Raw, playful and laced with a chaotic energy: we dive into the making of Spotify Wrapped 2023

At the end of each year, there’s no escaping Spotify Wrapped. Popping up on our phones with revealing breakdowns, the global, sweeping campaign comes in hot with a personalised experience that tells us, individually, how we’ve been really feeling this year. Whether you’re a Vampire or a Hypnotist, Wrapped dissects your streaming habits to unveil clever insights, including assigning you a character that probably tells you more than you knew about yourself. To bring together all the different parts that makes Wrapped tick, the design team at Spotify leads with an identity that, in its own way, captures the feeling of the year that was. In a decided departure from last year’s structured, ‘monogrammed’ design, this year Wrapped seemed to be laced with a more chaotic energy. With pixelated artworks, warped shapes and an almost Word Art-esque feel, the team leaned into a lo-fi take, inspired by memories of the early internet. “This year was all about being raw, playful and honest,” Rasmus Wangelin, Global Head of Brand Design at Spotify tells us. To dig a bit deeper, we sat down with Wangelin for an in-depth conversation about the increasing overlaps between the internet and real life, the importance of hard deadlines, and the intimidating – but ultimately rewarding – process that leads the team to the identity each year.