Music to Move You
Design Lead at Apple
Get your funky vibe right with a music product that truly knows your groove.
Apple Music imagines a world where we all march to the beat of our own drum. With algorithm's augmented by actual DJs helping to plan the next perfect track in your playlist, that world is coming close to fruition. Beats One Radio, the first in a series of live-broadcast music stations, harkens back to the days where we all jammed to the same hit programs and delivers a universality to popular music that was missing in the disparate daze of digital downloads. The product branding of Apple Music places an emphasis on muted, moody photography that evokes the classic styles of rock & roll album covers, and reflects an authentic street and studio style natural to each music genre.
“If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.”
Strategy
Add authenticity to the product by creating a purpose-built visual design system sourced from the sounds of music itself.
Design
Leveraging crowd-sourced concert footage and visuals that evoke concert experiences, Apple Music is now the largest streaming service in the world.
Leadership
As a design lead for the Apple Music product I used prototyping to build a bridge between product, marketing, and content teams.
What Music Looks Like
That feeling when you're halfway through a long set from your favorite band and it smells like fog machine. Photographic styling is as much a part of the interface and experience of an app as type and color. Selecting images that evoke the roots of each musical genre helps the Apple Music product feel authentic among highly specific, localized genres around the world.
A functional prototype of the Apple Music App built for in-situ previews of proposed art direction.
Artist Connect
Leveraging the existing album artwork database of 50K+ titles, the Apple Artist Connect design features a color matching sequence that pairs an interface tailored to each album palette with a simplified set of social networking data features.
Conceptual Design Study
Role:
Design Lead
Services:
Strategy, Design
Partner:
Apple
Status:
Launched, 2016
