The Ortho Show

Sonic Logo

Music + Sound Design

Sonic logos or Idents are a growing trend that give consistency across platforms and media to make the values a brand embodies understandable and recognisable in an instant. Effective idents set the scene for everything that follows and gives content creators another way to reach a target audience. Especially with the uptake in smart speakers, better quality headphones, voice assistants, sound is fast becoming an important tool in being able to, paradoxically, cut through the noise.

My approach often includes sound design with the music for a sonic logo as you can impart a sense of transparency through texture and foley and sound can communicate material and place - all important aspects to work with visual elements.

In this case, Ben and Micah approached me for a sonic logo for their podcast - it is in-depth but open, precise but human. Clocks and heartbeats. The podcast features discussion on the cutting edge topics of orthopedics, including interviews with surgeons and practitioners who have stories that push the field forward. A sense of momentum and anticipation was needed.

So vinyl crackles suggest close detail but also a voice from a distance, the front line. The stopwatch brings urgency. Heartbeats are self explanatory - they also have this great ability to fill a space whilst being atonal.

Harpsichord, being a plucked instrument, lends itself to precision yet has historical connotations, a sense of building on the existing.

Hang drums are very tactile, referencing something close to the body, the choir brings a sense of the human but also the angelic - sometimes these surgeons perfom miracles in the most unlikely of places. What they learn helps those that come after.

Drums and reverbs add air and space to suggest a bigger place worth exploring.

Deeper electronic bass adds depth literally and metophorically - being a sine wave, the bass is hard to define as it sounds like it's coming from everywhere. Similar to the effect that the heartbeat has.

And the piece is open-ended because the main act is the conversation, or episode, that the theme flows into.