Spotify Wrapped: You eagerly anticipate its arrival. You swoon over the in-app experience. You share your results on your socials. You snicker when you see the ads during your commute. But do you know what goes into Wrapped's unique visual identity each year?
Many months ahead of Wrapped's December launch, Spotify's Brand & Creative team comes together to refresh Wrapped as a true campaign and experience that reflects on the year with its own unique look and feel. To get the scoop, For the Record spoke with Spotify's Global Head of Brand Design Rasmus Wangelin. He shared the considerations he and his team put into Wrapped year after year-and what's special about the creative for 2021.
What is your role within the Spotify Brand & Creative team? How does your work throughout the year transition into Wrapped? In collaboration with my team, I oversee Spotify's design work for brand and marketing globally. I run a team of between 15 and 20 designers, art directors, and design directors working alongside me across different initiatives. They can range from brand marketing, music and podcast marketing, art direction and branding, design thought leadership, and problem solving any design-related issues for the company as a whole. We really work and collaborate with almost all parts of Spotify. We're also always proactively working in the background on the brand itself-the rules around it, guidelines, how it comes to life.
Wrapped is probably the biggest project we do every year. And it's not like other projects end-but because we know Wrapped is coming, we have to orchestrate and organize our team to be able to support it properly, alongside everything else that we still have going on.
And funny enough, design explorations for Wrapped actually start in June every year. We have to start that early in order to land the design direction so that we can then build an extensive tool kit that will be used by all of our partners and agencies globally.
What are some of the considerations that go into the Wrapped visual identity each year? I think there are a few different answers here. I think the most important one is that the way we tell the story of music and audio culture every year shifts, right? So we actually want to look at the year that has been and align our way of talking and our ideas with the year. As you can see, every year has a slightly different theme. And it's important for us on the design front to make sure that whatever design we create matches the sentiment of the way we're talking about the year conceptually.
And then outside of that, we actually aspire to create a completely new and fresh articulation of our brand every year. That is Spotify. We're always inventing, trying things, and exploring how we can push the brand. So when you go through the years and you start backtracking on Twitter and Instagram and all these different places that you can post, you can almost visually see what year you're talking about based on the art direction.
Of course we're always thinking about all the obvious things like accessibility and creating a design that feels inclusive enough for everyone to understand it. We work closely with a lot of different teams at Spotify, and we bring them in as stakeholders to make sure that we get feedback from different places with different expertise really early in the process. We're a digital-first company, so we are always thinking about how we can create impactful work across all of our digital touchpoints. So, for example, motion is always a key part of our design.
What are some of the specific elements within the identity for 2021 Wrapped? What should fans look forward to? The graphic element this year for Wrapped is a dynamic thread that ties together all the work. When we started looking at this as a design element, we were super excited because it gives us an additional layer of storytelling in every piece of creative. You can, let's say, have an artist image with copy, but you can also have things inside of this ribbon to enhance the story and go deeper with an insight.
Sometimes we will put words like 2021 or Wrapped, but it also gives us an opportunity to actually lean in even further and have a bit of a dialog with our audience. We've created a set of standard symbols, like a heart or a fire, but we're also giving local markets an opportunity to create their own custom symbols. We had so much fun with this piece when creating the work and we love the idea that some symbols might only be fully understood by a true fan. We're massive music fans ourselves. Everyone who works at Spotify is very in tune with music and music culture, and we want that passion to shine through.
How does the 2021 Wrapped visual identity reflect 2021 as a whole? This year, people around the world started to embrace the unknown in many ways, so we wanted every piece of creative to feel unique. At the same time, consistency is always important for a large campaign like Wrapped, and the playful ribbon does a good job at creating unique articulations while tying together the work as a whole.
This year, as you enjoy the new and familiar elements of the Wrapped in-app experience or explore what the world streamed most this year, make sure to take a look as well as a listen.
Most recent headlines
26/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
26/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
25/12/2025
Holiday lights are twinkling, hot cocoa's on the stove and gamers are settling in for a well-earned break.
Whether staying in or heading on a winter getawa...
24/12/2025
What is AI good for? Posted by MTI Film on December 24, 2025
What is AI good for?
What is AI good for?
It's been three years since ChatGPT first cap...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
24/12/2025
Back to All News
The Boyfriend' Season 2 Unveils Heartwarming Trailer, Key...
24/12/2025
Back to All News
Love, Fights, and Everything in Between: Badly in Love' Returns for Season 2
Entertainment
24 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied t...
24/12/2025
Scripps Research study links sleep variability with sleep apnea and hypertension How consumers' digital activity trackers could enable personalized health s...
23/12/2025
How guilas Cibae as Dominican Winter League Games Are Locally Produced for Glob...
23/12/2025
BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on Supplying Scalability and Customization in the Clo...
23/12/2025
CAMB.AI Enables European Athletics to Offer Multi-Language SupportPlan is to eventually offer translation into all languages spoken in EuropeBy Ken Kerschbaumer...
23/12/2025
Analysis: As sports media values trend negative, scarcity and quality are king By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Monday, December 22, 2025 - 14:08
Print ...
23/12/2025
ESPN, Disney, and NBA Return to the Animated Altcast Fray With Second Edition of...
23/12/2025
End the Year on a High Note and Donate to the Sports Broadcasting Fund Today! By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, December 23, 2025 - 12:25 pm
...
23/12/2025
The year is winding down, the weather outside is frightful, and it's the perfect time to escape into a story that warms the heart. For listeners looking for...
23/12/2025
A Zeus motor is hot fire tested at L3Harris' Camden, Arkansas, solid rocket ...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Lightware will exhibit several major product innovations at ISE 2026, including the new USB-C BOOSTER-V1, Google Meet. integration for various Taurus UCX models...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
23/12/2025
Taking the Stage at Carnegie Hall-On a Global Scale Boston Conservatory Orchestra students reflect on their epic concert marking the 80th session of the UN Gene...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's The Great Flood and Culinary Class Wars 2 Top Gl...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things By the Numbers: How the Global Phenomenon Shap...
23/12/2025
Experience the power of WO Automation for Radio's newest service, the System Effectiveness Review. Designed to help you achieve more, a System Effectiveness...
23/12/2025
23 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan and Rakuten Symphony Collaborate to A...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
How Steamy Can It Get? Single's Inferno' Season 5 Pre...
23/12/2025
Back to All News
33 Million Global Viewers on Netflix Watched Jake Paul vs. Ant...
23/12/2025
New technique lights up where drugs go in the body, cell by cell Scripps Research scientists developed a technique that maps drug binding in individual cells th...
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
Spotify Wrapped: You eagerly anticipate its arrival. You swoon over the in-app experience. You share your results on your socials. You snicker when you see the ads during your commute. But do you know what goes into Wrapped's unique visual identity each year?
