Apple Music Awards
The Apple Music Awards recognize top artists, albums, and songs from around the globe.
On November 30, Apple announced the third annual Apple Music Awards winners. Since 2019, Apple has held yearly awards to honour artists in five categories: Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year, Breakthrough Artist of the Year, Top Song of the Year, and Top Album of the Year.
This year, Apple also introduced regional awards for Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia. Apple states that these new awards serve to "recognize artists who made the greatest impact culturally and on the charts in their respective countries and regions."
The winners:
Global Artist of the Year: The Weeknd
Breakthrough Artist of the Year: Olivia Rodrigo
Album of the Year: Olivia Rodrigo for “SOUR”
Song of the Year: Olivia Rodrigo for “drivers license”
Songwriter of the Year: H.E.R.
Artist of the Year - Africa: Wizkid
Artist of the Year - France: Aya Nakamura
Artist of the Year - Germany: RIN
Artist of the Year - Japan: OFFICIAL HIGE DANDISM
Artist of the Year - Russia: Scriptonite
Picture of the Apple Music Awards - Image from Apple.
The winner of each category receives a stunning Apple Music Award (like an actual, physical award) featuring a silicon wafer suspended in glass and anodized aluminum. Here's the description of the award in Apple's own words:
“Apple has designed a series of awards to celebrate the extraordinary craftsmanship integral to creating music. Each award features Apple's custom silicon wafer suspended between a polished sheet of glass and a machined and anodized aluminum body. The wafers start as a perfect 12-inch disc of silicon with nanometer level flatness. Copper layers are deposited and patterned by ultraviolet lithography to create connections between billions of transistors. The result of this multi-month process, before it is sliced into hundreds of individual chips, is stunning and distinctive. In a symbolic gesture, the same chips which power the devices that put the world's music at your fingertips sit at the very heart of the Apple Music Awards.”
I can't even play Hot Cross Buns on a recorder, so there's not a hope in hell of me ever winning one of these awards in my lifetime. Instead, I did the next best thing: I made myself a wallpaper.
The Process
The foundation for this wallpaper starts with a 420 x 420 pixel microchip made out of a few rudimentary shapes and lines.
I started by looking at a video Apple released unveiling the award to get a rough sense of how the silicon chips should look. I created what I felt was not a half bad microchip mockup inside Sketch, after which I multiplied the design dozens and dozens of time to fashion the full wafer. Wafer complete, I ported everything over to Pixelmator Pro to add the anodized background, the frame around the wafer, and some sheen and shading. Custom gradients were applied to create multiple styles of the wallpaper. And after finishing the silver version, I created a second black variation of the wallpaper.
When multiplied and given a splash of colour, the design comes to life!
Downloads
The Apple Music Award wallpaper is available for your Mac, iPad, and iPhone in both silver & black, and both come in a variety of gradients. And for the Mac, I created a full circle version in addition to a beautiful half circle style. I hope you enjoy them. Congrats to the winners of this year's awards and to all those who share the gift of music: you make the world a better place.
Left: Full circle Golden version on black; Right: Half circle Golden version on silver.
Mac
iPhone
iPad
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