Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

This story about 23-year-old Jessica Stone is heartbreaking. Sounds like it’s straight from Hollywood, but it’s a true story: if she wanted to live, doctors needed to remove a tumor lodged on her brain stem. And in the ensuing aftermath Jessica would no longer be able to hear.

So, if you had only 30 days left to hear, what would you want to hear?

Or what what would you want to hear yourself say?

Normally this type of trite hypothetical question can drive me batty, but considering that someone had to go through this first hand, specifically examining the value of sound in their lives, it’s something that sends chills down my spine.

Inspiring stuff. We have this remarkable, personal, dynamic filter through which we process our lives, and yet so little understanding of it. So much yet so little exploration of it. The sky’s the limit.

I need reacquaint myself with the mini-disc recorder. Need to get out of this fuzzy, often disconnected land of “strategy” and start living in the creative weeds of sound once again.

On with the weekend!

– Noel Franus

Really looking forward to Inverge — “the interactive convergence conference” — next week.

At first blush, this isn’t a natural “sonic branding” fit. Yet convergent, cross-media design is the inevitable future. And we believe sound is a significant ingredient in designing the immersive and interactive experiences of that future.

The lineup looks great. I’m especially looking forward to Joshua Green, Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT and William Swartout, Director of Technology for USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies. Also looking forward to finding out what “cyborg anthropologist and social media consultant” Amber Case does for a living, as that’s a most curious title of the bunch.

On a related note, 5D is coming up soon, too — Long Beach in October. Martyn is running a two-hour Future of Sound event there, which should provide yet more great options for shaking hands and devising beautiful things that may or may not be useful.

Links: Inverge conference site; Inverge blog; 5D conference site.

– Noel Franus

I just started a new group at LinkedIn: Sonic Branding and Identity. If you’re part of the network or looking to build contacts in this biz, this will — over time — serve as a beacon for resources.

On that note: be sure to also check out the International Community for Audio Branding over at Ning. Feel free to drop in and say hello.

I’m back after more than two weeks away. Here’s five inspiring links to get things rolling again.

Does music sound better today than it did 30 years ago? Sonic ID’s very own Martyn Ware leads a podcast conversation with experts Tom Dunmore (Stuff magazine), Rob Kelly (Strongroom studios), Stephen Budd (artist/producer manager) and Tim Lawrence (culture writer). Facilitated by B&W.

Bowers and Wilkins Senior Design Engineer John Dibb recently led a “sound tasting” at Abbey Road Studios: “On a personal level I felt the same satisfaction I felt as a teenage speaker designer, and still do as a professional, when someone really gets how important sound is and how getting the illusion closer to reality is such a magical thing.” Here’s the story.

Brandchannel.com has a good writeup on the use of sonic branding and identity in India — with quotes from our pal Marcel de Bie and my former Elias frontman Martin Pazzani.

Mascara has gone electric. Unfortunately the sound of Estee Lauder’s and Lancome’s new electronic eyeliner is a “hum as annoying as a vibrating cellphone.” I can only assume this is not an intentional attribute of either brand.

And finally…nice Frontline World story about a Mozambique singer who’s saving lives by singing about…latrines.

– Noel Franus