- Nov 24-Apr 25EngagementEmbedded fractional creative leadership
- NVIDIA · GCPPartner calendarEqual weight across both headline partners
- SC24 → NextEvent spineLUG UK, SC24 Atlanta, GTC 2025, Google Cloud Next
The challenge
Co-marketing at the pace of someone else's keynote
DDN (DataDirect Networks) builds the storage and data-intelligence layer that keeps GPU clusters fed for modern AI training and inference. A longstanding NVIDIA partner, it extended that relationship in 2025 across Spectrum-X and Blackwell-class systems, and announced a Google Cloud collaboration at Google Cloud Next. Blackstone invested $300 million the same year to accelerate the AI storage business. Its customers include CINECA's Leonardo supercomputer and Roche Sequencing Solutions.
Design sat with a small in-house team: senior enough to own the brand, lean enough that global launch volume still needed outside muscle. We were brought in as fractional creative leadership so that team could keep pace with NVIDIA, Google Cloud and the wider partner calendar without building a larger internal agency or handing the brand to whoever won the next pitch.
Co-marketing with two of the largest names in AI infrastructure is not a side project. It is a rolling programme of exhibitions, social, product launches and sector campaigns, aimed at buyers as different as trading floors and national supercomputing centres, on a timetable set by someone else's keynote.
Like many global technology brands, DDN also leans on large agencies for volume. Too often that produces boardroom-ready pictures that arrive flattened, inflexible and unusable the moment the in-house team needs them for print, social, signage or the next show. DDN's Head of Design needed more than execution capacity. He needed a partner with systems thinking: someone who could turn a concept into a living brand framework, then run campaigns from it at the speed of the global AI event circuit.
Our approach
Fractional creative leadership, not freelance ticket-taking.
This is fractional creative leadership, not freelance ticket-taking. We work inside the client's creative and technical teams, own the systems and the campaigns, and move at the pace of a launch calendar rather than a statement of work. The same model we run with embedded clients such as AutoProtect and Techspert: New Brand Media holds the practice; the relationship sits inside the client's own rhythm.
That trust cuts both ways. When DDN's Head of Design was away, we ran the design function in his absence. Fractional leadership that can hold the department, not cover a gap.
What we did
The partner calendar as the spine of the work
We embedded with DDN's creative and technical teams and took ownership of the work that had to stand next to NVIDIA and Google Cloud in market.
The spine of the engagement was the partner calendar. We supported DDN through SC24 in Atlanta and Lustre User Group UK late in 2024, then through the two headline moments of early 2025: NVIDIA GTC in San Jose (17-21 March) and Google Cloud Next, where DDN announced its Managed Lustre and Infinia collaboration. Exhibition and social campaigns, co-branded partner creative, and product storytelling for Spectrum-X, Blackwell-class systems and the Google Cloud marketplace launch: both partners carried equal weight.
Systems
Brand infrastructure the in-house team can keep shipping from
Alongside the partner calendar, we built the supporting systems a lean in-house team needs to keep shipping between shows: brand and product creative for Infinia, the Beyond Artificial campaign, financial-services and fraud programmes, and NVIDIA Cloud Partner positioning.
The centrepiece was Vector Vortex. The agency original was a flattened bitmap that looked sharp in the boardroom and fell apart the moment the in-house team needed it for print, social or exhibition. We rebuilt it as a documented advertising system: two shapes, fixed proportions, defined zones, and a copy area measured rather than eyeballed.
Brand system
Vector Vortex: the advertising lockup
Rebuilt from an agency bitmap as a documented system the in-house team could ship from between shows.
01The lockup
Two shapes, one advertising device
The inner form carries the colour. The outer form carries the space. Locked up, they are the fixed device every DDN advert is built from.
Inner
vector-vortex_inner_v5-colorPDS.ai
Colour and energy
Sits above and right of centre. Drawn in one of the two approved colourways.
Outer
vector-vortex_outer_v5.ai
Space and structure
Mono. Supplies the clean field that copy and partner marks sit in.
Lockup
vector-vortex_lockup_v5.ai
The advertising device
Scale and crop it. Rebuilding it by eye is how a system turns back into a picture.
02Construction
How the inner registers to the outer
The lockup is a relationship, not a composition choice. Hold these proportions and the device stays recognisable at any size.
Proportions
- Inner width
- About 60% of the outer width
- Inner height
- About 62% of the outer height
- Inner position
- Above and right of the outer centre
- Aperture
- Reads through both forms. Never filled.
Figures are approximate, taken from the supplied v5 artwork. Treat them as a sanity check when scaling, not as a construction grid.
03The advertising frame
One lockup, three zones
Scaled up and cropped, the lockup divides an advert into a picture window, an unbroken brand form, and a clean field for copy.
- Image window
- 8% to 38%
- Brand form
- 38% to 63%
- Copy zone
- 63% to edge
- Copy safe area
- 66% to 96%
Percentages are approximate, measured from the supplied v5 artwork and rounded to whole numbers. They describe where the zones fall, not a grid to build to.
04Copy zone
Set copy to the safe area, not to the curve.
The rule that gets broken. The outer curve bows only 3% of the width across the full height, so the copy zone is a rectangle: nothing needs to flow around it.
Do
Copy set inside the safe area. Clear of the curve at every size.
Do not
Copy pushed to about 58%. It crosses the curve and loses contrast.
- Safe area, x
- 66% to 96%
- Safe area, y
- 12% to 88%
- Curve bow, full height
- About 3% of width
- GTC 2025 copy starts at
- About 70%
Percentages are approximate, measured from the supplied v5 artwork and rounded to whole numbers.
05Colourways
One geometry, two heats
The construction never changes, so a sector campaign can shift temperature without redrawing anything.
Vortex Red
Master brand. Corporate, partner and product advertising.
- #CD0000core
- #E01000mid
- #FF4D00edge
Vortex Amber
Campaign and sector work.
- #FFC800core
- #FE8A13mid
- #ED4501edge
06In market
Join DDN at NVIDIA GTC 2025
The lockup, the image window and the copy zone doing the job they were built for. San Jose, 17 to 21 March 2025.
- Format
- Digital display & social, 3.322 : 1
- Colourway
- Vortex Red
- Built from
- Lockup v5 + right mask
- Reuse
- Recrop and reset copy. No rebuild.
Plate 1 of 6: The lockup
Context & coverage
NVIDIA and Google Cloud, in public
- NVIDIA GTC 2025: DDN Expands AI Data Infrastructure (StorageNewsletter)
- DDN Announces Collaboration with Google Cloud at Google Cloud Next 2025 (Business Wire)
- Blackstone invests $300M in DDN (Blocks & Files)
- DDN Customer CINECA posts dominating bandwidth score on IO500 (PR Newswire)
- DDN opens European demo lab in collaboration with CINECA (PR Newswire UK)
- Roche Sequencing Solutions (DDN customer story)
- DDN as preferred AI storage provider to NVIDIA NCP (press release)
Outcome
Partner-calendar output without growing the internal team
DDN's design output scaled to a partner calendar built around NVIDIA and Google Cloud without growing the internal team. The campaigns shipped. The in-house team was left with systems and assets they could keep building from: grown-up brand infrastructure for a company that has to look as serious as the platforms it powers.