Bringing Apple Music Hall to life

To celebrate the opening of Apple Music Hall, Journey, in collaboration with Done+Dusted, created a live, public experience bringing the venue’s inaugural performance with Elton John onto the exterior of Battersea Power Station in London.

Building on Journey’s previous work with Apple at Battersea Power Station for its 50th birthday and annual holiday activations, the experience once again transforms the building into a dynamic canvas, creating a visual identity to launch Apple Music Hall and announce its programme of artists and shows to the public.

Challenge

Apple Music Hall is a brand new state of the art live music venue in London, designed to bring artists and audiences closer together, while combining the intimacy of a live show with the production capabilities to record, broadcast and livestream performances around the world.

The challenge was to extend this experience beyond the venue itself.

With Battersea Power Station already one of London’s most recognisable buildings, the projections were designed to celebrate its architecture and heritage while creating a flexible visual language for Apple Music Hall.

Solution

Journey developed a series of projection sequences designed specifically around the architecture of Battersea Power Station. The Music Hall’s distinctive architectural features were incorporated into graphic treatments and animated line drawings and expanded out to the exterior of the building, allowing the visuals to follow and respond to the structure of the facade. This created a relationship between the historic building and the contemporary identity of Apple Music Hall.

The Apple Music logo is revealed through animation and spot lighting, creating a strong visual arrival for the new venue. Rather than showcasing the branding in a traditional way, the logo becomes part of a wider sequence using light, movement and architecture to announce Apple Music Hall to the public.

For the first live performance in the series, the facade became an extension of the stage. Elton John’s performance was livestreamed directly onto the Power Station, allowing audiences outside to experience the energy of the intimate performance taking place inside Apple Music Hall, while connecting the venue with the wider public realm

The projections also provide a platform for communicating the venue’s upcoming programme. The artist lineup for the remainder of the year is revealed across the building, turning the Power Station into a large-scale announcement space and giving audiences a glimpse of what is to come.