Full English Post Founder on Why Sound Design Should Never Be an Afterthought

There will always be a need for clear, immersive, and emotionally resonant sound design. Those factors should be inherent within any content, but the subjective nature of sound design will constantly shift.

Of course, there’s the more literal side of sound design (mostly Foley) that can simply only sound one of a few ways. That being a door slam, a footstep, or room tone, etc., which doesn’t tend to shift with trends and remains timeless. But with advancements in user experience for certain products, I think users are expecting a type of ‘sonic trigger’.

For example, if we cast our minds back a few years, there was the trend of having the text message feed appear as a graphic on screen as the character types (rather than just seeing the character's phone screen in their hand).

It’s still a popular visual trick to do now, and that was an advancement/trend in the VFX world that audiences could relate to. With that came the need for the use of message notification sound effects to match those visuals. Often using actual Apple notification sounds is permitted, but usually we redesign our own to make it unique (and to make sure Apple doesn’t sue us!) to the spot.

These effects need to sound up-to-date with current relatable notifications such as TikTok or dating apps. It is a trend that audiences now expect to hear as the character receives a message.

ASMR is another audience preference that gained popularity in the sound design world and we get asked about it often. Audiences like certain audio triggers that are pleasing to the ear and there are clever ways to incorporate those positive human responses to sound in branded content.

A few years ago, there was the ‘Michelob Ultra’ commercial with Zoë Kravitz opening a bottle close to a visible microphone, tapping the glass with her nails, sipping, etc. It made the whole thing very tangible for the audience; everyone knew the sound a beer bottle makes, but hearing it very close up made it within reach for the viewer.

Even the simple sound of opening a cardboard box is something that resonates with the Amazon package, Prime delivery era we are living in. Everyone knows the moment of excitement when your box arrives and the sound associated with it. Having elevated sound design for those everyday moments makes the product real and attainable to the audience.

We now see that those ‘soloed’ ASMR requests with nothing else surrounding the audio have evolved into more layered, hybrid versions of those sounds. Adding the real sound of the product to engage the audience with familiarity but layered with more ethereal or creative and punchy SFX underneath elevates the product.

Overall, because sound design has become so immersive in recent years, with viewers having access to better headphones and even laptop/phone speaker technology, I believe the standards have gone up.

Therefore, the expectation of ‘good’ sound design has become fixed and a given. Yes, nowadays people are often listening through their phones and sometimes on mute, remarkably. But still, I think the benchmark has risen and when someone hears a poorly sound-designed spot, they are more likely to notice in a negative way.

TV speaker technology has improved incredibly too, which means your average viewer is hearing things with more clarity than ever. Brands and creatives should be thinking about how their product or service sounds in the real world. What’s a recognisable quality of the product that resonates with audiences sonically?

This doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be a ‘real’ sound either. Ethereal and creative sound design should perhaps let audiences know how it feels to use the brand or be part of the brand culture. If your target viewer is a millennial, maybe you have a ‘retro’ product. How then do you sound-design the content to trigger those feel-good moments of the 90s/00s?

Sound design is still often forgotten or the least thought-about element of a production – but staying on trend with product and technological advances, coupled with the tried and true audio principles, is what continues to shine through when it comes to sound.