Our final idea revolved around the idea of sound in design. We called it - 'Orchestrate'. As designers, we all orchestrate our work - what colour goes where, what font we should use, how big or small it should be etc. To orchestrate your work is the same as orchestrating your life - taking control.
With this in mind, we wanted to use the word to encompass what we want to represent at our D&AD booth. Our rationale was this:
The life of designers comes with many trials and tribulations. Highs and Lows. Peaks and Troughs. But we tend to forget the pain that we, as individual designers, have gone through to get where we are now. In today’s society, mental health problems are as real as they’ve ever been, and we are all finding ways to deal with it as best and effectively as we can. But in the heat of competition, things can get fierce and unrelenting. In the creative industry, it’s a man-eat-man world, and with that, we can forget just how fragile a person may be - the things they sacrificed to get here, the emotions they were forced to experience along the way, and possibly, feelings of passion and excitement being substituted by feelings of unhealthy competitiveness and exhaustion.
Orchestrate is a musical ode to the invisible life of us, designers, and the experiences we’ve had along the way, that may differ for each one of us. From our humble beginnings, discovering the world of design and filling us with wonder and excitement, to delving deeper in our education, studying and honing our skills, reaching the eventual point of our journeys that inevitably hold immeasurable stress, doubt, confusion and exhaustion …so being able to sit back, listen, and realise how we actually all feel, to sympathise and empathise with one another, is the first step to creating better environments for all of us. We invite you to orchestrate your life the way you want to.
We wanted to create an auditory experience that would resonate subjectively between each attendee who listens. We did this by creating a concept for a sound room that would sit inside our booth space:
Inside the booth would be a speaker to ask questions, and a microphone to record the answers given. However, aside from question 1, which would ask what the interviewee's profession is, the rest of the answers given must be replied non-verbally and simply with noises that reflect how you feel about the question asked.
For example:
Q. "How do you feel about your portfolio?"
A. "Hmmm... meh."
After the quick Q&A, a number would be given as well as a freebie - a pencil in the form of a conductor's baton. The number could then be used on a website, created for this particular event, after the event is finished.
With the answers collated throughout the day from (hopefully) a good number of attendees, we can then use this data to put together a symphony, using only the voices and noises that we have collected.
Showcasing these symphonies on the website, visualisations of the sound frequencies would also be visible, which is critical in analysing how the majority of people feel about certain topics of questions within the industry.
Individuals can, with their designated number, search for their individual symphonies on the site and analyse/dissect their answers to the questions. They can then ask themselves why they feel like they do if the answers are different to what they would have expected prior, and what has caused them to feel like this. Problems with the industry? With society? Is there even a need to change the answers, or is the symphony satisfactory?
Finally, at the bottom of the website will be an amalgamation of every answer given, carefully pieced together into a genuine, orchestrated, curated symphony. This symphony will ultimately sound like how the industry feels as a collective. Would it be a positive sound, with lots of high pitches and major keys? Or would it be sad?
Who knows.
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