Apple Music, on a real phone
Design lead for Apple Music, 2015 Launched, 2015
That feeling when you're halfway through a long set from your favorite band and it smells like fog machine.
Strategy:
Before Apple Music shipped, nobody could react to it. So the art direction went onto a working prototype, and the genre photography got argued in the room rather than on a board.
Design:
A working prototype of the app for in-situ reviews, the motion studies for how it looks moving, the in-store experiences, and Artist Connect, which tints the interface to each album's palette against 50,000 covers.
Leadership:
Through Portal in 2015, reporting to the ECD of the iTunes division: a skunkworks designer on the prototyping projects, and the iTunes brand design partner on the website.
Product in Hand
The room, on a phone.
Genre photography at phone size. The jazz page looks like the room it was recorded in, moody and underlit. Play a record and Artist Connect reads the sleeve and tints the whole interface to match.
Product in Life
Argued on a real phone.
A jazz page on a working phone in someone’s hand, not a board on a wall. The room could hold it, scroll it and say no to it in the same meeting, which is how the photography got decided.
Frames
Product in Culture
The sleeve is a thumbnail.
Album art was the size of the record. On a phone it is a thumbnail, so the interface carries the mood. Streaming put every record in reach, and the more there is, the more the picture has to do.
Position:
Product and experience design lead, through Portal
Services:
Strategy, Design
Partner:
Apple
Status:
Launched, 2015