Sam Smith & Tiwa Savage

I received the audio, the lyrics, and the track artwork from Tiwa and Sam via Nic, the Head of Digital at Universal South Africa, a couple of weeks ahead of the planned release date.

I spent some time listening to the track and drawing up some original concepts, colour palettes and how we could potentially use some of the audio frequencies to create animated elements. I felt an effortless summer vibe from the track, which reminded me of footage I had shot underwater on location on the Mediterranian Island of Malta. I had filmed shooting into the sun just below the surface, creating wonderful fluid textures and also have some nice shots of palm trees waving in the sea breeze. I cut a sample of this footage to create a gentle flowing texture for the lyrics.

I presented these concepts via zoom to Nic and Tiwa’s team, and we started to go back and forth with her feelings. She liked the pearlescent vibe of a lilac concept but agreed the red colouring represented the song’s intention best. We developed the split typography concept to emphasize the dualism of temptation and slick motion to match the producer London’s silky beats.

One of Tiwa’s team commented: “I absolutely LOVE the way you wrote “Temptation” would have preferred that Typography for the cover.”
From here, we developed some final colour and chorus animations, and then Sam and his team in London got involved. There were a couple of calls, and in the end both artists agreed to go for a final edit with a lighter red wash to allow the background footage and audio effects to shine through.

The Final Video was Featured in Rolling Stone and quickly gained over 500,000 views.