A beauty, and a beast. How do you describe over-ear headphones that are remarkably stylish, yet incredibly powerful? Moreover, how do you bring that to life in design? That was the challenge brought by AirPods Max — the newest member of the AirPods family. AirPods Max elegantly combine high-fidelity audio with best-in-class noise cancellation and theater-like sound — within a distinctive form designed in service of immersing you in every note. To launch this novel product into the world, we created an innovative web page that celebrates the listening experience.

In a year consumers were stuck indoors, our challenge was introducing an audio product that people couldn’t experience firsthand – and do it without media support. As the newest member of the AirPods family, we also needed to link our narrative back to the magical ease of use that made the original AirPods so successful.

AirPods Max combines both boundary-pushing design and the best in high-fidelity audio to create the ultimate personal listening experience. So we set out to illustrate the feeling of immersion in a human way. The site recreates the experience of first picking up AirPods Max — from focusing on the premium materials used to explaining the tech that delivers crisp, clear, high-fidelity audio.

Convince performance-obsessed audiophiles and style-forward consumers that the high-fidelity audio and meticulous design of AirPods Max completely redefines the over-ear headphone category. And clearly communicate the depth of sound quality, without overwhelming a broad, global audience.

AirPods Max’s amazing sound is the byproduct of ergonomic design features and cutting-edge technology working simultaneously and in harmony. To walk our audience through each benefit of the design features, we created a scrollable, high-fidelity video — instead of a WebGL model — allowing us to achieve a richer, higher-quality rendering closer to the real product.

We juxtaposed that rendering with use of studio-quality lifestyle photography throughout the page, so our audience could envision the scale and detail of the product without being able to touch them in person.

To signify the immersive nature of the audio, we transition from white to a bold black theme in the sound section. We used a layered X-Ray model to explain some of the more complex technical features within the product. This approach allowed us pinpoint the most essential elements of AirPods Max while also defining the concept of high-fidelity audio.

The next chapter of the AirPods phenomenon was launched without any lead-up, save a teaser a few hours before launch. But the surprise was well received. 80% of visitors scrolled past the introductory section, 30% completed the entire page — ultimately driving 90% of traffic to all AirPods products globally on apple.com.