RUN THAT BACK

When opportunity comes knocking, you have to be ready to answer, no matter the circumstances. So when a three-time Grammy Award–winning artist and the driving force behind The Fugees, led by Wyclef Jean, came searching for a creative team to launch a new podcast, the answer was immediate. Lockdown or not, there was no hesitation, just a commitment to show up, gear in hand, and build something that captured the raw, rhythmic spirit of hip-hop culture. The goal wasn’t just to make a podcast; it was to create an experience, something textured, alive, and unmistakably rooted in the culture that inspired it.

Services

Branding & Motion

Branding &

Motion

Client

Wyclef Jean

Team

Kerry Laster

Year

2021

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Run That Back became a defining moment in my development as a designer, an early “aha” that clarified both my creative instincts and my collaborative potential. I had the opportunity to work closely with Kerry Laster, an inspiring Creative Director and current Design Director at CNN, whose deep understanding of hip-hop culture shaped the foundation of the project. Together, we built a creative partnership that merged his cultural fluency with my motion design expertise, allowing us to craft an art direction that felt both authentic and innovative.

At the heart of our concept was a simple but evocative question: what if the show itself felt like a vinyl record, wrapped, sealed, and rediscovered? That idea became the backbone of the visual language. We leaned into the nostalgia and tactility of crate-digging culture, drawing inspiration from worn record sleeves, analog textures, and the imperfect beauty of physical media. Kerry took the lead on location scouting and worked directly with Wyclef to capture conversations on-site, grounding the show in real environments, while I operated in stark contrast, alone in a quiet office, translating that vision into motion.

The isolation of the pandemic became an unexpected creative constraint, one that ultimately sharpened the execution. With the world paused, I focused on building a visual system guided by a single principle: everything had to feel real. No artificial transitions, no digital shortcuts, only deliberate, tactile movement inspired by the physical mechanics of music production. Every animation mimicked something tangible, from the weight of a record dropping onto a turntable to the friction of a sleeve being pulled from its casing. The result was a motion language that felt grounded, intentional, and deeply connected to the source material.

Run That Back ultimately emerged as more than just a podcast identity, it became a fully realized sensory experience. Rooted in hip-hop’s legacy yet reinterpreted through a contemporary lens, the project captured the essence of sitting down with a legend like Wyclef Jean and listening in on unfiltered conversations with cultural icons. It was a project defined by contrast, collaboration and isolation, analog inspiration and digital execution, and one that solidified my approach to design: immersive, intentional, and always in conversation with culture.