50 Years of Hip Hop – Art Direction

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As 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of probably the world's biggest music genre - Hip Hop,

I had the utmost privilege of leading the art direction and design of The Recording Academy's campaign celebrating 50 YEARS OF HIP HOP.

My work on this project set the foundation and define the design system used by The Recording Academy's creative team as well as external entities for the entire campaign.

I started with conceptualizing 3 unique visual directions and presenting these options – explaining the rationale behind the style and design elements for each of the options – to the creative director as well as the executive team, working with the feedback and comments to build on the first two options (which they loved more).

The first option turned out to be the strongest; I, along with the creative team, worked together to then finalize the art direction and design system.

Hip Hop, the culture and music genre,

is one characterized by boldness and defiance, from the lyrics to the lifestyle;

and this was the essence on which I built the art direction for the campaign on.

This informed the bold typography and bold color compositions

and a subtle distress texture to give the whole a sense of longevity and age since this is a campaign celebrating 50 years of history.

Creating a mark (or logo, of sorts) that would represent the whole campaign

was one of the first touch-points of the process. I essentially had to create a simple typographic mark that could work seamlessly with regular text.

I incorporated reverberating lines into the logo

which makes it possible to either elongate or shorten the logo

by simply increasing or reducing the 'reverberations'.

I also adapted the logo into a black and white 'tape'

which can be applied alone, in pairs or as a long, literal tape.

This element gives the otherwise monotonous designsome visual depth.

As the campaign went on, a lot of assets and graphics were created

ranging from email assets to social media assets, and so on.

Around September of 2023, The Recording Academy co-hosted a

once-in-a-lifetime celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop at the residence of the Vice President of the United States – Kamala Harris.

Joined by artists, industry icons, and cultural pioneers, the first-ever Hip Hop event was held at the Vice President’s residence, marking a historic celebration of the genre and its impact!

The design system I established, as well as the official logo of the campaign was featured extensively at the event from the main stage graphics to the staff and guest badges.