Intentional | Audio Identity Blog

We define “sonic branding and identity” as the intentional use of music, sound, voice and silence to create a connection between people and organizations. Often one of the easiest ways to illustrate this is with the audio logo or sonic logo — the short identifier that brands often use as a brand signature or mnemonic. Mention the Yahoo! Yodel or the Intel Inside bong and people get it.

That’s the upside — but as with all good things, there’s a downside too…the risk of the C-word: commoditization. Today, for example, you can download your very own “sonic logo” in minutes for a few bucks. Yep, we’re talking stock photography, only with guitar.

More serious, however, is what the sonic logo can’t do. It can’t reflect the full breadth of a brand and its intentions in the experiences that matter most to customers. Once you step back and consider not what your brand sounds like, but how people experience it, the game changes. While many brand impressions are first seeded in advertising, it’s the first-hand experiences that customers have with your products or services that form lasting impressions.

For example, Harley customers don’t love the brand because of its commercials (do they even advertise?). They do, however, appreciate the unique hum and vibration of their hog, which you can hear from blocks away. This has nothing to do with sonic logos, advertising or even traditional marketing, yet this sound is a powerful brand asset for the folks at Harley.

Other product experiences that are driven or enhanced by sound (top of the mind) include the Apple and Windows startup sounds (as well as their error sounds); Nokia and Palm mobiles; heck, even a can of Pringles has its own sonic drama which is arguably more powerful than formal marketing.

Cities themselves have their own sonic identities, too, which we’ve written about before. Take the entire soundscape of the city of New Orleans. Or “Mind the Gap” in the London Underground.

Even Ford is getting into the game by quieting the rattles inside their cars, something BMW’s paid attention to for years, and which has a big impact on the balance sheet.

I get the feeling a sonic logo might not address that issue very well. But this is, however, something that sonic branding practitioners — and experience designers of every flavor, really — should be capable of doing. Solving problems. Building engagement. Making meaning.

This is what clients should demand with every sonic branding effort. Not just what can I sound like?, but how can I build brand faith everywhere my brand lives…across the end-to-end customer experience?

Otherwise you might as well grab that logo by the download. It does, after all, play a useful role. And hey, it’s fast and cheap. What could possibly go wrong?

– Noel Franus

Our second podcast is up: listen now. (MP3, 24 minutes)

In this second of a two-part interview with Martyn Ware (Heaven 17, Human League, Illustrious and Sonic ID) we hear about Martyn’s work with sensory design and immersive experiences in the healthcare environment. Also: what role does sound play in the recuperation process, and what can architects do to make life better for both guests, doctors and insurance providers?

Curious minds want to know. Give it a listen and let us know what you think. (MP3, 24 minutes)

Enjoy,

Noel Franus

• The dynamic duo at Audiobrain is featured in this month’s Fast Company. Nice job — great to see sonic branding and identity taking center stage in mainstream media.
• Martin Pazzani at Elias Arts has an interesting thought: too much music can dilute your brand. He’s right.
• And finally, my Sonic ID partner Martyn Ware (who’s populated this space recently) has an interesting new blog and podcast over at the Bowers and Wilkins website — part of its Society of Sound Lab. (Warning: clicking may suck you in for an entire afternoon.)

All for now. My podcast number two is going up this week. Stay tuned.

– Noel Franus

Photo by chuckp

If you’ve visited New Orleans, you know it doesn’t take too much wandering around to soak in the city’s sonic identity. It’s not something you can encapsulate in the form of a five-second audio logo, or even in one particular song or style of music for that matter.

I was fortunate enough to live there for a few years in the early 90’s. My head overflows with audio postcards when I drift back. Funky brass bands. Dixieland jazz. Funky blues. Cajun, zydeco, boogie-woogie piano, you get the picture.

You’ll hear all this walking the city in one day, but you’ll also likely take in the audio apparition of tankers and barges heading down the Mississippi just over the levee. Or the constant grind of streetcars, which can be felt in living rooms that are blocks away. Then there’s the rooster-hour hose-down of the Quarter’s streets, followed by a chorus of shopkeepers’ brooms as the city’s washed anew for just one more day. It’s a sonic collage that you’ll experience nowhere else on earth.

If you’re a fan of American music, you have this city to thank for sparking so much of the music we love today — New Orleans is the Giving Tree to which Rock often returns. And yet there’s more than music…that urban soundscape…that creates and reinforces our perceptions of a place most unique.

– Noel Franus

Photo by Libertinus

One of the areas most ripe for sonic branding/audio identity — or in this particular case I’ll call it holistic sound design — is healthcare. There’s not enough of it being done today.

Why? You and I are probably quite familiar with the idea that every little interaction, especially when well choreographed, can make or break the “customer experience” in a hospital. Eventually happy people become healthy people, who need less time in the hospital, and you know that’s music to everyone’s ears: patients, doctors, healthcare companies, insurance firms, governments.

What’s this have to do with intentionally applied sound? Let me state the obvious: just as visuals can impact perceptions and behaviors, so can sound…in sometimes more profound ways.

I should back up for a moment to make sure you know I’m not talking about traditional music therapy. This isn’t about one violin in a corner of the room a couple times a week (though that’s a start). It’s about thinking of the collective relationship we have with sound in the healthcare experience.

Quoting George Van Antwerp at the Patient Advocate site: One of the more interesting experiments I saw in architecture school was where some students set up a display where different areas of the building had color and sound that where activated by motion. The smiles and reactions from people were interesting. But, how often are we sitting down and mapping out the process and experience of the patient from open enrollment through different scenarios?

Sitting down and mapping out the process and experience…that’s the difference between making noise and making things better. When you orchestrate customer experiences that are both empathic and systemic — as IDEO, for example, has done time and again — you’re adding measurable value. And design is no longer a matter of output, but one of process.

Sound seldom plays an intentional role in the customer experience, mostly for three reasons: 1) “sonic branding” is usually mistaken for a cheap marketing gimmick (just add music!); 2) “sound design” is often seen as an artist’s toy rather than a business tool; and 3) people don’t usually change what they can’t see.

It’s time to approach the problem a little differently, with greater emphasis on all our sensory stimuli. We know that sound plays a huge role in how we perceive and experience spaces. We know that sound, as with other stimuli, can impact us physically and physiologically for the better. And a good many of us (ahem) have the customer-experience chops to pull it together in the form of an experiential playbook for healthcare scenarios.

To take Van Antwerp’s example further, this could mean a more pleasant door-opening; generative sounds for specific zones, times of day, or seasons; intentionally directed silence (especially in those blasted recovery rooms); and other acoustic considerations.

That’s a start. There’s much more to consider if you have the time to pour some energy into it. But it involves a much broader view of sonic branding than the Intel or Yahoo sonic logo. After all, brands sound like their bottom-line products and real-world experiences. Not just their ads.

And on that note…my partners and I at Sonic ID are working on a fascinating batch of closely related experiential projects for commercial applications. I can’t wait to tell you more. Stay tuned…

– Noel Franus

I’ve written another sonic branding / audio identity feature for the AIGA: “Sound Value: Creating an Audio Identity for Cisco.” It’s a case study, so there’s a bit more meat in it than some of the introductory pieces I’ve offered in the past.

I’m excited. As part of the vendor team, it’s clear to me that Cisco has some tremendous opportunities to leverage sound in ways that few companies can.

The creation of a systemic plan that accommodates Cisco and its wide brand portfolio — including Linksys, WebEx, Scientific Atlanta — means Cisco understands their opportunity isn’t to thoughtlessly infest our world with sonic logos, noisy ads and cute ringtones, but to increase brand linkage and emotional depth across these touchpoints in ways that visuals cannot or do not.

Looking forward to hearing this evolve.

– Noel Franus

Following up from my previous post “Secondary Players in Our Environmental Soundscape” … Grant McCracken has a terrific piece at his website and at the AIGA on the simple beauty of found sounds.

Preview: “The charm of found sounds is that they are not designed. They just happen. Not one thought to make them. No one was trying to anticipate what a middle age anthropologist wants to hear from his Coke machine, dish washer or ThinkPad. And this is charming because these objects become a kind of whiteboard. I don’t have to shift anyone’s meanings to attach my own.”

McCracken continues: “no meanings are always better than moronic ones.” It’s a very well written piece.

I’ve always been a proponent of context sensitivity rather than noise for the sake of noise, or sound for the forced, pushed sense of meaning. (Exhibit Brand A: can’t you hear us? We matter, dammit!) It’s refreshing to find an essay that so thoughtfully uncovers this important point…some things are just better left alone.

– Noel Franus

Photo by CoffeeGeek

Thinking this morning about sound and cognition in physical spaces. Yes, countless studies on sound and purchase behavior in retail environments await the curious, but let’s toss all that aside for a moment.

What’s on my mind today isn’t commerce per se, but the impact of the secondary players in our audioscape. In other words, this isn’t about the background music in a busy coffeeshop (which is unfortunately what conversations on sound in physical environments is often limited to) but the specific din of the La Marzocco humming away industriously, the chatter among patrons, the cha-ching of the cash register and the impact of these on our perceptions.

Can you imagine, for instance, how you might think differently about that coffeeshop if it took away its hardworking espresso machine out of sight or somewhere less audible? Might as well be an antiques shop, a church hall or a used books store in that case. Things go awry when our audio cues don’t match expectations. And this forces other environmental cues to work that much harder to achieve the notion of perceptive “fit” and appropriateness.

Envision a visit to New Orleans without the calliope pipes chirping away on the riverside (no thanks). A waltz through Manhattan without audible traffic (thumbs up). Or a visit to the dentist without those imposing teeth-grinding machines (way up). While these aren’t signature sounds, they’re experiential ingredients that for better or worse are part of our world. And some of them are things we can actually control.

Today (at least) I’m not alone in this meandering. Came across this New York Times piece on the role of phone conversations in a busy office: The Office Phone Call Was Music to Their Ears (registration required). In short: a busy office just doesn’t feel very busy or dynamic without all that sonic energy in the air. (Blame email and take-the-call-anywhere cell phones.)

You know where I’m headed. Today’s closing question can’t be anything other than: what primary and secondary sounds add to or detract from the places and spaces you interact with today? How? Why? What if our typical, expected sounds were subverted in some way to sound like things they’re not?

One more for you branding nuts: how are your customer’s real-world experiences working for or against intended brand perceptions? And which among those can be intentionally designed? For example, I’ll riff on the dentist-drill example; dentists work feverishly to produce a calming environment, get you relaxed, keep you happy. But then halfway through the visit that noisy beast inevitably rears its ugly head. Using a softer, gentler tool would be one step in the right direction.

Granted, it’s a small step, but those little things can add up. Together, they comprise this thing we call an “experience.” And as any of us interested in directing, producing or creating experiences knows, sometimes those little things matter.

Related reading: The Soundscape; Our Sonic Environment and The Tuning of the World by R. Murray Schafer. Enjoy.

Update: should you happen to find yourself in Belgium, check out Displaced Sounds in Leuven this Thursday March 13: “Expect unexpected sounds, exciting evenings where listening and hearing are the keywords.” More.

– Noel Franus

Roger Dooley has an interesting piece on music and neuromarketing over at FutureLab. He touches on non-music aspects of audio branding, which is somewhat divergent from and certainly more valuable than a traditional, cursory piece on audio branding. Dooley specifically calls out Nokia:

They have always offered a unique walkie-talkie feature which lets fellow Nextel users initiate a conversation instantly by pushing one button. While most cell features let the user choose from a range of sounds or ringtones, Nextel did something smart: every Nextel phone emits a distinctive chirp when in walkie-talkie mode. This chirp is unique and instantly recognizable by any other Nextel user. They have incorporated the chirp into their TV commercials, and one hears it often in public. This powerful auditory branding message cost Nextel nothing other than the courage to keep the sound consistent across phone styles and generations, and to not let users easily change it.

Russell Davies has a jaw-droppingly thorough play-by-play and heady commentary on the new Sound Art book by by Alan Licht. Here’s a snip from the book, called out on Davies’ site:

Morton Feldman, after a discussion with Brian O’Doherty concluded: “…Between categories is a defining characteristic of sound art, its creators historically coming to the form from different disciplines and often continuing to work in music and/or different media. But in the last decade sound art’s identity between categories has intensified, particularly as the term itself has spread. Eno’s ideal sound installation is ‘a place poised between a club, a gallery, a church, a square, and a park, and sharing aspects of all of these.’ “

Conference watch (revised): speaking of design “between categories,” one of the more intriguing new conferences on my horizon has to be 5D: The Future of Immersive Design, this October at Cal State, Long Beach. (Originally scheduled for April.)

From the agenda: “This international conference assembles the design world’s leading pioneers and academics in an open exchange of ideas and insights about new design processes and the delivery of the immersive experience.”

If the topics of “narrating space,” “gestural interfaces for cinema,” or “the future of sound” don’t pique your interest, then perhaps we should talk. Do we even know each other anymore?

Finally, since we’re on the topic of conferences, I’m planning some travel for 2008 and am curious: which single business, design or media conference is your must-attend event for 2008? Why?

Give your answer here (at LinkedIn) or in the comments field below. Thanks.

– Noel Franus

Photo by Joachim S Müller

Shining a little sonic spotlight on a new organization: Ear to the Earth, a group whose aims go well beyond art for art’s sake — they have a problem to solve, and it’s a big one.

Ear to the Earth is an organization that aims to engage the public in environmental issues through environmental sound and sound art. It’s a new idea. And it’s an important idea. Listening can get people involved. Listening is close and personal. And we believe that by connecting people with the sounds of the world, we can involve people in what’s happening to the world.

Multimedia bonus from their website: Bernie Krause, one of the leading researchers on the “noises of nature” provides a sonic peek at the sounds of a jaguar in the wild, practically sitting atop Krause’s microphones. Grab your great speakers or headphones and turn it up:

Stunning, beautiful, haunting, superlative. Awareness-raising, for sure.

– Noel Franus

Heading into a long holiday weekend, the commerce amps up and the opportunities to step back and reflect on things that matter become increasingly rare. Steve Duin sets a useful tone for the break in this very readworthy column.

Snip:

…When it comes to the full-court press of the Nordstrom clerks, the metallic howl of the Salvation Army bells, or the tone-deaf quarrel between the ordinary and the uninspired, I am in full retreat.

Maybe it’s a matter of balance. While there’s more resonance in giving than getting at this time of year, the darkest and shortest of days, we all know we’re at the receiving end of something simple and profound. And we are waiting — and listening — for the quiet reminder of what rests at the heart of the reunion.

– Noel Franus

Photo by :: Wendy ::

Nordstom to bench its pianists – from the Oregonian:

Come the new year, Nordstrom stores will pipe in popular tunes, instead of continuing to air the live piano notes that have lulled many shoppers for the past 20 years.

The Seattle-based chain said the company is carrying out its hyper-attentive approach to customers, who it said compliment canned music more often than live musicians.

Wow! It’s hard to believe that a store whose differentiator is personal service would take this step. It’s an interesting move that raises a few questions:

1. Has Nordstrom actually measured the financial effect of pianists vs. canned music? The article quotes anecdotal “compliments” favoring the piped-in music, but that’s a specious case. People speak or don’t speak out for various reasons, but the only numbers Nordstrom should be following are the receipt totals of days when pianists are playing vs. canned music. ‘Course we all know the effect of “sophisticated” music and purchase intentions in restaurants…by all means this is something Nordstrom should be exploring.

2. Nordstrom’s cites a cost savings in using a music service over the pianists. I’m surprised that a company with such a strong sense of “brand experience” would use this as a primary argument for nixing the live music — they’re a high-end retailer that understands the value of providing an exceptional experience, even if that experience costs more to provide. Again, run a study and see what turns up.

3. Numbers aside, you just can’t deny the iconic and emotional status of the piano in a Nordstrom’s. As Leonard Lauder, retired chairman and CEO of Estee Lauder said, “A Nordstrom piano doesn’t take up much room. It’s a small idea, but it’s a genius idea.” It’s part of the brand. In fact it’s the closest thing the company has to an associative “brand sound.” Losing this in favor of preprogrammed audio that sounds like, well, every other retailer in North America, makes for a risky move.

Let’s hope it works out for the best. Hey, I’m working on an large, environmental audio-identity effort for one of our clients right now…and if a few pianos are in this client’s future, we know where we can score some on the cheap.

– Noel Franus

Here are four late-night links for the always-curious sonic-branding nut in each of us. Some of these may seem to be from left field, but there’s always something to learn. How can you apply some of the innovations/ideas/thinking that’s referenced below to your (or your client’s) brand/product experience?

The remote you’ve been waiting for
Dolby offers a new TV-volume leveler that actually sounds kinda interesting. Wild prediction: customers will love it, advertisers not so much. How long before Microsoft buys them out?

The music tool you’ve been waiting for?
Yamaha’s Tenori-On…it’s been out for a while, and I’ve avoided it because of its high-gimmick factor. (It’s very hard to believe anyone who pitches their “digital music instrument for the 21st century.”) But most reviews of the Tenori-On have been positive…so what gives? If you’ve played with this (perhaps at the MusicLive Show in Birmingham?), please share your thoughts.

The chair you’ve got to hear to believe
From Networked Music Review: “the Sound Chair begins as a sound that is precisely crafted to form the physical shape of a chair when visualized as a 3-dimensional object using a volume, time, frequency line plot. The life-size chair is an exact replica of the soundwave graph. The result is a product with dual existence as both a ’sound’ & a ‘chair.’”

The noise you won’t forget
Making Noise in NYC features “work by visual artists who utilize the many different modes by which sound is produced and received. Exploring the possibilities that lie within the relationship between producer and receiver, these artists demonstrate how the manipulation of sound can become a tool for the organization of power and, in turn, the subversion of it.” November 28, 2007 – January 2, 2008 at the Melville Gallery at the South Street Seaport Museum.

– Noel Franus

Photo by Sean Dreilinger

Ad Age’s CMO Strategy section today has an excellent piece on the strategic use of sound in…wait for it…products. Which is certainly something we agree with.

Snip:

Historically, marketers have focused more on use of sound to define corporate identity, not product brand identity — and it is more difficult to create an emotional connection to the corporate brand than to the product that the consumer can actually use or interact with. That’s why the real opportunity lies in leveraging sonic branding at the product or brand level.

This is the first Ad Age piece I’ve seen that would sit just as comfortably in a brand management, visual design, industrial design or even digital design magazine. Kudos to Donna Sturgess at GlaxoSmithKline and to Ad Age for the article.

Been a while, so you’re expecting a brilliant post as payoff for the wait, right? Fuggedaboutit! Today’s post is all noise, all the time.

First off: Henry Bean’s newest film is all about the unrelenting urban soundscape. Cue VO: “Tim Robbins is a man with a mission: annihilate the noise of New York City, and bring power to the people. Noise. Coming soon to a theater near you.” (Surely there’s a musical to follow — “Noise! Noise! Noise!”)

Second: the entertaining conversation at the community-link site Metafilter that follows the movie announcement, where people share their top-five “worst noises of all time” and also offer up some clever homespun remedies for shutting up the neighbors. (Hint: plug your nose!)

– Noel Franus

Related: The Worst Sound in The World. Survey says…
Related: No Two Spaces Sound Alike. The unexpected consequence of a jam-packed jungle.

Check out Warbike and Murmur, two newish sound-art projects that deserve attention because they bring experiential nuance to life — each in its own form adds new dimensionality to a world that’s normally right before our eyes.

The Warbike, for example, makes the w-fi networks around us audibly apparent: “Almost anywhere that you go in a city you’ll be sharing space with someone’s private wireless computer network…The Warbike turns this wireless network activity into sound. As you cycle the streets, you’ll hear the activity of this invisible communications layer that permeates our public spaces. Who knew that so much was going on?”

Teaser CBC Radio clip on the Warbike below. (Full interview @ CBC here.)

Meanwhile, Murmur applies the usually personal concept of “placemaking” to public spaces: “We install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number (in a public space, such as a bus stop or park) so that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to (someone else’s) story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze.

Fascinating works, both applicable to brands — especially brands venturing into experiential marketing: these projects provide previously unseen tethers to other people and places, illustrating shared experiences where before there were none. And of course, we consumers human beings are fundamentally social at heart. We thrive on shared experiences.

In a commoditized world, it’s the brands that facilitate meaningful social ties like these that ultimately outlast brands that can’t (or don’t even bother to try). Warbike and Murmur show us two unique ways to leverage sound and make a shared experience come to life. What can you bake into your brand’s identity or customer experience that does the same?

– Noel Franus

The Ghost Army is a documentary film that tells the story of a secret WWII US Army unit whose sole purpose was to create a phantom presence on the battlefield. One of its primary tools was sound.

“The mission of this top-secret unit was to create a ‘traveling road show’ to deceive the Germans about the location and strength of American troops on battlefields across Europe. From Normandy to the Rhine, they staged 20 battlefield deceptions, employing an array of inflatables (tanks, trucks, jeeps, airplanes), sound trucks, phony radio transmissions and even playacting to fool the enemy. Like actors in a repertory theater, the men of the 23rd had to ask themselves with each mission: ‘Who are we this week? What’s our story?’ Then they would put on a show, with the Nazis as their audience.

But that’s only half the story…”

If you’re a regular reader of this site you know I’m a fan of the use of sound as a means of innovation, applicable not only to brands but social problems as well. Here’s a great example of sound applied to some bigger-picture questions. Makes you wonder what most brands are missing out on if they’re not asking “how can and should the intentional use of sound make this a better ______ ?”

More:

• Ghost Army entry at Wikipedia
• NPR on the Soliders of the 23rd.
• Book: Secret Soldiers: The Story of World War II’s Heroic Army of Deception

Ruth Simmons has an excellent piece on emotions and music at Brandchannel.com.

I’ve always defined the practice of audio identity and sonic branding as “the intentional use of music, sound, voice and silence to create a cognitive and emotional connection between people and organizations.”

Sure, I think that definition covers it, but Simmons’ piece expands on this in graceful, grokkable form. It’s valuable thinking as we grow this practice, this market, this business of choreographing brand perceptions through the strategic use of sound.

– Noel Franus

I was flipping through Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia — a must-read for anyone interested in the relationship between who we are and what we hear — and noticed an entire chapter devoted to the power of earworms, those catchy audio mnemonics that we sometimes can’t get out of our heads.

The chapter, and much of the book, focuses on rare, intriguing neurological conditions. But with respect to earworms, Sacks touches on something that affects just about everyone: our inherent need for structure, form, and repetition in our music. In a way, we practically invite the earworm into our lives.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition. Every piece of classical music has its repeat marks or variations on a theme, and our greatest composers are masters of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to the repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.

You read vulnerability; some among us (ahem) understand that as an “opportunity.” And others, still, (ahem again) see this as a “challenge.” It’s both. And the art and science of leveraging this awareness of sound — for commercial and social purposes — is something we’ll hear about with increasing frequency in the near future.

– Noel Franus

Julian Treasure has penned a thought-provoking piece at Sound Business: Where Has Sonic Architecture Gone? Required reading. Here’s a snippet:

Since Pythagoras (and surely long before that) building designers considered sound as at least the equal of visual design in the making of buildings. The sound of water (representing life) has been used for millennia, especially in hot places, to create pleasing ambient soundscapes, with many homes designed around a central fountain. Clever architecture has deliberately utilised echo, reverberation, focusing, diffusion and absorption to manipulate sound waves for spiritual, artistic and practical reasons….

When and why did the skill to design like this get lost? With modern architects and urban planners investigating the leading edges of interactivity, technology and all forms of light, it seems sad that the ancient wisdom about how to make buildings that sound appropriate and nourish the activities inside them is gone. I wonder if we can ever recover it?

I’m so glad Julian’s asked this as it’s been on my mind lately. I agree that the skills are lacking, but it’s without blame — most architects and designers simply lack the sound-related playbook or best practices necessary to ensure successful projects. Understandably so; for many architectural engagements, budgets and time become first priority and clients often give their attention to that which is familiar (and negotiable): walls, floors, heating and air conditioning, materials, colors and furniture. It’s no surprise that fuzzy intangibles like sound drop to the bottom of a priority list.

I’m encouraged, however, by my own conversations with architects who compensate for any lack of expertise with an abundance of enthusiasm. Architects who see themselves as facilitators of choreographed experiences are clearly eager to acknowledge and leverage our relationship with sound. They’re waiting for inspiration.

So, consider this a call to action: if you’re reading this, show me your inspiration. Where have you experienced successful sound in the built environment? If you think that sound affects our thoughts, actions, spending patterns and habits; if it can direct our physical movements and alert us to danger or guide us to safety; and/or if it can transform our sense of being in ways that are conscious, subconscious and even physiological — then where are you seeing it happen?

I’ll share my hit list with you next week, and I may also dive into some of the guiding principles for designers that I provided at the Experience Architecture Forum at Harvard last month. For what it’s worth. Meanwhile, let’s keep the ball rolling — let’s hear your thoughts.