This is a hobby project. I was responsible within this project for: Branding, Concept Development, UX Design, Icon Design and Visual Design.

Sampling is the act of taking a (small) piece of music from an existing song and then using it to create something new. This might sound easy, but believe me, it’s not. It truly has become an artform. And where there’s an artform, there’s a community of people appreciating it. For myself, I would even call it a hobby. Listening to music, spotting the samples, looking them up and contributing to the documentation of them on WhoSampled. Doing this, I’ve had this idea in my head for quite some time of designing an app that would encompass this hobby. Hence Swung.

The idea is simple; you take a streaming music player and combine it with a database of all samples used in the music. The challenge was conveying the concept of sampling into an interface that makes sense. You need to be able to find and play music as you would in any other music player but with all the relevant information on sample combined.

You can click through the prototype yourself. I’ve worked out the most important screens to convey the concept.

The style, colors and UI of Swung is based on the drum machines such as the Akai MPC 60 and its interfaces. Combined with the graphic elements of some classic Blue Note records that have been sampled hundreds of times.