Amazon was prototyping a “serendipitous browsing experience” for books, music and other digital media, that behaved like the then-new iPad swiping experience, even on desktop computers.

Why is it that many of our most favored experiences are frustratingly brief? The Amazon WindowShop project was one of those experiences for me. Great concept, nice people, tons of art production work, which I performed in the sanctity of my own home, and yet the project lasted only a few months.

In the vicinity of 2009, I signed on to perform art production services for this project through my main vendor at the time, FilterTalent (now Filter Digital) in Bellevue Washington. Amazon was prototyping a “serendipitous browsing experience” for books, music and other digital media, that behaved like the then-new iPad swiping experience, even on desktop computers.

The task was to gather the beautifully crafted bits of promotional artwork and typography from the giant media companies, then arrange and produce them in the desired “tile” format for Windowshop. See an example of WindowShop’s tiled interface below.

On this project I was lucky enough to work with the late great Kathy Ally, and the inestimable David Hose.

Gallery