architecture to our first party platform, we redefined the user experience by way of strategic testing and prototyping. Now the user experience spans all of our paid site subscription flows.

File Under

UX, Research, Journey

August 2019

CTInsider Premium Subscription Product

An end-to-end program that scoped the standing up of five new brands within our Connecticut market as a new digital subscription offering within a three month window.

File Under

UX, Marketing, Brand, Journey

March 2018

Datebook Brand Identity and Launch

Launched the first-ever digital rendition of the longstanding print section for Arts and Entertainment in the Bay Area. The visual language and brand identity is a complete departure from the legacy print product as a means of attracting a new audience.

File Under

Brand, UX, Marketing

Feburary 2019

The SF Chronicle Digital Product Rebrand

Worked as an integrated team alongside the newsroom and EIC to develop a new digital brand identity along and core product experience. It has served as the starting point to the entire NewspaperOS product evolution over the past two years.

File Under

Brand, UX, Product, Marketing

February 2020

SA Express-News Digital Product Rebrand

The first launch of NewspaperOS on a site experience without a rebrand. As part of this launch we onboarded the entire newsroom producing staff, updated marketing creative and launched a new newsletter look and feel.

File Under

Product, UX, Newsletter

April 2019

’Close To Home’ Brand Campaign

Developed and Designed the entire brand campaign for the San Francisco Chronicle. Copy, art and video were all produced in house and launched via digital platforms.

File Under

Brand, Video, Campaign

March 2020

’We are Houston’ Brand Campaign

Created an entire campaign focused on promoting and positioning the Houston Chronicle at the center of it all. This brand campaign touched all marketing assets both digital and linear.

File Under

Brand, Video, Campaign

May 2017

Newfronts 2017

Directed and Produced all of the visual identity of the 2017 New York Times Newfronts event. This involved both the creative strategy, execution and day-of production.

File Under

Event, Brand, Marketing

November 2016

The Daily 360

Worked alongside newsroom counterparts and sales to envision an opportunity where Samsung would sponsor the creation of 365 VR videos by The New York Times.

File Under

UX, VR, Product

January 2017

Core NYT Product: Ad Experience

We developed a uniform ad strategy that integrated ads more gracefully into the site experience. This improved both reader experience and advertising metrics.

File Under

UX, Advertising, Product

November 2015

NYTVR

Launched the first VR product by a news organization that won multiple awards and set the standard for journalism use of 360 video. This project was a large collaboration between stakeholders both at The NYT and brands (Google, GE and Mini)

File Under

VR, Product, Advertising, Innovation

July 2016

NYTADV

Part of a large initiative to better equip advertising teams at The NYT with a storefront of activations and products they can market to brands to purchase.

File Under

Ad, Marketing, Product

November 2015

GE VR Launch

Part of the NYTVR launch, GE worked with us to develop an original 360 native ad video piece on how nature inspires innovation. This piece went on to win multiple awards.

File Under

VR, Video, Campaign

April 2020

The Sunday Magazine: Advertising Creative Director

The magazine received a much needed update in 2014. We worked alongside the new EIC, his staff and the advertising department to relaunch the product with a record number of pages and interactive content pieces.

File Under

Product, Editorial, Marketing

January 2015

The FlexFrame Advertising Framework and Strategy

Readers expect a seamless user experience. So we reinvented our display advertising to deliver impact and engagement without interruption. Completely modular, responsive and built through Google Native.

File Under

UX, Advertising, Product

October 2015

NYT Thanksgiving Chat Bot: Ad Experience

We opened our food editor to readers leading up to Thanksgiving over text messages and designed an experience to elegantly integrate a sponsor.

File Under

Product, Advertising, Innovation

January 2017

NYT Podcast: Ad Experience

Launched in January, The Daily launched and utilized the Podcast advertising framework that was developed a few months before, making it a seamless experience for BMW to be integrated into.

File Under

Podcast, Product, Innovation

September 2014

Google x NYT 36 Hours

Worked across the entire organization to create both a Google Maps integration on every 36 Hours editorial piece as well as a centralized hub that allowed readers to explore the world of our travel content.

File Under

Ad, Innovation, Product

September 2016

Taste of T

The New York Times’ premier food and design event was in need of a design overhaul and that’s where we stepped in. Focused on the basic elements of flavor, we directed and executed a creative position that was clean, focused and tasty.

File Under

Event, Marketing, Brand

May 2015

Audi x NYT

Featured within the relaunched Sunday magazine was a highly interactive piece about rock climbing. We pitched, sold and executed a clean, never-been-done-before experience to marry the Audi brand alongside the forward-looking digital story.

File Under

Ad, Product, Campaign

March 2017

Google Native Integration

In order to better scale the Flex Frame product for advertisers, we partnered with Google and the Doubleclick Native team to port our templates into their platform. This increased both capacity and overall performance of all of our native ad products immensely.

File Under

Product, UX, Innovation

November 2015

Mini x NYT

Working in conjunction with the head of marketing to develop a strategy on how the Mini Cooper integration with VR would work alongside GE’s part of the integration to ensure 50/50 share of voice.

File Under

Ad, VR, Campaign

Flite / Widgetbox (Acquired by Snap)

San Francisco, CA

Flite is a professional grade, self-serve Creative Management Platform (CMP) with patented technology that delivers live interactive canvases, driven by a combination of design, content, and data. Flite was acquired by Snap, Inc in 2016

My role at Flite was to work directly for the SVP of Business Operations to define and build an entire creative services department to support our growing business in advertising. As part of this role, I worked across organizations to help provide meaningful feedback on the core product offering as well as assist new organizations who were using our CMP for their own campaigns.

In addition to being a founding member of the services team, I worked alongside the SVP of Operations to grow our active accounts from the first ever deal to the point where we had the most amount of active clients conducting business with us.

I worked at Flite/Widgetbox from 2010-2014

March 2013

Content At Scale

Developed an end-to-end scalable design framework to power all of the P&G brands on their rich media placements. Instead of deploying creative, this changes their entire workflow process giving producers access to assets that were designed and deployed in real time, enabling them to change marketing at a moment's notice.

File Under

Advertising, Product, Marketing

February 2011

Flite Rebrand and Product Suite

Widgetbox (the former name of the company) was rebranded ’Flite’ as a direct result of a pivot in the company objective and structure and my team facilitated the definition of ad products and marketing materials needed to communicate our value proposition to potential clients.

File Under

Marketing, Product, Advertising

2010-2011

Forbes SAM 1.0 / 2.0

As part of our first foray into dynamic rich media units we explored what would be possible with Forbes and their need to bring in RSS/ATOM feeds into an advertising unit. As a direct result we jointly created a product called the SAM. It was so successful it went on for multiple years and had a second version, the 2.0.

File Under

Advertising, Product, Campaign

The Native Institute

Positioning Publications for the Future of News

#NativeAdSecrets with Michael Villasenor, Creative Director of Ad Marketing & Innovation at The New York Times

August 2017

Slack

Growing Culture with Slack Teams at The NYTimes

This session was filmed at Slack’s Amazing Teams event in New York to discuss the challenges of scaling team culture and explore how people can stay connected as teams evolve with help from Slack.

July 2016

Brown University

New York Times Embraces VR Technology

Last November, the New York Times announced the launch of NYT VR, a new virtual reality project in collaboration with Google. Executive Producer at NYT's T Brand Studio, Sydney Levin, and NYT Creative Director Michael Villaseñor made their inaugural trip outside Manhattan to showcase NYT VR.

February 2016

Google

Growing engagement with native ads: The New York Times’ approach

The New York Times launched a new advertising model, Flex Frames, and turned to Google Ad Manager to successfully scale native ads to all platforms.

July 2017