Rick Rubin’s Squarespace template want to make your internet better

Anybody can construct an internet site with AI. However are you able to construct an internet site that was pre-built by a legendary music producer?

Rick Rubin—who has produced albums by LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys and who not too long ago authored the celebrated ebook The Creative Act—has partnered with Squarespace to design an ultra-minimalist template that places the content material on a digital pedestal.

The collaboration is a part of a mission referred to as Squarespace Icons, which received a 2023 Innovation by Design Award. The concept is as follows: high artists design an internet site for their very own artistic tasks, then design a Squarespace template impressed by that web site. What you get on this cut price is a website template that allows you to construct on the alternatives made by among the world’s most artistic folks.

Now, it’s Rubin’s flip to go away his mark on the web—in a radically totally different method. Rubin’s web site, like his podcast series, is known as Tetragrammaton. As Rubin described it in an e mail to Quick Firm, it’s “a quiet web site that will get out of the best way,” or a “response to the overall expertise of the web and the way the web feels in the present day.” (Tetragrammaton hasn’t formally launched but however anybody can entry a prototype by signing up here.)

Tetragrammaton intends to behave as a web-based repository for curated artistic works. The whole website is designed to facilitate a way of discovery, which Rubin says is “the important thing to every part.” You’ll be able to learn articles, poems or quotes, watch a random historic movie (in my case, a documentary about Gaddafi), and take a look at artworks or photographs. The Photographs part is randomized, so every time you click on on the web page, you’re offered with a random duo of pictures. “Each time you take a look at the Photographs part of Tetragrammaton, you’ve gotten a brand new expertise,” says Rubin. “It’s partaking within the second and creates a way of shortage since when you flip the web page, chances are you’ll by no means see it once more.”

When designing the location (and the accompanying template), Rubin steered away from many net design traits like using motion and pop-ups. As a substitute, he opted for a website with “a recessive nature,” he says. “It’s all in regards to the content material, unencumbered by ornament. An area to set the artwork free, the place the viewer can commune with the works and ponder them.”

The Squarespace template, Transmission, works in related methods. As Albert Chang, design lead at Squarespace, explains it, Transmission has a sturdy and scalable system of organizing, cataloging, and archiving.

The colour palette skews closely monochromatic, and the whitespace is fairly dominant, which is supposed to let the content material shine. Stated content material will be as assorted as you’d like: You’ll be able to add audio blocks, native video internet hosting (full with mute, loop, velocity, and different controls obtainable), and even a member’s space for paying guests to entry unique content material.

Each web sites have related vibes, too. Tetragrammaton’s touchdown web page is a clean white house that Rubin likens to a “gallery wall” the place a special piece of fantastic artwork is “hung” on daily basis. There are not any social media icons. No menu. No emblem. The latter two solely seem whenever you begin shifting the mouse round, and the social media icons merely don’t exist. “The platform by no means seeks your consideration and hopefully, due to that, it earns your consideration,” says Rubin.

Transmission’s touchdown web page is a little more sensible (the brand and menu are seen by default), however it boasts the identical uncluttered aesthetic. “The concept was to interrupt from the accepted guidelines of how issues are carried out,” says Rubin. “The template opens technical potentialities for extra new experiences on-line.”