Xbox | growing a partnership

When I joined Ten Gun Design, our Xbox work was mostly small, last-minute projects that other agencies weren't handling. Over the next decade, we grew from producing simple animated game boxes and marketing assets to becoming a trusted creative partner across packaging, product visualization, retail, and digital experiences.

I helped identify opportunities to expand the relationship and built teams capable of taking on increasingly ambitious work. A big part of our success was understanding the client's production headaches and finding smarter ways to solve them. We regularly invested in new capabilities and developed prototypes to demonstrate what we could offer, often turning those early experiments into ongoing business.

One example was our approach to 3D product visualization. We developed a reusable library of cameras, lighting setups, materials, and meticulously detailed product components. Rather than rebuilding and retouching every render from scratch, we could efficiently produce consistent imagery across dozens of products, colors, and special editions. We spent hours getting the tiny translucent ABXY buttons just right with Microsoft's industrial design team, knowing we'd use those same carefully perfected details for years.