The Windows brand needed to champion Microsoft’s vision across the company and in every one of its products. Therefore, the Windows brand was created to be the driver of the Microsoft brand at large.

Our goal was to do for the brand what is being done with the product, so we took an engineering approach, thinking as hard about how the brand would be deployed as how it would be designed. We embraced the principles behind the product—its modern aesthetic; fierce reduction of elements; absence of artificial embellishments; emphasis on digital authenticity.

We arrived at the final design by focusing on 3 genes in Windows’ DNA: Windows has always been about choice and diversity; Windows has enormous and enviable reach around the world; and Windows at its core is a humanist idea to empower people and all the amazing things we want and need to do.

Each of these attributes comes to life in various ways within the new brand system,

resulting in a confident and cohesive system built around usability for all parts of the brand, and reflecting a vibrant spectrum of unique perspectives and personal Windows looking out into world.

Well over a billion people around the world are currently running Windows. Software is written for it, products are developed with it, and businesses are built upon it. Since the Windows brand launched in late 2012, Microsoft’s bold new OS has been described by Fast Company as the 'the boldest, biggest redesign in Microsoft’s history'. In the last quarter of 2012 Windows sales rose 24% to $5.8 billion. More than 60 million licenses of Windows 8 were sold in the two months since its October 2012 launch.