June 22nd, 2010
Another interesting and vital aspect to keep in mind in terms of briefing and feedback is the Terminology used and referred to and what is understood by each creative and client party by that Terminology.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe that the challenge is to break the briefing down into a more fundamental key value status.
It’s important to make sure that all parties involved in the creative process have the same reference point in terms of a definition of a particular word or description.
Although it sounds a bit obvious, you would be surprised . . truly! At how many times we have been described something in terms of music or audio, but it is absolutely not what was meant by the person or persons using these particular terms.
We have often, in feedback sessions, been told “it needs to be faster” but having established that the “TEMPO” of the music was ok, we discovered that it was more to do with the rhythmical layers and rhythmical structure or parts and was more a case of making more things happen more often, not speeding things up at all . . it’s a lesson we have learned and apply every time when dealing with these particular clients!!!
Often this mis-communication can lead to dissatisfying results, or even to quite difficult situations. But of course this is also something that a good audio branding agency will be aware of and protect the client from . . .
Ala Kondre | Alexander Nijmolen
May 17th, 2010
The idea of a seamless connection of musicality and soundscapes is something that I feel isn’t explored and utilized as often as it could be . . . as it can be a hugely effective process when applied in the right way . .
In my opinion, a great example of this are the BBC1 idents of 2006 , created by Charlie Mawer and the people at Red Bee Media.
have a look
I asked Charlie to explain what the intention was in the audio aspect of the idents and he explained that in three parts:
The first was to have a unique tune at the heart of every ident – a sonic mnemonic to brand the channel – this would be subtly used – not like the “intel inside tune”. But this musical theme would very important because the visual design of the idents were going to be so different, it would help establish them as a coherent set.
The second, was that the idents needed to be as varied as the programmes on BBC ONE, which is a multi genre channel, and we needed them to help us with the gear changes from one programme to the next, and the music and audio designs would play a key part in this.
With the parameters of a set of notes that had to appear somewhere in the idents – we then allowed composers free license to give each ident a distinct mood. Using quirky, surprising arrangements, tempos and musical influences.
The third, was that on top of the music we also wanted to craft soundscapes. On certain idents the sounds are almost as big a part of the overall music bed, and they help to convey a mood as much as the music track itself.
Ala Kondre | Alexander Nijmolen
April 20th, 2010
For many years now, it’s been a popular trend to develop an audio logo or a channel Identity design package that we could compose, produce and develop in lots of variations and arrangements. So you have a main or generic 3 or 4 note Audio Ident played on a piano, but a sports ident variation played on an electric guitar or analogue synth for instance, and your Cultural or Arts Ident played with violins or in a classical style. Personally, I doubt very much if this helps us in creating a strong and memorable audio brand (If that’s your objective) for your channel.
Please have a look first at the Ned 2 Ident ” TRANSPORT” :
and now have look at the Ned 2 Ident ” CARNIVAL” and judge for yourself:
This is an audio package that Ala Kondre designed for the Dutch public broadcaster.
Although I still personally like the audio design very much, I also believe that creating so many and varied versions was a little unnecessary and detracted slightly from the main goal. In total Ala Kondre produced 11 variations. Don’t get me wrong – we did actually enjoy working and creating these variations from a creative satisfaction point of view, we even recorded one of the versions in a huge old cathedral in the Netherlands, performed by the organist who plays at all the Dutch royal events, and on the original pipe organ that was once played by a young Mozart.
Have a look
Now for us, and our clients, this was all quite exciting – and it created a great “story behind the scenes” kind of thing – though once we had seen all the finished results and final package, our opinion was that in terms of a branding project it didn’t really support the original idea (in terms of audio branding) so I think it’s important to say that if it’s your objective is to create a strong memorable audio identity – you need to be careful in terms of how much you progress and develop from the original idea – no matter how amazing and exciting the ideas sound and appeal to us at the discussion stage . . .
It may sound like I’m being a little negative about one of our own audio branding projects, but that’s not the case!, although for us some important lesson were learned though this project . . .
Another interesting aspect of this project and brief, was that the audio brief placed a very strong emphasis on two things – 1) the melodic recognition element – 2) the soundscapes in terms of real places and situations in the idents.
Because of the visual design concept, it was important that the audience really HEARD the place it was set, and what was happening where we see it etc . . so for instance, children playing, cars driving by etc, and of course this can easily be referred to as Foley sound, but the brief was to make these sounds an integral part of the musical design too, so it blended and melted into each other,
Have a look at all 11 Idents:
Ala Kondre | Alexander Nijmolen
March 12th, 2010
With my previous post “The Intel Logo as benchmark for Audio Idents” in mind – we can say that we have a good understanding of what people actually hear and recognize within music and audio, we can also explore further through research and interesting experiments, how audiences actually recognize and categorize sound logo’s.
And this is where a very interesting experiment carried out by the Technical University of Delft comes in.
The researchers ( a.o. Rolf den Otter) of TU in Delft conducted an experiment called the Timbre Swap experiment. In this experiment they took the timbre (the colour and texture of the sound) of one well-known audio mnemonic and exchanged it with another well-known audio mnemonic. They conducted the test using the T-mobile sound logo and the Intel sound logo.
Please have a listen first to both the original sound logo’s:
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Ok . . so now you will hear them swapped over and exchanged.
This is the Intel Sound logo using the timbre of T-mobile:
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And now you will hear the T-mobile sound logo using the timbre of Intel.
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For the majority of participants, the timbre was the most salient factor in assigning it to a reference sound. This factor took precedence over all other available factors.
The outcome of the experiments were surprising, since in the development of audio logo’s there seems to be more attention given to the melody, than on the timbre.
Ala Kondre | Alexander Nijmolen
February 17th, 2010
The Star Wars audio experiment was carried out by Lucas Films and the Sky Walker Ranch sound design guys a few years ago . . .
The experiment involved using a 20 minute segment from the movie Star Wars. They would show this segment of film twice to an audience of about one thousand people in a THX movie theatre, one after another etc . .
The only difference between the two pieces of film was the audio and sound design layers . . . . and this is what they did: the first piece of film did not use the proper soundtrack, it was essentially the original soundtrack (music, sound design, and sound effects etc) but it was altered, very slightly so that it wouldn’t be obvious, so some things were very slightly off sync, a few frames here and there etc, the music was mixed slightly less dynamically than the original and some audio ques were even left out, but the important point was that it should not be noticeable that the viewer would notice anything different about the soundtrack immediately .
The second piece of film was the actual optimized high resolution full synced sound track, full music score, actual sound effects and so on . .Now the important thing to mention is that the audience were not told that this experiment had anything to do with audio or sound what so ever! In fact they were told everything but that, and after the viewing they were asked to fill out a questionnaire that had several pages of questions about the colours, the editing, the story, the characters, the visual dynamics and so on .
When asked if they thought that, say for instance, in which segment did the colours seem more vivid?, or in which segment did the movements seem smoother?, and so on, almost 100% of the audience always selected the second piece of film, even though the films were identical from a visual point of view. And there was one question that simply asked, “overall, which segment do you think looked the best”? and yes, you guessed it, almost all the audience thought that the second film looked better, the film with the optimized soundtrack.
Written by Jonathan Ware & Alexander Nijmolen | Ala Kondre
February 12th, 2010
Please play the following clip but I would like to ask you not to watch it but to listen to it.
So please have your eyes shut…
Sound Experiment #1
What is he Saying
BA BA BA
Now play the clip again but now you can open our eyes and watch the film as well.
Sound Experiment #2
So what was he saying?
Most people think they are hearing DA DA DA..
This is a so called fused respons- where the D is a result of and audio visual illusion. In reality you are hearing the sound “BA”
While you are seeing the lip movements “GA GA GA”
We have just seen the “McGurk effect”, and I like this example because it clearly demonstrates that there are more things happening within an audio and visual context.
Alexander Nijmolen | Ala Kondre
February 5th, 2010
We often see and hear an a lot of brand and channel logo designs that utilize a minimalist 3, 4 or 5 note musical hook and it would seem that the intention is to be as recognizable and appealing as the Intel audio logo.
But in our experience, we have found that it’s a little more complicated than that. First of all there is a determined and heavily backed up effort to have the Intel logo featured in so many of it’s partners commercials, Intel pays its distributors roughly 350 million dollars a year to have their sonic branding design included – and secondly this audio logo fits the brands values perfectly. It’s a perfect little audio mnemonic, in the sense that it conveys the key values of Intel very effectively . . .
The other important factor in the success of this audio mnemonic can also in some way be linked to the very strict guidelines that are applied and adhered to in relation the terms of it’s usage within any commercial. The intel audio logo is generally (not always) but generally placed within the main body of a commercial, rather than an element used as an end device and one very important condition in regards to using the sound logo is that it must be given clear space and air around it – for example – no other sounds are allowed to compete with it. The composer was challenged to make an audio logo that would convey the feeling or sound of how a computer works and sounds inside – and I think we can all agree that he was pretty successful in finding a nice way to convey this . . .
Since the Intel benchmark, we are in many ways even more aware of the power and potential contained within an effective Audio Mnemonic, although with this thought in mind, I feel we should also be a little careful – because as much as an Audio Logo can help to develop, consolidate and strengthen a brand – it can also harm or have a detrimental effect.
So it’s important to keep in mind, that if one of your goals or intentions is to create a memorable or recognizable audio mnemonic, the traditional 3, 4 or 5 note musical logo may be the right solution but it may well not be the right audio solution, although the goal is indeed a device to create ongoing recognition and the hook factor!
It occurred to me recently – just how distinctive can you be these days? . . and in this ever-expanding soundscape of ding ding ding dongs!
In order to look at some examples of how and what audiences do recognize in Audio Idents we first need to understand what the audience is actually hearing or listening to.
An Audio Ident or a sound logo, in general, consists of more than just musical notes.
the audio, generally speaking will consist of:
A : The Timbre and Tonality – which is the colour, texture, tone and character of a sound or group of sounds . .
B : Pitch and Melodic Structure – for example, what notes are where, the melodic composition and how the melodic points relate to eachother harmonically and emotionally.
C : Rhythm or Phrasing, the starting points of tones and notes, the rhythmical structure, and what can be referred to as the phrasing of a musical design – the phrasing could also be thought of as syllables in a word.
by Alexander Nijmolen | Ala Kondre
February 3rd, 2010
From this broken down summary and understanding of the core key values that have been prioritized, we then discuss, explore, study and absorb the direction and visual cues and designs, we can also begin to assess (in our opinion) which key values and intentions are conveyed and transmitted through the visual designs, and maybe even suggest values that are not being effectively conveyed that we can maybe enhance through the pending audio design elements.
We now have the opportunity to enhance and support the values that are already contained in the visual design itself, and / or we can focus on the values of the channel that are not (or not as effectively) transmitted as others through the visuals.
But let’s be slightly realistic, in my experience I have found that with a very short piece of audio it’s not really possible to transmit an unlimited and endless array of values. I believe you should aim for 2 or 3 core key values in an Audio Ident design. And I stress the word “Aim” because of course there will often be more values desired than this, but aiming for a more specific and targeted group of values will – in my experience – be more effective in the end result . . .
Below you will find an audio ident that I believe demonstrates very effectively what I was just talking about. Some values are so clearly conveyed in the visual design that it’s not so necessary to also emphasize the same values in the audio itself. So this enables the audio designer to focus and enhance on conveying other (but complimentary) values through the soundscape and music design – equally important, but not as obviously conveyed in the visual design. In these particular examples you will see for instance that the visual logo is Pink. These are idents for NET5, a commercial broadcaster in the Netherlands, whose audience target group is female viewers aged between 18 and 40. The channel positions itself as a premium quality channel. The audio design is composed by Justin Billlinger and Michiel Marsman and the idents were aired between 2005 and 2007.
Have a look . . .
An important aspect of this audio ident is that there is no real melodic structure or notation contained within the musical composition, but it still has a memorable quality. It’s the glass like texture and the spacious open feel in the sound design that helps to create a recognizable quality. For more examples check http://www.alakondre.nl
by Alexander Nijmolen | Ala Kondre
January 29th, 2010
Without stating the obvious, but lets state it anyway, providing an effective and focused audio brief is in many cases more than half the battle. Fortunately we are not alone in this battle. By working with Europe’s leading branding agencies I have developed a solid understanding and have become familiar to the varied and interesting ways in which branding designs are briefed and introduced to the designers from a channel brand perspective. In other words I borrow the best bits from everyone else’s branding briefing process and I apply them to our needs combined with our own specific expertise in terms of briefing for audio. In this I have also discovered how similar the processes of designing a visual brand and designing an audio brand can be. Before I get near to the creative work itself I need to have an understanding and clear perception of the channel, it’s key values, it’s statement, its positioning etc . . . This is often – as you will probably know – referred to as the “channel audit”. Quite often I will receive a lot of background and detailed marketing information, which does of course help and assist me in understanding the channel’s goals in design, although I often find that from an audio perspective the challenge is to simplify and break down this information to a core list of key values and intentions. Although, in some cases this breakdown is already provided by you . . . the agency or channel. Have a look at this film where I meet Jon Ware (media composer & producer) for a music brief.
by Alexander Nijmolen | Ala Kondre