ARCHIVE home←  Back to the museum

The process

How I made this

ARCHIVE is my entry for the ONE-TEN web design challenge: a museum of Nigerian music and photography you can dig through like a crate of old records.

The brief

ONE-TEN asked for a one-page site for ARCHIVE, a fictional digital museum of Nigeria's creative history. I picked two of its rooms, music and photography, and looked for the place where they meet. I found it on the album: the music is on the record, and the photograph is on the sleeve.

Side A and Side B

Every record has two sides, so the site does too. Side A is the music. Side B is the photograph and where it came from. You pick an era, play its songs, then open a song's album and turn it over.

That gave the page its order: how it works, the six eras, the songs inside an era, and then one song with both sides of its album.

Six eras, 1922 to 2009

The story starts in 1922, when J.J. Ransome-Kuti travelled to London and recorded hymns for the Zonophone label. It ends in the 2000s, before streaming changed how people keep their music.

Each era is named for how records were made and who owned them: recorded in London, pressed abroad, pressed in Nigeria, owned by Nigerians, the cassette years, and CDs and new pop.

ARCHIVE is for all Nigerians, so I kept any one city out of the headline. The songs come from across the country, sung in Yoruba, Bini, Pidgin and English among others.

Type and colour

Anton sets the headlines and Archivo sets the reading text. Before choosing them I checked every font for Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa letters. Anton and Archivo passed. Zilla Slab, Archivo Black and IBM Plex Mono did not, so they only ever carry plain Latin text: the italic "in", the logo, and the small labels that read like the print on the back of a sleeve.

The colours come from the objects: ink and cream from old sleeves, a red like a record label, mustard, Nigeria green, and wood for the crate the albums sit in.

Six album covers

I designed one cover for each era, each built around an instrument or a symbol: a hymn sheet, a highlife guitar, a jùjú talking drum, Fela for Afrobeat, Mount Fuji for fújì (Sikiru Ayinde Barrister said he named the music after a poster of the mountain), and a CD for Naija pop.

The Afrobeat portrait is painted from a public domain photograph of Fela from 1986. I wrote a small script that maps the photo onto the site's palette and breaks it into triangles, with more of them along edges so the face keeps its detail.

The river of notes

I drew a line down the page in pencil in Figma, and black music notes drift along it slowly, like leaves on a river. On a computer you can tap one: it hops, plays a soft note from a five-note scale, and floats back into the stream. On a phone they are only decoration, so they never get in the way of scrolling. They hide on the dark sections and slip out of sight behind words and pictures.

Getting the facts right

Every song's story was checked against its sources, which are listed below. Where sources disagree on a year, the year says "c." and the story leaves the disputed detail out.

Every photograph is public domain or Creative Commons and is credited below. When no free photograph of an artist exists, Side B says so and shows an honest picture from the era instead.

Previews come from official sources only. On a computer a song plays from its official YouTube upload, from the artist's own channel or YouTube's Topic channel for the record label. Phones only let a video start with sound when you tap inside it, so on a phone a song plays Apple Music's 30-second preview of the same recording instead, which starts straight from the Play button. When neither exists, the player says so and the red icon searches YouTube Music.

What works, and what is a concept

Saving songs works without an account. They are kept in your browser, so anyone judging the site can use it straight away. Signing in and adding your own records are shown as panels that explain how they would work. Nothing is sent or collected.

Tools

I designed ARCHIVE in Figma and built it with Next.js. I worked with Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, on research, fact-checking, image preparation and code. I made the design decisions and reviewed what it produced.

Credits

Sources and credits

Photographs

Some are cropped to fit Side B. Each links to its page on Wikimedia Commons, where the full licence is.

  • Era 01, Recorded in London

    The family of J.J. Ransome-Kuti's son Israel, about 1940. Young Fela stands at the front.

    Unknown photographer · Public domain · commons.wikimedia.org

  • K'Olorun da Oba si (Abeokuta National Anthem), Rev. J.J. Ransome-Kuti

    A printed sign of the Egba Anthem that credits Canon J.J. Ransome-Kuti and gives the date 27 June 1922. Photographed in Nigeria in 2017.

    Jotmax · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Orin Tituba Fawon (Oba Ile Yoruba), Part 1, Ladipo Solanke

    Abeokuta, Solanke's home town, seen from Olumo Rock with the River Ogun beyond. A Colonial Office photograph; its date is not recorded.

    The National Archives UK · CC0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Bandele, Domingo Justus

    Joseph Street in Lagos, Justus's home city, with the Royal Cinema. Taken some time between 1930 and 1960.

    Edward Harland Duckworth, via Northwestern University Libraries · Public domain · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Era 02, Pressed abroad

    Old 78 rpm records of Nigerian origin from a private collection, photographed in 2008. The discs' labels and artists are not identified.

    Domaleixo (named as author on Commons) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Era 03, Pressed in Nigeria

    Onitsha market on 30 January 1962. Onitsha was home to the record pressing plant that opened around 1960.

    H.F.J.M. Crebolder, African Studies Centre Leiden (cropped) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Punctuality is the Soul of Business, Haruna Ishola

    A Yoruba talking-drum player in Nigeria, photographed in 2024. Apala is built on drums like these. No free photograph of Haruna Ishola could be found.

    Tijani Taofeek Bamidele · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Salome, I.K. Dairo and His Blue Spots

    I.K. Dairo on stage with his accordion. The date and place of the photograph are not recorded.

    Afropop Worldwide · CC BY-SA 3.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Joromi, Victor Uwaifo & His Melody Maestroes

    Victor Uwaifo in 2012, almost fifty years after Joromi. No free photograph from the 1960s could be found.

    Catchbod (cropped) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Era 04, Owned by Nigerians

    A decorated boat at the regatta in Lagos during FESTAC '77, the festival of Black and African arts held from January to February 1977.

    Heliné Rautavaara, Heliné Rautavaara Museum (cropped) · CC BY 2.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Lady, Fela Kuti & Africa 70

    Posters and press adverts for Fela and the Africa 70 from the 1970s, on a wall at the New Afrika Shrine in Lagos. Photographed in 2024.

    Nominaetch (cropped) · CC BY 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Zombie, Fela Kuti & Africa 70

    Fela on stage with both fists raised. Celluloid Records sent it out as a promotional photo in 1986.

    Celluloid Records, promotional photo, 1986 · Public domain · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Era 05, The cassette years

    Cassettes by Nigerian musicians, among them King Sunny Adé and Ebenezer Obey, with a blank tape and a handwritten label. Photographed in 2018.

    Olasunkanmiariyo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Ja Funmi, King Sunny Adé and His African Beats

    King Sunny Adé on stage in 2005, more than twenty years after Jùjú Music.

    master_xpo, via Flickr (cropped) · CC BY 2.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Send Down the Rain, Majek Fashek

    Majek Fashek in a TV interview in 2019. A frame from a Wazobia Max TV video.

    Wazobia Max TV · CC BY 3.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Era 06, CDs and new pop

    A disc seller working the traffic in Nigeria in 2017. Most of the discs he holds are films.

    Kenanah T.I. Najmeddin, Wiki Loves Africa 2017 (cropped) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • African Queen, 2Face Idibia

    2Face Idibia, centre, with the dancer Kaffy in January 2009.

    Chastecharity (cropped) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Why Me, D'banj

    D'banj, left, with DJ Abass at Intro Studios. The file names the year as 2004.

    Tokunbo68 (cropped) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

  • Do Me, P-Square featuring Waje

    Peter Okoye of P-Square in 2015, in a still from a Globacom video.

    Globacom (cropped) · CC BY 3.0 · commons.wikimedia.org

Songs and eras

The sources each story was checked against. Recordings belong to their artists and labels. Previews play from YouTube and Apple Music.

Era 01 · Recorded in London · 1922 to 1940s

Era 02 · Pressed abroad · 1947 to 1950s

Era 03 · Pressed in Nigeria · 1959 to 1960s

Era 04 · Owned by Nigerians · 1969 to 1970s

Era 05 · The cassette years · 1980s to 1990s

Era 06 · CDs and new pop · 2000s

Typefaces

  • AntonVernon Adams · SIL Open Font License
  • Archivo and Archivo BlackOmnibus-Type · SIL Open Font License
  • Zilla SlabTypotheque for Mozilla · SIL Open Font License
  • IBM Plex MonoIBM, with Bold Monday · SIL Open Font License

ARCHIVE is a fictional museum made for the ONE-TEN web design challenge in 2026. It is not connected to any of the artists, labels or photographers credited here.