ADAM CHEN

SPOTIFY WRAPPED 2026

Scope:
Visual Identity & Motion Language / Digital, OOH & In-App Experience

Goal:
Create an engaging experience that reveals how oysters support New York Harbor and inspire visitors to see them as essential neighbors in the city’s ecosystem.

Team Members & Roles：
Adam Chen — Creative Direction, Visual & Motion Identity
Jia Yutian— Motion Design

Overview

This conceptual project explores a potential direction for Spotify Wrapped 2026 through a retro-chaos visual world that assigns listeners into distinct music-playing machine archetypes.

The goal is to turn yearly listening data into a playful identity system that feels expressive, immersive, and aligned with how people connected to sound in 2026.

Concept Development

Inspired by Boom Boom by Sean Monahan—its view of our era’s overstimulation, nostalgia, and aesthetic excess—and celebrates maximalism, performance, and bold self-expression.

We translate that sensibility into Spotify by creating exaggerated music-machine playback styles that reflect each listener’s sonic behavior.

Design System

The design system draws from the iconic geometry of music technology—spinning discs, cassette windows, knobs, and circular motion.

Its color and gradient language channels the vivid, hyper-saturated energy of the moment, echoing the bold visual pulse of the Boom Boom era.

Visual System

The concept of visual system draws from retro audio culture—vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs, and analog sound hardware. Circular forms, radial gradients, and rotational patterns reference how sound is physically stored, played, and amplified.

The motion language is inspired by analog mechanics: spinning, pulsing, sliding, and glowing. Concentric rings, rotating forms, and spectrum-like color shifts translate audio energy into a visual system that conveys rhythm, volume, and movement—even when static.