Spotify Ads
Filtr, a Sony-owned company, curates daily playlists for platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and Deezer, highlighting Sony artists and trending music. In addition to spearheading Filtr's rebrand, I was responsible for creating monthly video ads targeted at Spotify's free subscribers. Each playlist has its own unique branding, for which I designed the covers and extended the style to the video ads. I developed After Effects templates to streamline the monthly updates, allowing new artist features to be easily incorporated by myself or other designers.
For each ad, I received three music videos from which I extracted 10-second clips. I then seamlessly edited these clips together, ensuring smooth transitions both visually and audibly, and layered in the voiceover. Each artist feature involved updating and re-animating the artist names, creating visual transitions between videos, and incorporating branded intro and outro buffers for each playlist.
Viral Hits
Viral Hits features a mix of hits trending on TikTok and in general, along with tracks that are having a viral moment or have potential to grow within that realm. Rotating covers feature top trending artists. Listen here.
The branding was created entirely by me, designed for a younger audience that this playlist resonates with. The goal was to create bright, exciting branding that is attention-grabbing and that “pops” while fitting a trendy aesthetic.
This is the first variation of the Viral Hits Spotify ads which features music by The Kid Laroi, Doja Cat, and Carolesdaughter.
Covers below feature Dove Cameron, Lil Nas X, and SZA (left to right). All photos retouched and silohuetted by me.
In anticipation of the launch of Viral Hits, I created animated teasers for Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Each artist is featured over a kaleidoscopic background, animated by me in After Effects. Audio editing was done by me as well. Featuring music by 24k Goldn, Mulatto, and Doja Cat.
Hit Songs
Hit Songs launched in 2021 as rebrand I did of a playlist previously named “Now Hear This”. Hit Songs features the biggest tracks and today’s chart toppers. The visual inspiration for this playlist was bold gradients, fluid cutout shapes, with a flexible photo frame that easily could feature individual artist images as well as large group shots and compliations of multiple artists.
Above covers feature Beyoncé, Travis Scott, Doja Cat & SZA, and Bono, The Edge & Martin Garrix (left to right).
Below trailer features music by Maluma, Lil TJay, and 24k Goldn
To drive traffic to the playlist, I also created monthly static Spotify ads featuring new tracks and artists added to Hit Songs. Ads had to be adaptable for solo artists promotions as well as large composites. Ads feature SZA & Doja Cat, Harry Styles, and SZA, 24KGoldn, Maluma, and Lil TJay (left to right)
Indie Vibes
Indie Vibes, previously named “New Alternative Tracks” was reconceptualized in 2020 to feature Indie, Alternative, and everything in between. If it’s cool like HAIM, The Strokes, and Foster the People - this is your scene. Much like most indie hits – stripped down and focusing on the feeling of the music – Indie Vibes’ design is more minimalist than other Filtr brands. The font choice was designed to feel a little retro and have some texture to it, while still aligning with the other Filtr playlist’s white blocky text style. The Indie Vibes color palette is warm bright tones with a static gradient. Unlike Hit Songs, where any gradient can be applied to the ad unit to match the artwork, Indie Vibes sticks to a minimal color palette of red, yellow, green and blue.
![IndieVibes_RecHall_1280x1280_green[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6567572c277931342543bf3e/1716583591073-JYRWXDQF6EF7LIZFZMLN/IndieVibes_RecHall_1280x1280_green%5B1%5D.jpg)
![IndieVibes_TheBleachers_1280_blue[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/6567572c277931342543bf3e/1716583615638-394Q4RUNIOCTQM0O4ONK/IndieVibes_TheBleachers_1280_blue%5B1%5D.jpg)
Above covers feature PRONOUN, Dominic Fike, Rec Hall and The Bleachers. Animated ad features Haim, Cage the Elephant, Peach Pit, and The Srokes.
On Platform Ads
Cover artwork and playlist branding icons were adapted weekly for 4 different ad-specs to promote Filtr’s playlists to free users on Spotify. Home Page Takeovers (purple) are large home page banner ads while Leaderboards (orange) are more subtle and appear at the bottom of the screen while browsing but don’t interrupt interface usage. Web and Mobile Ads (blue) are the least subtle of the ad designers, taking up the screen for a 15-30 sec ad break supported by an audio track further promoting the content.
