Sound as a gift: how digital agency Hexagon has made sound-identity for clients
Any coherent designer will attest that the brand identity has little to nothing to do with beauty but rather emotions and feelings that a company appeals to with its product or service.
An INTENTly designed IDENTITY communicates that a brand is a whole world in itself, conveying various meanings, with its own values and strategies.
An opposite of a mere label placed on a product.
As such: Corporate gift (≠) “a branded thing.”
First and foremost, it’s a gesture of loyalty and respect.
Identity for ears
While contemplating Valentine’s Day gifts for our dear clients, we have come to think that a corporate gift originating from a digital studio is not ought to be a tangible thing.
Actually, no one even said it’s mandatory to be something of a visual nature.
We wanted to think of branding not only in terms of a visual style but rather as a totality of solutions. Solutions that project the brand idea to various senses.
Therefore, we’ve chosen sound as our first stop on the road towards building a multi-level identity.
Initially, we thought of a hymn.
But we have discarded the idea for being too momentous of an identity element, requiring it to be built in close cooperation with the company.
Therefore, we have decided to start with companies' customized sounds, namely: a corporate ringtone and notification sound for messengers.
Sound design process
The technical part implementation is as follows:
a text reading service records the company name, and at a later stage, the conversion of the recording into MIDI note format, using Ableton DAW.
The resulting notes are played on an analog drum machine and a synthesizer; then, the sounds are processed via Ableton.
Thus the ringtone becomes a sound interpretation of the company naming, embodying its spirit.
http://tones.hexagon.agency/salateira/
http://tones.hexagon.agency/alliance/
We have selected the notification sound based on the samples obtained from processing the company name, making it in tune with the ringtone.
As for the gifts, we have attached instructions on installing ringtones and sounds on iPhone & Android OS and Slack to make the setup process as convenient as possible.
http://tones.hexagon.agency/oioni/
http://tones.hexagon.agency/purpose-in-play/
From idea to sounds, the whole process took us 4 days and another day to design landings with ringtones. As a result, our partners received the first elements of sound identity, and we are ready to develop this direction in our work.
The “Idea-to-implementation” process took us 4 days, plus one more day to design landings with ringtones.
Postscript
We were hoping to amaze our clients by providing a gift unlike anything they have experienced.
Taken the feedback, we have succeeded:
Apart from that, our goal was to rethink to revamp the concept of corporate gifts.
Instead of cups, less-than-eco-friendly notebooks & pens that everyone grew weary of, we fancied a kind of gifts that are to match the current era of digital solutions, remote work habits, and empty offices.
After all, gifts like ringtones can be used by each and every employee of the company regardless of location, thus enabling one to experience the involvement and inclusivity towards a certain entity.
Read more stories on our blog. And drop us a line to collaborate: hello@hexagon.agency.
