Say hi to Songkick’s Design Principles

Songkick has a sweet new set of design principles. We’re feeling pretty stoked about them, the journey that got us here and the things we learned along the way — so in the spirit of sharing, here are some hot takes.

The principles

Here they are! Look at them!

Why bother?

We’re a design team of 3. Sometimes initiatives like this can feel overbearing for a small team that already works super-closely with one another. But the truth is we still come up against the same problems that can plague design teams of any size.

The way we saw it, an agreed set of design principles could:

• Push the quality and consistency of our designs
• Make us more accountable for our work, and establish a stronger consensus about design standards at Songkick
• Give us confidence in articulating and justifying the design decisions we make
• Provide the wider team with a clearer context about how we make design decisions, and what our priorities are
• Inform and guide larger bodies of design work in future

All that sounded pretty great in principle (aha!), so we went all-in and hatched a plan.

Inspiration

As is often (always) the case, smart people have already blazed the trail in these areas, so we got off the ground by shopping around for inspiration. We found some awesome examples of principles and processes from Airbnb, Spotify, GovUK and more. But it was energy startup Bulb whose principles really resonated with us.

Alla Kholmatova, head of design at Bulb, writes that good design principles should be “genuine, opinionated and memorable”. These are some cracking adjectives, which we loved, so we unpacked them as a team:

• Genuine. Not just fluff, or chat, but something meaningful that you can realistically and tangibly apply to the way you work. Design principles should exist in the hallowed turf between ambitious and achievable.
• Opinionated. Yes! We’re here for a reason. The live music space is ripe for bold actors, and our collective passion and purpose should be tangible in the products we ship.
• Memorable. We loved Bulb’s trio of one-word principles; you can instantly imagine yourself calling on them in a workshop or kickoff. It should be that easy.

So, to visualise a happy end state, we agreed to lean on this template of three simple, genuine, opinionated and memorable design principles.

In this scenario, your principles really boil down to the three words you choose. Three words to help shape design at Songkick — where do you even begin?

Moodboarding

As a starting block, we looked to examples from across the music industry (and beyond). Over the course of a week, we covered an enormous wall in our office with amazing examples of design, branding, photography and more. Then as a team, we circled the elements we liked, discussed why they resonated with us, and then used post-its to summarise those elements in single words. These descriptors and buzzwords ended up in a longlist that would form the basis of our future discussions.

Find the themes

In a workshop, we grouped our descriptors into broad themes, talked about what these themes meant in the context of design at Songkick, and iterated on the adjectives that best encompassed what we were trying to say. After really constructive discussions we ended up with 5 broad buckets that we felt positive about: Effortless, Fan-first, Human, Experiential and Unified.

Focus in

After a little time away, we came back to our shortlist with fresh eyes — with a view to whittling down to three final principles. We worried that we might lose something meaningful as part of this exercise, but in fact we found that some areas folded really naturally into one another.

‘Fan-first’, for instance, was already encompassed in our company values. We decided we didn’t stand to gain anything from reiterating it in the design level. And in truth, what ‘fan-first’ really meant in the context of design was making products that work for fans, and that resonate with fans — and we felt that these bases were already covered with ‘Effortless’ and ‘Human’ principles.

So, we came out of the other side with our three final principles. Which felt great!

Flesh out

Entering the final furlong. To get what we needed out of our design principles, we knew we had to weaponize them so that anyone at Songkick could easily understand them and call on them in the right context. That meant including a short description and some simple, classic examples of the principle in practice — much like Bulb’s template.

From our experience creating Songkick’s values, we learned that writing good copy as a group, democratically, is an almost impossible thing to achieve.

So, we took things as far as we could as a group — taking all our un-used buzzwords and each contributing descriptive sentences and examples — and then called on the writer amongst us to condense our favorite phrases into something clear, concise and memorable.

And, voila! Our three, finalised design principes:

Effortless. We make live music easier through clear and simple solutions. We reduce the stress and complexity of concert-going so that any fan can see their favorite artists live.

Experiential. The live experience starts with Songkick. We channel the anticipation, excitement and euphoria of a live show in our designs. Songkick should feel like a launchpad to life changing experiences.

Human. Songkick is designed for fans, by fans. That warmth, energy and craft should be felt at every touchpoint. We’re not robots, we’re personal at scale — and actually kinda weird.

Erm… what now?

It’s now up to us to put these principles to work. As a starter for ten, we’ve designed some kickass posters (a few of Adila’s design ideas below) printed them out on A2 and hung them prominently on an office wall.

We’ve added them to our Trello card descriptions and to our kick off templates — but we’ll also be on the look out for new and better ways to integrate them into our design process. Our primary goal is to keep them front of mind, so that they’re being called upon in the right contexts, and at the right time — ultimately, to inform our design decisions. Stay tuned for a follow up post on how all of this goes down!