Beats: Decade of Defiance

Creative directed and pitched Complex’s FIRST side scrolling parallax editorial.

THE CHALLENGE: To deliver a new innovative immersive article to celebrate Beats decade milestone. Although they wanted to highlight all of the celebrity moments along the way and the multiple stars within the Beats family, the brand didn’t want to do a standard dive through the photo archives.

To celebrate the first decade of the brand and their anniversary collection we created a “Top 10” moments for each year that showcased the brand’s largest impact in culture. I was able to pitch the concept and then collaborate with accomplished illustrator Sophia Chang. I took her illustrations and animated them so they would have dynamic motion as readers scrolled through. The piece was a huge success with Beats and even made it on the radar of a very busy Jimmy Iovine. This story was also featured on BrandTale as a top piece of content of not just the week but that month.

The feature has been recently taken down due to legal restrictions over time it could live on Complex’s site.

I grew up on Dr. Dre so to see his evolution over the years has been amazing. Working on this was great because it was hard to fathom that the brand was already 10 years old back in 2018, but once I dug in it was a welcome trip down memory lane. Working with Sophia Chang was also fun. She’s extremely busy but she always had time to walk through my ideas, toss around ideas and make last minute edits.