18 January 2007
IMM studio A 2.24
Aaron Day on sound design
The Eyeball is King: A short presentation about sound design for Samsung, user driven design, and the process of communicating about sound across cultures.
We have huge vocabularies dedicated to the description of information we receive via the visual channel - not so with sound. It is difficult to talk about sound with individuals who are unfamiliar with, or in some cases, scared of the subject. Often, decision makers consider sound as either A. music and music only or B. That annoying part of the project that you do after everything else is done.
Baldly stated: all music contains sound but not all sound is music (John Cage aside). Understanding this distinction by the client is vital for any project with a sound element. Communicating this is, of course, easier said than done. Graphic design, information design, user experience design, interface design - they are all critical to successful sound design.
Furthermore, the world is filling with media pollution and the information noise-floor grows like a slow tide. Make it louder. Make it brighter. Make it blink really fast. Rarely does this help the user-listener. The traditional methods of marketing and advertising are no longer as useful to companies as they once were. Our acoustic landscape is disappearing under a hash of PC fan noise, ringing cell phones and motor noise. This challenges sound professionals to show clients that user experience is primary to successful sound-design projects.
Day's presentation will cover these issues with supporting examples from past and current projects.
For the last 7 years Aaron Day has been leading sound-branding, sound-innovation and sound-for-interface projects for German, US, English and Korean clients. After leaving Method Inc. in 2001 he formed Receive-Transmit with Australian, Robert Connelly. He lives in Berlin, Germany.