Today marks the day that 2022’s Wrapped launches worldwide. For this year, the overarching idea behind the campaign was “Self-expression and Play”. What was the thinking here? “Since the pandemic, we’ve all started to embrace much more individuality. No one knows what’s cool anymore, it’s so subjective now,” says Rasmus. “And we see that in how people are experiencing music and podcasts as well. You might listen to the friendliest pop music and then pivot to murder podcasts, or you listen to 90s emo rock in the gym and then go home and listen to jazz while you cook.”
So, from a design perspective, the brief that Rasmus and his team worked on was all about expressing this sense of multiplicity and plurality, while also injecting as much fun and interactivity into the campaign as possible. Seeing the visual identity for the first time, the first thing that jumps out at you is the introduction of overlapping and interlocking shapes. “It’s really based on these, what we call monograms,” says Bruno Borges, the design director at Spotify who was in charge of bringing this year’s Wrapped identity to life. “They’re really the heart of the campaign this year.” These monograms are used in multiple ways throughout the campaign, as backgrounds and as holders of information and imagery, from album covers to portraits of artists.