Making the Brand: Fresh Finds Playlist Collection

Fresh Finds is a playlist assortment that showcases the most effective rising impartial artists that span a spread of genres. Often unsigned and up-and-coming of their careers, many younger artists first meet their audiences by means of Fresh Finds. The assortment at the moment consists of 10 playlists: 1 flagship checklist and 9 genre-specific lists starting from indie to nation to experimental. With round 50 newly launched tracks added per week — the flagship playlist alone has grown an natural following of 700k+ followers with no promotion — Fresh Finds has established itself because the go-to playlist assortment for listeners to find new music from up-and-coming artists. 

Collaboration: Spotify Editorial Design X It’s Nice That

Editorial Design is the staff devoted to creating practical and delightful art work that enhances the content material expertise for customers by means of product artwork route. When we had been tasked with redesigning Fresh Finds, we got down to align the duvet art work with the theme of the playlist assortment: Discovering the freshest rising artists.

One of the important thing challenges that we got here up in opposition to was guaranteeing that the broad array of sounds included within the assortment had been represented — we knew that we would have liked to create a visible identification that scaled and spoke to every style, whereas nonetheless giving the whole thing of the Fresh Finds assortment a transparent visible route that was distinct and recognizable. 

Editorial Design noticed this as a novel alternative to collaborate with It’s Nice That. Known for championing rising creatives and showcasing probably the most thrilling and fascinating work on-line, we got here collectively to fee impartial visible artists to create art work to help the playlist assortment. 

Concept: Teenage bed room

To seize the vitality and momentum behind the playlist and the artists featured, it felt like a pure development to gravitate in direction of one thing with tactile and DIY qualities. Early inspiration for the redesign was drawn from the seemingly collective and acquainted teenage expertise of discovering new music and self-expression: overlaying the partitions of your room with posters of your favourite band, collaging cutouts from magazines, and accumulating pins and stickers from stay reveals. 

Utilizing this idea because the overarching narrative for Fresh Finds helped information the route and opened up prospects for the art work to evoke numerous ranges of individuality by means of the character of DIY.

Execution: The artists behind the art work

With the 9 genre-specific playlists alongside the Fresh Finds flagship playlist, it was necessary to seize the nuances of every style whereas having all the playlists within the set nonetheless really feel related to 1 one other.

Together with It’s Nice That, we sought out completely different impartial visible artists that every have their very own distinct kinds and work with numerous DIY mediums. Ranging from collaged paper cutouts to felt-tip pens, the variation in fashion and mediums allowed for every playlist to retain a novel stage of individuality.

10 genres, 10 visible artists, 100 distinctive artworks

Each visible artist was paired with a style and tasked to create a collection of 10 unique artworks. This resulted in a dynamic system, consisting of 100 distinctive artworks throughout the complete playlist assortment. The covers are up to date weekly by switching and highlighting new artists. The broad array of artworks allows the visible language of Fresh Finds to help various kinds of artist imagery whereas additionally making every week really feel like a brand new and contemporary expertise.     

Release: Rollout and launch

For the launch of the rebrand on-platform, we commissioned visible artist Adriana Lozano for example 10 artist portraits — highlighting every artist’s private expression and individuality by means of her signature colour pencil fashion.

Wrapping up

The undertaking succeeded in what it was aiming to do: create a versatile design system that would symbolize various kinds of sounds and artists. A significant factor within the success of this undertaking was our collaboration with Its Nice That. 

Thanks to their massive community, the partnership enabled us to simply discover a number of, highly-talented visible artists who might create art work that may improve the Fresh Finds expertise. By bringing collectively a bunch of visible designers, every with their very own strategy and magnificence, we might align the brand new art work with our objectives for the Fresh Finds playlist assortment: to help and spotlight new and upcoming artists.

Additional Reading

Read extra concerning the artistic course of for the artist portraits and playlist cowl artworks on It’s Nice That.

Music artists featured within the article