Let’s Back it Up! Rewind: A Case Study

The Task:
We were provided with medium fidelity wireframes for an app called “Rewind”. My team (consisting of one other designer and myself) were tasked with coming up with 2 differing art directions and designing 4 screens for the app.
The App:
Rewind is a music streaming app that sets itself apart from the others by focusing on and catering to lovers of vintage music. The app has a large database of throwback and old-school music from past decades while still offering all of today’s music for free. It’s most unique feature is that you can curate playlists that can be turned into a physical mixed tape cassette. The user can choose a recipient and the cassette would be mailed to them directly.
Target Demographic:
Due to it’s unique features, it is expected that the Rewind user would have distinct qualities. Most likely, they would have a niche interest in cassettes or other old-school items. The target demographic was specified to be:
- Predominantly female
- Age 20–25
- Student
- Outgoing, likes to laugh, passionate, loves music, social, creative, and stylish.
Art Directions:
We created two art directions to explore further going forward with the design process. One is focused more on the warm feeling that stems from the nostalgia of listening to vintage music. The other is bright, poppy and highly stylized in order to play off the cassette gifting function. I will focus this case study more on the latter direction, which we’ve dubbed “Retro Tunes”.
Design Process:
After talking to some potential users and completing a design inception process, I identified some key reasons “why” someone would be wanting to use this app. From there, I identified the mood and visual language that would correspond with this “why”.
- Why: “I want to have fun while expressing myself through music to the people I love. I want to explore my creativity using music.
- Mood: Fun, light-hearted, old-school, quirky, energetic, stylized.
- Visual Language:
Colour: Fun, bright colours that are less saturated hues to give an aged, vintage feeling. Off-white used for same aged effect, triadic colour scheme for vibrant effect.
Shape: Inpired by 90’s bubble letters. Friendly, light-hearted, welcoming and familiar. Round edges, no harsh corners, round font for a “bouncy feel. Cloud imagery used to inject more of this bouncy, fun feeling.
Space:Use whitespace and certain visual elements to create cartoonish “doodle” feeling.
Movement: Try to achieve “floating” feeling by combining contrasting colours and textures along with space usage. Draw eye towards focal points by creating tension. Cloud imagery adds to this feeling.
Mood Board:
Based on the visual language identified above, I created the following mood board to guide the art direction.

Logo Design:
I was inspired by two time decades for this project, and I wanted to incorporate that into my design and logo. I felt like diner’s from the 50’s-60’s really embodied the retro feel, and I incorporated the bold pink and blue colours that were very popular at the time.

In addition, the bubbly, carefree nature of the 90’s was a big source of inspiration for this project. The popular bubbly and blocky lettering was what inspired most of my typeface choices.


Deliverables:
Style Tile & Style Guide:
After designing the logo, the next step was to compile a style guide and style tile to showcase the typeface choices and formally set the standards for this art direction. Both are shown below, and you can see that elements from the mood board and logo are expanded on and supported by the choice of typeface and colour.


Four screens were produced for the Rewind app: Login, music player, mixtape organization and mailing. The screens have been included below:

Reflection:
Moving forward I am looking to refine these screens further by making them more cohesive. Some screens are more illustrative while some are not, and I am looking to balance them out to increase the overall harmony of the app. I want to allot more time to developing the style guide in the future in order to streamline the process more. I am looking forward to learning more and more and being able to apply that experience to my future designs.
