Not the first or Last.fm
O Street have walked side by side with Last.fm over the last 12 years (have a look here and here). As a brand, it feels like a living thing, something that evolves and develops as it becomes wiser and smarter (and a lot better than others at giving you your annual music listening stats).
Over the previous 12 months, we have helped develop the brand in a number of ways that have been both inspirational to us and ways that have helped Last.fm engage with existing and new audience groups.
We have fine-tuned their existing style guidelines. The brand application exists in both the digital product space and the marketing space. These worlds have different demands, and ensuring that the brand was consistent across each was the focus of our update.
Visualising the concept of digital music data is the constant challenge at Last.fm. Our team saw an opportunity this year to do something really special. Our Becky created an interactive online tool that could take data metrics and visualise them in both static and motion.
This playfulness and experimentation is true to the spirit of the Last.fm brand. When we work in an authentic way like that things just seem to click. The resulting graphic output helped shape both marketing collateral and online UI, it also informed a range of new merch for the Last.fm store. Our personal fave is the vinyl slip-mat we developed that becomes a modern-day zoetrope when spinning.
The new pattern work also helped inform our work on Playback, Last.fm’s annual personalised listening report. Playback has grown in popularity this year, mainly due to a backlash against the limited data in Spotify Wrapped. We helped create a unique brand and character for Playback with a new brand palette. This included colours, patterns and a logo optimised for the animated flash screen on mobile when you first open your report.
As an evolving project, it’s difficult to know how to end this post. What we can do is tease some recent work we are very excited about: In a bid to create a more premium and unique experience for Last.fm Pro Kevin is working on developing a set of illustrations and animations. We like to think of them as emblems of a digital music cult that we’d all want to join!
“O Street have been helping last.fm knock it out of the park for over 10 years. Their strategic partnership and creativity allows us to share our data in a way that captures attention. Our brand has never been stronger and we love working with them.”
—Matt Clark, Head of Marketing & Music Partnerships,
Last.fm
