‘nowhere, man’: In September 2020, Tune-Yards were about to release a stand alone single, ‘nowhere, man’. We wanted to tip off fans that something was coming, reignite the band’s social media accounts, and provide fans with fun, shareable, graphics. Inspired by the collage-esq single artwork by Mike Zimmerman, I came up with the idea of launching the website 24 hours ahead of the single’s release with the components scrambled around the screen. All items and text were drag and drop-able so fans could have a go at guessing the song name and artwork lay out. Fans really jumped onboard with the idea and we saw some amazing song title guesses.

sketchy. album announcement and ‘hold yourself.’ single release: The album sketchy. was launched with a single ‘hold yourself.’ in January 2021. I wanted to launch these elements online with a nod back to the ‘nowhere, man’ teaser, this time with audible clues, instead of visual ones. ‘hold yourself.’ starts with a series of synth chords and a drum loop. I built a soundboard based around these chords using Howler.js, so that fans could try and anticipate how the new music might sound. I initially built a proof of concept with a very simple geometric interface, intending to upgrade it with artwork elements later. Merrill Garbus of tune-yards really loved the simplicity of the design so I just brought in textures and colours from the album artwork. We once again had some wonderful fan engagement and built a great deal of anticipation for the announcement.