Specialist music and sound design studio Echoic Audio has unleashed a slick new identity that calls on the collective creative talents of leading designers from around the world.
Design studio I See Heroes, headed up by Damon Charles, crafted the new branding and three-shaped logo concept (see below). Charles also designed the front-end of Echoic’s sparkling new bespoke website, which was then brought to life in full responsive glory by Bristol-based web developer Yadda.
Visualising sound
Meanwhile, five top motion designers from around the world took the new logo design and visually interpreted it through a series of stunning idents. Make Make Studio, Alex Donne-Johnson (aka Vector Meldrew), Tim Borgmann, Nahuel Salcedo and Adrian Letechipia (aka Roark) were each briefed to visualise the notion of sound.
“We wanted the idents to show some organic forms,” explains Echoic co-founder David Johnston, “as the word ‘Echoic’ means: ‘Imitative of natural sounds; onomatopoeic’, so the idea of rocks, crystals, wind, water and other elements formed a large part of the brief.”
“But we also openly suggested all artists could ignore every word and come up with anything they felt drawn towards. The idents are there for each artist to express their own creative visions and personal style.”
Reversing the process
Once completed, the animated idents were delivered to Echoic’s Johnston and fellow co-founder Tom Gilbert, who set about creating the music and sound design for each one.
“Sound is - in many ways - the final stop in production, so it’s been fascinating to reverse that process and see what resonates back,” says Johnston.
“The most challenging part was scheduling and managing our own expectations of how quickly it could all be achieved in," Johnston continues. "We originally gave ourselves 10 weeks to complete the rebrand, get the idents created and finish and launch a brand new website. This was completely unrealistic, but it's all been worth every step.”
“We love the new idents and the way they have shaped the showreel and website. The artists have been incredible and we salute each and every one! We’ll definitely be doing plenty more interesting projects again next year and hope to get more artists involved."
“In the meantime, we'd love to be involved in Computer Arts readers' work, so feel free to get in touch via email with collaborative proposals.”
You can read more about the Echoic rebrand in the latest issue of Computer Arts (August, #217) - which is on sale now.
