For far too many years, both designers and users have judged designed artifacts almost exclusively in terms of their visual and occasionally haptic qualities.
The design’s functional and perceptual qualities are generally limited to the senses of sight and touch, to the exclusion of the other senses.
This attitude corresponds with the centrality of vision particularly within most western cultures, and assumes a hierarchy of sensory significance that privileges sight over the more visceral “near senses” of smell, taste, and touch, which are downplayed as baser animal perceptions.
This hierarchy of the senses has had a powerful impact on design. While designers have been experimenting with acoustics since the early days of the field, it took many decades before the idea of consciously employing sound as an essential element of design became widely accepted. Gradually, sound came to be increasingly appreciated, not only as an important and often subliminal signifier of particular qualities, but also as a critical dimension of instructional and information design.
While working in the United States during the 1950s, the French-born Raymond Loewy ( Streamline Design) designed the iconic Frigidaire refrigerator. He designed the acoustics of the closing mechanism so that it made a sound analogous to that of a closing Cadillac door. A great number of sound checks were conducted to achieve the intended result, which was to produce acoustic image transfer that would lend the fridge, through its acoustic qualities, the aura and prestige of a luxury car.
The automobile industry played a leading role in the development of sound design. In 1970, the German car manufacturer Porsche released a recording of various “Porsche sounds,” promoting these distinctively exciting and attractive sounds as explicit brand attributes. It was not for another two decades, however, that car manufacturers began to incorporate sound design as an integral dimension of the overall design process. This shift was apparent when a Japanese brand produced a car model that sounded quiet on the outside while on the inside, via hidden loudspeakers, it conveyed the acoustic impression of a racing car.
Nowadays, all of the major car manufactures invest significantly in their sound-design departments, and each car model is designed to have its own specific acoustic identity. Careful consideration is given to each component: the starting of the ignition, the shutting of the doors, the running of the motor, and so on even down to such details as the sound of the indicators. No longer controlled by mechanical switch relays, indicators can now produce any sound but are designed to sound like the original familiar mechanical relay sounds played through loudspeakers.
The shift from mechanical to electronic systems of production, and the increased capacity for miniaturization that resulted, has meant that one’s sensual interaction with a product is no longer as dependent on its analog functions and construction. Consequently, there is greater attention paid to the design of touch and sound in particular, as a suggestive and subliminal dimension of a product.
Sound design is also important in the context of design the interfaces and navigational systems we use in our day to day lives. As another example, studies have shown that pedestrians who are hearing-impaired are often at greater risk in road traffic than those who are visually impaired, as we typically register dangers aurally before we register them visually. Consequently, many municipalities and companies are now supplying traffic lights with acoustic signals in order to improve both safety and mobility for the visually impaired.
Design studios are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of our acoustic environment, as well. The products of poor sound design are all around us: from the awful noise that vacuum cleaners and hair driers make the kind of noise that drives you out of bed and makes it impossible to think straight to the disappointingly hollow clinks made by poor-quality wine glasses when people enthusiastically gather to drink a toast. Of course, this is inevitable since nearly everything makes a sound: spoons clatter, clothes rustle, water babbles, plastic bottles crack, ovens mumble, tables squeak, doors click, and so on.
What we consider to be the “ambience” of any particular environment is largely the product of its various sounds. When Starbucks set out to establish a “European” coffee culture, they paid very careful attention to sound the company’s style guide even makes reference to the hiss of the steam, the click of the ceramics, and so on. And then there is the multiplicity of sounds made by customary audio devices like radios, televisions, and mobile telephones. Acoustic design is urgently needed to coordinate the cacophony of everyday life.
This is particularly evident in the field of web design, where there is now a much greater awareness of the informational richness and navigational capabilities made possible through the use of acoustics. Audible instructions (cf. new guidance systems) are recognized more rapidly and easily than ever before. Sound design also has an important role in branding with companies like Honda producing jingles and other short musical compositions to represent their brands as far back as the 1960s.
However, it would take many years before companies fully realized just how powerfully acoustics could affect our memory and powers of recognition. In the mid-1990s, designers began cooperating with music experts to develop distinctive acoustic logos and signatures for brands, companies, and products in order to enhance their overall recall value. This practice has now developed to a point where particular sounds (like the tapping of a spoon on a can of cat food) can be registered as acoustic trademarks, giving them the same legal status as graphic logos.
Finally, a word must be said about the relevance of sound design in the context of the film and television industries. Since the advent of the very first “talkies,” people have been aware of the profound effects that music can have on our experiences and interpretations of film to the point where sound can profoundly change our perception of images. Nowadays, of course, sound effects are used far more extensively in media to powerfully manipulate our responses to visual images for instance, a car chase can appear faster than it is with acoustic manipulation, sounds can announce scenes and entrances, and sometimes sound is even used to psychologically signify the presence of an unseen object, event, or character.
Film sound design has progressed to the point where the stars of major films now may have their own distinctive acoustic identities, as sound can accelerate the process of viewer identification.
Sound has become a key method of design and, as a result, has become established as an independent and integral dimension of the field.
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