WeTransfer Offers Immersive Art Experience While Files Download

Starting today, users waiting for WeTransfer files to drop can set their artistic spirits free and create a masterpiece. Or, at the very least, do something more compelling than sit around and watch their download counters advance to 100%.

“Color Push,” developed by the company’s creative studio with generative artist Zach Lieberman, provides an immersive 90-second art experience. It lets folks move their cursors (or shake their heads and hands if the camera is enabled) to create abstract, watercolor-style images. In true WeTransfer spirit, the resulting pictures are downloadable and designed for sharing.

Available for a month, “Color Push” lives here, and will also pop up during downloads as one of WeTransfer’s full-screen “wallpapers.” The campaign illustrates the creative studio’s ability to craft eye-catching, interactive fare for advertisers, as it’s done for Adidas, Apple, Google and Netflix, among others.

“There wasn’t an explicit call for this online experience from our users—however, they’re always at the heart of everything we do,” company rep April Edgar tells Muse. Plus, as the coronavirus news cycle rages, “now, more than ever, we need to be able to switch off from the everyday and lose ourselves in creative activities, if only for a while,” she says.

WeTransfer teamed with Lieberman because his work fuses artistry and code, an approach that jibes with the interests and methods of many WeTransfer users, 70 percent of whom work in creative industries.

“There’s a part of your brain which is full of negative voices, but you need to listen to the other part that is more about intuition and play,” Lieberman says in an item on WeTransfer’s blog. “We need to reduce the friction between having an idea and putting it out into the world.”

“Color Push” continues WeTransfer’s run of innovative campaigns that include a call for everyone to “Please Leave” the Internet (just for a while, naturally), this team-up with singer FKA twigs, and explorations with musicians and artists such as Bjork, 88 Rising and Jesse Kanda.

It also marks the latest art-minded project from a notable brand, following initiatives from Bombay Sapphire, Epson, HBO, Squarespace and more.

CREDITS

Production team
Design: Pauline Klieber
Development: Jetske van der Wouden
Design & development: Mikey Casalaina
Production: Joe Mier
Marketing & PR: April Edgar

With additional contributions from: Angelo Vreeswijk, Sebastiaan Laurentius, Ben Blench, Terri Chen, Karen van de Kraats, Thomas Schrijer, Floris van Driel, Beau Bertens, Devin Beliveau, Joel van Dorp, Stefan Mikolajczyk, Ilja Popovs, Boris Emorine, Jenne Meerman and Laszlito Kovacs