Secret 7": Your art on our sleeve
Secret 7” is a global creative collaboration, bringing together artists, collectors, and musicians for charity.
OVERVIEW
Secret 7” is a global creative collaboration, bringing together artists, collectors, and musicians for charity.Secret 7” takes 7 tracks from 7 of the best-known musicians around and presses each one 100 times to 7” vinyl. They then openly invite any creative around the world to create artwork for the track of their choice and submit it for judging. The best are selected, published to the website, and then the physical sleeves auctioned off at a gallery event in London to raise money for the year’s selected worthy cause.Past superstar contributors include David Shrigley, Ai Weiwei, Es Devlin, Yoko Ono, as well as tracks from Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley, Aretha Franklin, Foo Fighters and Vampire Weekend.
RESULTS
5,000+ submissions handled seamlessly on the backend700 pieces of artwork displayed on the online galleryQueues forming 52 hours before the gallery openHundreds of thousands of pounds raised for charity4,900 one-of-a-kind records printed over 7 years
Challenge
To re-energise a 6 year long event to continually inspire and encourage participation.
In 2019, in its sixth year, and after a one year hiatus, we were looking to create a bold and interactive site for Secret 7” to inspire submission and re-energise the project.
We also needed to smooth out kinks from the year’s previous site which included upload restrictions and tracking issues.
Solution
Solve upload and tacking issues with a headless CMS approach.
After listening to website issues from the previous year’s CMS problems we decided a headless CMS approach with a React frontend would solve upload and tracking issues. The new site features a music play bar integrated into the nav and a modular, typographical art direction.
Secret 7” returned in 2020, with a lean budget but needing a site refresh.
Utilising use our existing infrastructure as a foundation for which to build the new site, we were able to achieve a gorgeous result with minimal time and development effort. We overlaid the new brand design which celebrates the brand’s record heritage, and also created a 2D engine (@ahmed what’s the tech stuff behind this?) which the user can interact with. Submissions for 2020 are currently live…stay tuned!
