Summer Lovin’

The challenge for this project was to take an already existing brand and create a themed newsletter for it (followed by an enewsletter). Spotify was the brand I chose, and my theme was summer. Spotify’s aesthetic is firmly established, which made the design process both easier and more difficult. I found it easy because I had a clear idea of the look I was going for (a rare victory as a graphic designer), but it also made things more difficult because I had to be careful not to put myself in a box and still allow room for creative solutions to flow. 

I took a good look at Spotify’s interface, their website, their newsletters, and their overall brand to get an idea of what their aesthetic was. This was pretty straightforward; their brand isn’t hard to understand at all. I decided my design needed to include the same high contrast (i.e. black backgrounds and brightly coloured text) and bold colours that I was seeing in their interface. I was also very influenced by Spotify Wrapped 2023; I loved the way it was designed that year and the fun, interactive graphics that came with it had a notable effect on its users. 

I created all of my individual design elements in Adobe Illustrator. Once I was happy with my content, I dragged it into Adobe InDesign, where I set up my file for print. Once I had designed my print newsletter, it was easy to design the enewsletter. I created that file back in Adobe Illustrator, cut some of the content, reformatted things, and we were good to go!