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Music2016 - 2017As a contract UX and production designer on the iTunes team, I supported Apple Music's global playlist production. I designed and managed playlist artwork with producers around the world, built templates that carried artist imagery across more than 100 languages and localizations, and contributed UX to the internal tools curators used to produce it all.
Contract UX / production designer
Playlist artwork, templates, and internal tool UX
iTunes team, working with Apple Music playlist producers worldwide
Artwork templates across 100+ languages and localizations
Simpler artwork production and management workflows
A note on visuals: Apple's confidentiality rules mean I can't show the artwork or tools I designed. Playlist art shown on this page is Apple Music's published work, included for context only; I don't claim it as mine.
Apple Music publishes playlists for listeners in markets around the world. Each cover had to capture the mood of the tracks inside it, and each playlist series, like an artist's Essentials, Influences, or Inspired By sets, needed a strong, consistent look so listeners could recognize it at a glance.
That art also had to exist in more than 100 languages and localizations. Producing it one cover at a time, by hand, didn't scale for the producers who depended on it.
I conceptualized, created, iterated on, and managed the cover art for playlists on iTunes and Apple Music, working directly with producers worldwide to match each cover to the playlist's mood and its series' branding.
For artist franchises, I curated artists' publicity shots into templated playlist art. The templates kept every series recognizable while letting the same design work across more than 100 languages and localizations, so producers could publish consistent art in every market without starting from scratch.
Alongside the artwork, I contributed UX design to the internal tools the team used for curation and artwork production. The goal was to simplify and systematize tedious, repetitive curation work and make artwork easier to produce and manage.
This was my first role designing systems rather than single screens. Templates and tools mattered as much as any individual cover, because they decided whether a small team could deliver consistent, high-quality work in every market.
Working with producers around the world also taught me to design for the people who use a system every day, a thread that runs through my later work on design systems and operations tooling.