Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

One of issues we work with regularly is that of sonic dissection: how do you take a brand, distill its essence down to a few words, and compose music that fits like a glove? Simply put: you can’t. At least if you’re hoping to nail it. As my friend Fritz put it, you can’t take the Beatles and span their career as a band into one particular song; neither can you do the same thing in pinpoint fashion for any organization.

What composers can do for a brand, however, is link up with strategists of the branding, design and experience flavor to develop a larger audio palette, or constellation, that adequately reflects an organization’s core identity. This palette serves as the foundation from which all linked brand communications are built: sonic logos, advertising, product sounds, etc. (Daniel Jackson describes this moodboard process in further detail in his book Sonic Branding.)

Getting to that point of clarity, however, is always an interesting challenge: there is no objective timber, rhythm, or melody that matches up seamlessly with the fairly common brand attributes of, let’s say, “global,” “innovative” or “reliable.” But indeed there are particular types of sounds that can evoke a particular response: a feeling, an idea, a memory, etc.

David Byrne and Daniel Levitin (he of the superlative This is Your Brain on Music) recently sat down for a chat, and they explore this very issue — the hows and whys behind the things we hear and how we perceive them. Fascinating! (Seed Magazine Video below, article here.)

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