Sonic Worldizing for Currys PC World
When we create audio branding at Obelisk, what we’re doing is developing behavioural principles that can help with anything from interaction design to motion graphics. This stems from our background in creating animated films and interactive art installations. ‘Worldizing’, as it’s known, is a design method for creating the rules in which characters or people behave in a 4D world, affected by space and time, and which sound as a sensory asset falls into.
We were asked by Dixons Carphone to help them develop the sonic brand for Currys PC World (CPCW). It is a complicated brand architecture historically but, as we learned, a sophisticated collaboration of creative and production agencies that all use and produce audio in their own and different ways.
We developed a Currys PC World ‘sonic world’ with its own rules, behaviours and tonality to give the flexibility needed — a dynamic toolkit of sound assets and guidelines to help CPCW’s partner agencies create consistent and recognisable content across platforms.
When compared to high street competitors, which tend to be more faceless and automated, we wanted to celebrate the diversity and authenticity of the CPCW staff and community that help us buy and use technology. To highlight this, the first thing was to reduce sound and music around the endframe messaging of video communication, so we could hear voices clearly. Much like the use of white space in graphic design and layout, silence can be an important composition tool. We wanted to create clarity around the dialogue tagline ‘At Currys PC World, we help you get it right.’
We noticed after visiting the Colchester studios, where every product that Currys PC World is photographed and filmed, that the ‘White World’ or infinity cove studio that both colleagues and products ‘float’ inside was a great anchor to develop the sonic identity from. This ‘What does the White World sound like?’ became an internal brief for us to explore.
We worked with behavioural AI specialist Ben Bashford to build a sonic framework that would adapt across the many types of content that will be produced. We developed a language that broke assets up into environmental space, and that gave space for its inhabitants, both staff and the products and appliances themselves.
I am a huge admirer of BBC wildlife sound recordist and former Caberet Voltaire band-member Chris Watson. I had the privilege of learning some of his recording processes in Brighton a few years ago, and was inspired by his process for capturing natural soundscapes. He identifies three types of recordings, the ‘room tone’ or atmospheres that gives a sense of space, the habitat recordings, and the featured sounds that direct the narrative.
We spent a few days recording different appliances using the same methods used by Chris Watson for capturing nature recordings, but with laptops, washing machines and toasters. Once we had recorded these, we processed the recordings while imagining that this ‘white world’ galaxy and the sound it emitted was the sonic decay of all these people and products over time. Similar to the way you can adjust the focus of an image until it blurs into invisibility, or a Gaussian blur effect, we stretched and granulised the recordings until the characteristics emerged into a strange, noisy soundscape. We then started isolating frequencies from this cloud, based on natural frequency and real-world harmonic resonances. By tuning fundamental and octave frequencies to the alternate tuning of 432Hz, or ‘God frequency’, we extracted hidden resonances and textures in the recordings. We then transposed and tuned these recordings into an ambient loop based around the key of G Major, not just because this felt like it represented the calm personality of the business, but because it would also mix well with the Elle King Exs&Ohs instrumental music already being used in advertising.
So, how does all this work to create a sonic identity that makes Currys PC World recognisable when you’re overhearing the television from the kitchen, listening to a radio ad, walking into a retail space, or chatting with a bot messenger on Facebook?
Rather than follow the typical approach of creating a three-second melodic phrase, such as those used by Intel or McDonalds, we wanted to offer a glimpse into our sound world. Using a powerful sustained chord variation of Gsus2, we designed something strong and clear that can be used beneath dialogue to add emphasis and clarity to what staff members are saying. By stripping out music beds and using this new atmospheric chord to create space around key messaging, it allows consistent sonic presence when using visual logo elements in moving image. This ‘glimpse’ approach was intricately designed to work in tight time constraints and legals, only adding 12 frames, or half a second, to media.
The sound logo also incorporates a ‘click’ tone that adds definition and punctuation to messaging. Again, this sound is created from layered product and appliance sounds, and is used in endframes with a new animated logo to help draw the eye to the globe animation that also takes on this new ‘glimpse’ behaviour.
These sonic changes have a subtle but powerful effect on the brand, and how it is recognised. They will also grow and become more sophisticated over time, as new touchpoints appear and our world becomes less screen-based and more ubiquitous.
Karl Sadler is a sonic experience designer, and founder of Obelisk, a London-based sound and interaction design studio developing audio branding for tech business.