MDM570 Week 1
Sonic Branding
Sonic branding, or audio branding, is the strategic use of sound to reinforce a brand's identity. This includes creating unique auditory elements, such as jingles, sound logos, and musical themes designed to evoke specific emotions and associations with the brand. These sounds are integrated into various brand touchpoints, including advertisements, product interactions, and digital environments, to create a cohesive and memorable brand experience. By leveraging the power of sound, brands can establish stronger emotional connections with their audience and enhance brand recognition and recall.
According to Björn Thorleifsson in "The Evolution of Sonic Branding," sonic branding has evolved significantly from traditional jingles to sophisticated audio identities due to technological advancements and changing consumer behavior. Thorleifsson highlights the importance of immersive soundscapes in modern brand communication, underscoring how sound has become a crucial element in creating distinctive brand identities. His historical perspective provides a comprehensive overview of the trends and factors influencing the development of sonic branding, making it an essential component of contemporary marketing strategies aimed at enhancing consumer engagement and brand loyalty.
According to AMP's article "What is Sonic Branding and How Can It Make Your Brand Stand Out?" sonic branding is pivotal in distinguishing brands within a crowded market. Sonic branding enhances brand perception and recall by creating unique audio logos, jingles, and soundscapes that resonate with consumers. AMP highlights successful campaigns and emphasizes how sound influences consumer engagement and brand identity. The objective and credible insights from a reputable advertising agency underline the strategic use of sound to create a memorable and emotionally engaging brand experience, which is essential for effective brand communication and differentiation.
My evaluation highlights sonic branding as the strategic use of sound to reinforce a brand's identity through unique auditory elements across various touchpoints. Thorleifsson's perspective emphasizes the evolution from jingles to sophisticated audio identities shaped by technological advancements and consumer behavior and the importance of immersive soundscapes. AMP focuses on sonic branding's role in distinguishing brands in a crowded market, enhancing brand perception, recall, and engagement through unique audio elements and successful campaigns. Both perspectives align with my evaluation but provide deeper insights into the evolution and market impact of sonic branding.
An example of this concept is the Intel Inside Jingle, a distinctive five-note sequence at the end of Intel's advertisements. It aims to create a recognizable auditory identity that immediately associates the sound with Intel's brand. The jingle has become synonymous with Intel, enhancing brand recognition and recall across various media platforms.
The evolution of the Intel Sonic logo
Three Categories
of Sound
The three categories of sound in film and video are dialogue, sound effects, and soundtrack. Dialogue refers to characters' spoken words, which drive the narrative and convey essential information. Sound effects include any non-musical audio elements, such as footsteps, ambient noises, and special effects, that enhance the realism and mood of scenes. The soundtrack encompasses the musical score and background music, which add emotional depth, set the tone, and support the storytelling. Together, these categories create a rich auditory experience, enhancing the overall impact and immersion of the visual narrative.
According to the Los Angeles Film School's article "The Importance of Sound," the three categories of sound—dialogue, sound effects, and soundtrack—are crucial for creating realistic and immersive experiences in film, music production, and gaming. High-quality sound in these categories enhances audience engagement and emotional impact. Dialogue drives the narrative, sound effects add realism and texture, and the soundtrack provides emotional depth. The article underscores the importance of original sound clips, asynchronous sound effects, and iconic film scores, aligning with industry standards and best practices to achieve high-quality multimedia content.
In Chapter 4 of Producing Great Sound for Film and Video, Jay Rose underscores the importance of the three categories of sound, dialogue, sound effects, and soundtrack, in planning effective sound design. He stresses avoiding overlapping dialogue with noisy actions and considering different frequency ranges to prevent conflicts. Rose emphasizes how each category contributes to the auditory experience, ensuring balanced and engaging soundtracks. By addressing the specific needs of different media formats, his practical advice highlights the complexities and significance of sound design in creating immersive and impactful film and video productions.
My evaluation highlights the three categories of sound—dialogue, sound effects, and soundtrack—as essential for a rich auditory experience in film and video. The Los Angeles Film School's article supports this by emphasizing its role in creating realistic, immersive experiences and enhancing emotional impact. In Producing Great Sound for Film and Video, Jay Rose further underscores their importance in planning effective sound design, stressing avoiding conflicts and ensuring balance. Both perspectives align with my evaluation but provide additional insights into achieving high-quality sound through industry standards and practical advice for different media formats.
The opening sequence of "Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope" is an iconic example showcasing the three sound categories—dialogue, sound effects, and soundtrack.
Here is a breakdown:
The characters' spoken lines provide essential narrative information, such as Princess Leia's plea for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi. The sounds of the spaceship battles, blaster shots, and the distinctive hum of lightsabers create a realistic and immersive experience. John Williams' iconic score sets the tone and emotional backdrop, enhancing the epic and adventurous atmosphere of the scene. These elements combine to create a powerful and memorable auditory experience that enhances the film's visual storytelling.
Sound Effects
Star Wars: A New Hope sound design
explained by Ben Burtt
https://youtu.be/So0nmciiFJg?si=DjUtHFqsc1KlgfAW
Dialogue
"Help Me Obi-Wan Kenobi, You're My Only Hope."
https://youtu.be/zGwszApFEcY?si=ahbQEOB9d67ajJ6d
Soundtrack
"Main Title" | A New Hope Complete Score
Audio Logo
An audio logo, or sonic or sound logo, is a short, distinctive sound or jingle representing a brand. It is designed to be easily recognizable and evokes specific emotions and associations with the brand. Audio logos are used consistently across brand touchpoints, such as advertisements, product interactions, and digital platforms, to enhance brand recognition and recall. Compelling audio logos are memorable, reinforce the brand's identity, and create a cohesive and engaging auditory experience for the audience. They play a crucial role in differentiating a brand in a crowded marketplace.
According to Anne-Sophie Mongeau's blog post, "How to create sound for commercials—insights from an award-winning sound team," an audio logo is a critical component in crafting impactful commercial sound design. The sound design team at Factory Studios emphasizes early client involvement and the use of sound techniques to enhance visual content. Audio logos play a significant role in creating immersive soundscapes that engage audiences. By integrating unique and memorable audio elements, brands can strengthen their identity and leave a lasting impression. The source highlights the importance of strategic sound design in elevating advertising content, making audio logos essential in modern marketing.
Full Sail University's case study, "The Sound of Phillips," emphasizes the significance of an audio logo in creating a distinctive audio identity that enhances brand recognition and emotional recall. The collaborative efforts between Massive Music and Phillips to develop a unique sound signature using a custom-made instrument illustrate the importance of aligning a brand's heritage with innovation. This strategic use of sound triggers emotional memories and engages audiences effectively. The source highlights practical applications of sound design in branding, underscoring how a well-crafted audio logo can reinforce brand identity and create memorable, emotionally resonant consumer experiences.
My evaluation describes an audio logo as a distinctive sound representing a brand, designed to evoke specific emotions and enhance recognition. Mongeau's perspective emphasizes early client involvement and sound techniques in creating immersive soundscapes for impactful commercial design. Full Sail University's case study highlights the significance of a unique audio identity that aligns brand heritage with innovation, emphasizing emotional engagement and practical sound design applications. Both perspectives agree on the importance of audio logos in reinforcing brand identity and creating memorable experiences but offer different emphases on implementation and emotional impact.
One of the most recognizable audio logos is the NBC chimes, a distinctive three-tone sequence (G-E-C) that the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) has used for decades. Its purpose is to create a unique and memorable audio identity that immediately associates the sound with NBC's brand. The chimes have become synonymous with NBC, enhancing brand recognition and recall across radio, television, and digital platforms.
This demonstrates the power of a simple, consistent sound element in establishing a strong auditory brand presence.
NBC - 2018 brand refresh
https://youtu.be/lacUTljo8Xs?si=PdMl-V13s-ggvZpY
On a personal note, when I transitioned from a creative lead position in the video game industry to television broadcasting, my first job was as the Art and Animation Director at KSEE 24 News, an NBC affiliate in Central California. I have many fond memories of animating that peacock, editing news and promotional content, and incorporating that chime into everything I did at the station for over a decade.
1.6 Design Challenge:
Brand Sonification
This week’s Design Challenge was all about sonic branding — combining music with sound effects to help communicate the holidays that we worked on throughout the course MDM565: Design Research.
I had a great time with this challenge. The song has to fit with the image we created in Week 3 of MDM565. It was a lot of fun picking the music and then finding sound effects that helped build a tone and a narrative of sorts, which crafts a tangible mood set by the song. I have a subscription to MotionArray.com, and I found a majority of the sound effects and all of the music there. I found the rest of the sound effects on FreeSound.org, which I have been using for many years; there’s some great stuff there if you are patient, and sometimes you need to be really creative with your search parameters.
What to Expect Below:
I created a video with a reformatted still image of each design and the rendered audio track so you could watch and listen with the safe file. I have also included the images and the .mp3 file as well, just so I fulfilled the assignment requirements.
Dia de los Muertos
This is an .Mp4 of the audio file.
According to my research, this is usually a happy event, but mourning and grieving are still prevalent. This was my sister’s favorite holiday. She married into a Hispanic family, and to my knowledge, her family celebrates it every year. Even though she is gone, her two adult children celebrate it yearly, and they create a shrine for her in their homes. Because of this, I wanted to emphasize a grieving event, and I tried to craft a mournful tone with the sound effects.
The Song
For the main song, I chose a nice Spanish-style acoustic nylon-stringed guitar piece. I intentionally found one that was not perfectly played; I wanted something that had a strong natural feel and not an overly produced one. Next, I found a clip from a Park in Mexico City. I selected a chunk of it that I liked that had the right amount of ambiance, but no crazy squeaking birds, and this created a nice Abient soundscape that lay underneath the whole tune and grounded it.
Next, I layered and cut up a clip that contained a bunch of beautiful female vocalizations. It had no words; it was just ahhs and ohs and that sort of thing. This clip is beautiful, and it has a wonderful moderate Tremelo effect; I’ll admit that I also messed with the amplitude on most of the audio tracks in this file. I also found that adjust the pan (which ear the sound came out of). By default, everything is centered so it comes out of both ears evenly, but you can really control the tone of the piece by keying the pan feature on each clip.
Sound Effects
The next big thing that I added was a lot of natural wailing and crying. In the background, I put a Female Whispering and just copied and pasted it for the whole song. It is really soft, so you may not hear it unless you’re listening for it, but it adds texture to the piece. Add in some bell chimes in the right spot, and the piece will round out nicely.
Panning
Once I thought I was finished and listened for the millionth time, I felt that the guitar was getting a little lost among the rest of the tracks. I could turn up the volume of the whole track, which is the most common way to do it, but I also want it to feel like it has more depth to it, so I duplicated the track and animated the pan on the lower track to it started in the right ear and move to the left in the first 15 seconds of the song and then I held that for about 20 seconds and a then animated it left to right and right to left ending that last couple of seconds in the direct middle. Duplicating the track really helped beef up that guitar piece, and animating the pan added some emotion that I really found pleasant but not too distracting.
Screen Grab of the Two Music Clips
Follow the line in the lower track that starts at the bottom left corner of that clip and goes up at a sharp angle to the upper right corner. This will give you the gist of what I was describing when I talked about animating the pan of that track.
- The original image -
The full-sized image before the center is cut out to accommodate the pole.
- The image printed on the
two hanging banners -
Halloween
This is an .Mp4 of the audio file.
This was a fairly straightforward sound design. The song was a little difficult in the sense that it was a Halloween theme, and any of those types of songs have a lot of sound effects built into them already.
The Songs
Because this was a DJ dance theme, I was able to do more than one song, and it still stayed within my established DJ-centered theme. I picked three songs with a rave-type sound. I used an ambient sound bed underneath my intro content, but once the songs started, I relied on the songs themselves, which all contained their own soundscape undertones in their compositions.
Sound Effects
These were a little tricky because the songs already had their effects built in, so I built a DJ intro using a lot of sound effects to act as an intro, something that is typical of a live or broadcasted event. Some of the sound effects that I used had both vibrato and tremolo elements.
The full-sized image before the center is cut out to accommodate the pole.
- The image printed on the
two hanging banners -
Valentine’s Day
This is an .Mp4 of the audio file.
This one is by far the simplest in terms of the complexity of the three holidays that I chose. The key here was setting the proper tone.
The Song
The song that I chose has a nice, gentle piano that starts establishing the tune and slowly builds to a mid-sized composition and then to a full orchestration. The most challenging part of this project was editing the 02:35-minute song to less than one minute and still keeping some representation of each of its movement changes. Once that was mapped out, for the most part, I added a nice Ambient Soundscape, and for this, I chose a slightly breezy, quiet countryside recording. For some reason, a lot of these nice, peaceful environments always have some crazy bird that has to be louder and more obnoxious than its fellows. There are two solutions to this: one, you can edit out all of the instances of that squawking nightmare, or two, you can find a nice section and then copy and paste it a bunch of times to fill your overall runtime. I went with option two, and I repeated my chosen clip three and a half times with a nice cross-fade between all of them.
Sound Effects
The sound effects in this project were minimal at best. I added nice fairytale bells that blended into the piano intro and added a nice outro-type sound effect at the end. I had originally had some baby laughter in the center. I had wanted children, but I couldn’t find what I wanted in the time that I had, so I went with babies. That was a wrong decision; it just had a weird vibe; they were cute but not right for this project. I did find a young woman’s (teen) giggle that I kept. This was it in a nutshell.
The full-sized image before the center is cut out to accommodate the pole.
