Histagrams
What If History Had Instagram?In 2013, while scrolling through Instagram, I started wondering what the feed might have looked like five years earlier. Then ten. Then twenty. Eventually I asked the more interesting question: what if Instagram had existed throughout history?
I brought the idea to my friend and fellow designer Gavin Alaoen, and together we created Histagrams, reimagining iconic historical and pop culture moments through the visual language, humor and behavior of Instagram.
What began as a simple creative experiment quickly became a global internet project, millions of organic impressions, attracting press, followers and shares within weeks and eventually earning recognition as a Webby Awards Honoree.
My Role.
Creator
Original Concept
Creative Direction
Art Direction
Content Creation
Cultural Storytelling
Brand Identity
Digital Design
LAUNCH PROJECT ︎
HISTORY, THROUGH THE LANGUAGE OF THE FEED.
The idea worked because every Histagram had two recognizable layers.
The historical moment needed to be familiar enough to understand immediately. The social behavior needed to feel authentic enough that you could imagine the person actually posting it.
Captions, likes, comments, usernames, hashtags and contemporary slang became storytelling tools, collapsing hundreds or even thousands of years between the event and the audience.
MAKE HISTORY FEEL CURRENT.
Histagrams was never really about Instagram.
It was about understanding how the language of a platform can completely change the way a familiar story is experienced.
By combining historical knowledge with contemporary humor, internet behavior and pop culture references, we could make events people had seen countless times feel new again.
FROM SIDE PROJECT TO INTERNET CULTURE.
I created Histagrams simply because I thought the idea was funny.
Within weeks, the project began traveling around the internet on its own, generating press coverage, followers and shares around the world.
RECOGNITION.
2014 Webby Awards Honoree
BEFORE SOCIAL FIRST HAD A NAME.
Looking back, Histagrams represents something that has followed me throughout my career: an obsession with understanding how culture changes when a new platform changes the way people communicate.
The technology and interfaces keep evolving, but the creative opportunity remains the same. Understand how people behave, understand what they care about, then make something that feels like it belongs there.
The platform was Instagram. The idea was human behavior.