Sonic Identity System

A sonic identity is what keeps your brand recognizable across an ad, a product notification, a phone queue, and an event opening, even though those four things are made by four different teams who never speak to each other.

What you get

A core musical theme and the family of variations that come from it. Cuts at the lengths your channels need. Rules for tempo, instrumentation, and mood, so the identity bends without breaking when someone adapts it.

Most importantly, documentation. Guidelines that let an agency, an in house editor, or a product team use the identity correctly on their own. A system that only works when you are personally in the room is not a system.

How we build it

We start with the brief. It carries more weight here than anywhere else in the process, because a sonic identity is a long lived asset and the cost of getting the foundation wrong compounds. We wrote about what a good one contains in What a Sonic Branding Brief Should Contain.

From there we work in stages, with you involved at each one. Direction first, then the core theme, then the variations, then the documentation. Nothing is built from a template, and nothing is pulled from a library.

You can hear five finished systems on our Our Work page, including the thinking behind each. They range from a certification business to a swimming pool builder to a daycare, which is a fair illustration of how differently this work turns out depending on the brand.

What a complete system covers

More than most people expect. We break down the parts in The 5 Elements of Sonic Branding.

If you are rebranding

This is the right moment to do it, and the most commonly missed one. A visual refresh that leaves the old sound in place is only half a rebrand, and the half that gets noticed later. More on that in Rebranding? Why Your Brand's Sound Needs to Change Too.