SOUND DESIGN, SONIC IDENTITY & UX AUDIO WORK
From recording luxury cars screeching around racetracks, gurgles and burps for beer ads, or sculpting SciFi soundscapes on modular synthesizers, I’ve had a wide range of experience inventing filmic worlds of sound. As Co-founder & creative director at Robot Repair, I managed all aspects of production, from raw sound synthesis, recording on location, sourcing pre-recorded sounds, composing and integrating SFX with music, and directing staff and external teams at all points in the process. I’ve sulpted sound for hundreds of commericals and just about every emerging form of media and technology. I think of sound design in musical terms, paying meticulous attention to all tonal aspects and how my work fits within the larger context of each project, and where it will be heard. And in all my work I’m constantly trying to invent new trends instead of following them. Scroll down to hear my SONIC IDENTITY & UX AUDIO work or, visit ROBOT REPAIR’s website to see more.
SONIC IDENTITY / UX AUDIO WORK
I’ve worked in sonic branding and UX design long before those terms even existed. I started in the era of Flash websites & CD-ROM presentations, making sounds for link rollovers and clicks. Over the years I’ve worked on apps, video games, art installations, immersive environments, and have extensive experience designing high end sonic branding for top global brands. Some high points were creating the startup sounds for the first gen Apple TV, the start-up logo for TenCent Games, audio logos for Toyota, Lexus, Acura and AMEX, and most recently the abstract score for the A24 podcast. The following is a selection of sound projects I’ve done for various brands. Some were used in single projects, and some are still being used to this day.
LEXUS
Team One hired Robot Repair to develop “The Sound of Lexus.” The brief was to merge humanity and technology. We hired Erased Tapes recording artists Shards & Hatis Noit to record vocals for us. Some iterations were human imitations of technology (singing engine revs, etc), some were human sounds altered to represent technology.
The next video shows how we solved a problem we’ve seen many brands struggle with every time they try to use an audio logo. How do you elegantly transition from the music used in the spot to a completely separate and distinct audio logo at the end? Our innovative solution was to create a repeatable treatment that would make any piece of music ring out into an “ambient cloud” of reverb. Sounds simple enough but to do it right the solution needed to be highly refined using just the right reverb style and precise EQ / filter sweeps. The resulting “ambient cloud” makes the musical elements feel like they flow effortlessly into, and become part of the audio logo - much better than simply dipping the music volume.
For another Lexus project, we were hired to write music and create sound design depicting a world where everyone is tuned out and only paying attention to their phones. We were asked to create fake UX sounds to represent a range of devices. Since they would have legal trouble using the actual phone sounds we had to invent a whole world of UX sound design. The exploration wasn’t as focused as if we had been doing this work for a real phone brand but it’s worth showing here.
ACURA
Mullen Advertising hired Robot Repair to explore percussive mnemonics to expand on Acura’s existing “Kick Kick Snare” sonic logo sequence. We didn’t compose the original but they hired us to explore a range of modern variations that could work against aggressive or more mellow lifestyle spots.
A24
A24 hired Robot Repair to write the music for their podcast. Not surprisingly, they wanted something unconventional - more ambient sound design than musical. We also assisted them with the edit and mix on the first few episodes. Final music is the first example. And since it was an unusual score, I’m showing some other demos we wrote for the project here as well.
AMEX
McGarry Bowen hired Robot Repair to explore an audio / logo campaign mnemonic for use in a single campaign. The intent was to interrupt, yet compliment, whatever music preceded the end animation of the card spinning onto screen.
TOYOTA
SAATCHI & SAATCHI hired Robot Repair to develop an audio device to emphasize the logo on a single campaign and perhaps gain traction across the brand. The goal was to subtly create impact - perhaps a sense of motion, and perhaps built with actual sounds of Toyota cars.
TenCent Games
Droga 5 hired Robot Repair to create an audio branding element for the TenCent Games startup screen. The goal was something dark, a little ominous but understated. These were our starting points. After the client was finished making tweaks to it, all that was left was a slight whiff of air. While this is the sound they still use, I wonder if anyone recognizes it as “a thing?” 🤷🏽♂️
EXPEDIA
You probably remember the goofy, folky, original jingle for “Expedia…dot commmm” which was used for many years. Team One hired Robot Repair to explore a reinvention of the classic jingle, reminiscent of the original but more modern. Unfortunately, after an extensive exploration the Expedia client decided to ditch the old jingle entirely and go in a different direction.
GOOGLE PLAY
Google hired Robot Repair to develop a variety of sounds to highlight the vertical markets existing within Google Play. These were meant to live on commercials with music over top, or just on their own.
LG
Strawberry Frog hired Robot Repair to explore a range of tones to use as brand mnemonics for LG’s ad campaigns and for use on a new range of devices. Some of our sounds were used for LG device UX and several TV spots.
Quickbooks
RPA Hired Robot Repair to explore some campaign mnemonics for an animation on a campaign promoting a new quick tax returns product. We explored tonal mnemonics as well and sound design that summed up a quick fast easy bookkeeping experience. The work ended up drastically paired down, essentially just a couple sound effects, but here is some work from the development process.
US Cellular
Mullen hired Robot Repair to create a series of brand mnemonics representing sounds of technology and communication. The client chose an odd mashup of two different demos we created. They’re still running it but it’s…strange. I’ll just show the more interesting demos we wrote in earlier rounds.
ISIS PAY
THE MOST UNFORTUNATE COMPANY NAME CHOICE OF ALL TIME!? Long before this name meant what it means now, we developed UX sounds for an online payment company’s smartphone app. Sounds included app launching, message notifications, payments made and received. They eventually changed their name to SoftCard, but probably too late. They shut down in 2015.
Zappos
I’ve been working in sonic identity before it was even called that. At first clients just asked for “End Tags” or “Stings” — short bursts of music that finished the spot. Mullen hired Robot Repair to create quick musical end tags for a dialog-only TV campaign for Zappos. They wanted something friendly and a little bit silly. These are some of the options we wrote. The winner was ‘Peaches and Cream’.
A portfolio showing this work is always more impressive when the sounds are immediately recognizable. Regardless of the work we create, to make something memorable, a brand must spend millions of dollars to run it in various media for many years. Unfortunately, the majority of the big-brand sonic identity work ends up in the bin, often for entirely avoidable reasons. After doing these explorations for global brands for over a decade, we’ve seen several common reasons why intentions can unravel.
-Lack of unity and support for integrating an audio device into company-wide marketing efforts
-Lack of media saturation to actually make the thing memorable (they didn’t just use the Intel sound in one ad)
-Failing to make “a thing” that CAN actually be memorable
-Lack of consideration for how the audio elements sit within the mix (ie. music, VO , SFX all slammed together)
-Lack of established standards to make sure the audio device works again and again (across multiple campaigns, handled by different teams, etc)