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Generally, musicians and other celebrities use their website as a form of ego-stroking. Pharrell Williams, however, is all about his fans. Thankfully, his team made the right decision when turning to Tal Midyan and Will Perkins’ team of collaborators to redesign the Pharrell Williams website.
Pharrell Williams hadn’t had a website for some time prior to 2016. Pharrell’s team, i am OTHER, initially wanted the updated site to act as a portfolio for his 20+ year career. They hoped to catalog all projects and accomplishments from every facet of Pharrell’s creative career, including music, fashion, TV, film, art, design, philanthropy, and more.
However, Tal Midyan and his partner, Will Perkins, had something different in mind. They questioned the value of an “archive” website in the 21st century and sought to innovate. Their idea? An interactive, fan-focused and user-submitted website.
“Especially in today’s age,” says Tal Midyan, “anything you want to find out about him is a Google search away. So we thought highlighting his fans first and putting them as the gateway into his work was not something you’ll ever find in a Google search.”
When approaching the revamped Pharrell Williams website, Tal Midyan new he had to be inventive and original. “It’s Pharrell,” exclaims Midyan, “one of the most innovative and forward thinking creatives of our time.”
In addition, Midyan says Pharrell is an “extremely humble” and grounded individual who puts others first. It was this attitude and selflessness that Midyan and Perkins’ team wanted the website to represent.
The brilliant, bright blobs of color used as the website’s central theme seem to be a natural extension of the fun, creative attitude that Pharrell exudes. Not surprisingly, Pharrell and his team immediately fell in love with this concept.
“Other than refining it and building a UI system around it, we didn’t want to change it much throughout the process,” explains Midyan. These design aesthetics were one of the first ideas pitched for the Pharrell Williams website.
According to Tal Midyan, the most challenging part of the entire projected proved to be the resources. “Our team was very small.” recounts Midyan. A website as robust, interactive, and animation-based as the Pharrell Williams website requires a lot of both front-end and back-end design.
“I found myself having to solve every big problem and small,” says Midyan, “which could be difficult.” However, Midyan claims to have learned a lot from the experience and is very proud of his team’s efforts. He’s particularly fond of the website’s unique and unconventional homepage navigation.
According to Midyan, it took his team a while to build the navigation. They took their time, making sure all the interactions and animations worked smoothly and felt intuitive. Despite the small team and large challenges, Midyan reassured that “it was worth the hard work.”
Tal Midyan believes the playfulness of the website makes it more fun and memorable, and that it is “definitely unique to other websites in this category.”
Don’t believe him? Take a closer look and see for yourselves!
Client: Pharrell Williams, i am OTHER.
Collaborators: Tal Midyan, Will Perkins, Lillie Ferris, Jemilla Michael, Pieter De Jong, Florian Zumbrunn, Michael Mosley, Phi Hollinger, Mimi Valdes, Greg Locsin.
Year: 2016
Honors: Fast Co. Design Awards finalist, 2017 Webby nominee, FWA Site of the Day, AWWWARDS Site of the Year finalist, AWWWARDS Site of the Day, One Show Interactive finalist.
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