How Jukely gets things done
Jukely is a Brooklyn-based startup that connects music fans with guest list access to concerts in their city.
We caught up with Chris Muccioli, head of design at Jukely, to find out what inspires this diverse team of designers, engineers, former industry promoters, and all-around music lovers. We talk creative process, dealing with tight deadlines in the music industry, and what it means to “make it weird”.
First, can you provide a quick introduction to Jukely?
Jukely is a concert subscription service that enables its members to attend unlimited shows for $25 per month. Our goal is to get people out to more shows more often and in turn encourage them to discover artists and acts that they might not have. We’re a team of music lovers, musicians, promoters, and label heads trying to change the way people discover music in a live setting.
Jukely is available on iOS and Android via jukely.com
What inspires your team?
I think as a team we’re pretty all over the place in terms of inspiration. Universally, I think we’re all pretty drawn to things that surprise and delight us. Color combinations that catch us off guard, bits of clever copy, or illustrations in unexpected places. A designer I used to work with always said to “Make it weird” and I think that still sits in the back of my head whenever we’re concepting new projects and features.
“Universally, I think we’re all pretty drawn to things that surprise and delight us.”
Can you tell me about your team’s creative process?
Our product is pretty design driven, thus our design is pretty product driven. Our talented engineering team keeps our product moving quickly as well, so our process is always evolving. On the product side, we tend to think about UX first and foremost. Our product designers focus on both how it functions and how it looks so the creative ends up entwined with the feature. I sometimes say that we work from the inside of the product out, letting function of the product determine visually what’s required. This refers both to our web and mobile apps, but also the marketing side of the brand.
From a marketing and brand perspective, we do a lot of live events and enjoy testing new visual ideas out whenever appropriate. When we’re presented with a new project we’ll start with the deliverables: the absolute necessities and the nice to haves. Events come up quickly, have hard deadlines and tight turnarounds, so sometimes we have to be flexible, move quickly, throw things around and see what sticks. We’ll come up with a vibe or concept, throw some inspiration in a Dropmark folder, and start jamming away.
“Our product designers focus on both how it functions and how it looks… we work from the inside of the product out, letting function of the product determine visually what’s required.”
Who do you use Dropmark with?
We use it with both the product and brand teams. We’re our own clients and the design and visual decisions are left up to us but it’s nice to have a place to archive things we really liked to reference during and after projects and conversations.
How does Dropmark fit into your workflow?
Like most teams we use Slack for all of our day to day conversations. Images, especially oddly named google finds, easily get lost in the chatter, lose context and get lost in the white noise of the day to day. Dropmark gives us a place to organize cool stuff we find by project or save things we want to keep for future reference. It’s also great when a new team member starts. We’re able to just give them access to the team Dropmark and let them see where our heads have been.
The team behind Jukely
“Events come up quickly, have hard deadlines and tight turnarounds, so sometimes we have to be flexible, move quickly, throw things around and see what sticks.”
What’s the most interesting thing you’ve Dropmarked recently?
Trevor, one of our designers, recently went on a deep Google dig for visual references for a product feature we’re currently working on. He dug up a ton of 60s and 70s concert ephemera. Here are a few I really dug:
For more on Jukely visit jukely.com and follow @jukely on Twitter.