Apple Music // Playlist Redesign Animations

Apple Music rebranded and updated their "Essentials" playlists across their entire platform, bringing motion and life to the cover art. They brought them all in line with each other visually, whereas before they had been very singular pieces of art.

Each animation had to be between 10-30 seconds and needed to loop seamlessly to fit Apple's smooth and sleek style. There were strict requirements on motion design too - each piece of cover art had to really speak to its particular playlist music style while being in keeping with the larger set.

I was brought on to the team at Magpie to help bring a staggering number of these new designs to life.

We as a team had around 150 designs to handle, animate, and finesse - in just a few months with tight deadlines that were met every step of the way. I knew that clever use of expressions, essential graphics, sliders, and templating would be the key to creating so many animations, variations, and updates from feedback.

I had to handle quick handover of files and versioning, sometimes producing up to 5 animations a day (and not letting the quality slip at any point!). Working at such a pace in a team environment meant carefully labelling layers, versions, changes, and feedback to cut down on backtracking.

At key points in the process I spearheaded troubleshooting. I figured out challenges with colour space (it was a nightmare), bitrate (this wasn't a nightmare), Mac-PC compatibility (it was a nightmare), and expressions (coding efficiently and effectively within After Effects) to help everything flow smoothly.

Owing to my meticulous care and keen eye for detail, I was then kept on post-design to help with final delivery, file management, and cleanup of all the projects. This was then bundled into final delivery for Apple, where again their stringent requirements meant that renders had to be labeled precisely in the correct manner.

In the end we delivered all the required exports, template files, and projects on time, in all variations of ratios and lengths.

Please get in touch to hear more, or if you'd like to book me for any projects!