Def Jam Recordings
Def Jam Recordings, famously founded by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, has helped to bring hip-hop music into the American mainstream. Boasting a roster of heavy-hitting hip hop-acts including pioneers like the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Warren G, Public Enemy, and EPMD who laid the groundwork for future platinum artists including DMX, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Kanye West, and Rihanna, Def Jam Recordings has been a powerhouse of hip-hop music for more than 30 years.
Operating from a position of customer service as its guiding principle, Visual Natives was able to leverage its extensive network of established relationships in the music industry to secure a position as a trusted vendor for multimedia design within Def Jam Recordings. Def Jam’s interest in contracting Visual Natives rose out of promotional motion graphic social media videos the firm had produced for other artists for distribution channels like Instagram and Vine. The relationship between Visual Natives and Def Jam Recordings grew rapidly and productively with dozens of services rendered for artists including 2 Chainz, Alessia Cara, Bibi Bourelly, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Leona Lewis, and Ludacris. Beyond artist development, Def Jam also entrusted Visual Natives to assist with internal corporate branding with the creation of the company’s social media skins, Def Jam SXSW promotions, and numerous social media marketing content. Currently, their relationship remains strong as Def Jam continues to defer to Visual Natives’s creative direction for artist development and social media campaigns.
Services
- Website Design
- Website Development
- Mobile Development
- Motion Graphics
- Graphic Design
In August 2015, Visual Natives assisted Def Jam and Justin Bieber with a promotion of one of the most highly anticipated albums of that year. VN created dozens of graphics and animations based around a countdown to the release of “What Do You Mean”, the first hit single off his then upcoming album, “Purpose”. With the digitization of Justin’s own handwriting, VN produced a graphic each day (30 days) of lyrics from “What Do You Mean”, each day with a new line from the song. Up until the release of “Purpose” later that year, Visual Natives created a number of promotions including Spotify featured banners promoting “Purpose” along with the launch of his mobile skateboarding game “Purpose Pro”.
Def Jam approached Visual Natives with an idea for very special project for Rick Ross’s latest album “Black Market” in which they wanted to created a video spoofing a “hack” of rapradar.com when a visitor first visits the site. Visual Natives came up with the idea to use CSS and Javascript instead of creating a video so that when users visited the website’s homepage, a fake console window would open and run “code” replacing the site’s images and copy with promotions for “Black Market” to give the appearance of a hack. The experience translated to mobile devices flawlessly and truly resembled a genuine “hack”. To complete the campaign, Visual Natives also created a series of motion graphic videos and graphics for Rick Ross and Def Jam Records to promote on their social platforms.