ADC Awards
The ADC Annual Awards is the oldest continuously running industry award show in the world. Now in its incredible 102nd year, these awards celebrate the very best in advertising, digital media, graphic and publication design, packaging and product design, motion, experiential and spatial design, photography, illustration and fashion design all with a focus on artistry and craftsmanship.
Category
Craft in Video / Sound Design
Annual ID
ADC102_ADV013G
About the Work
An enigmatic yet assertive voice tells us we’re taking part in an exercise for the Australian Navy. The voice tells us to listen closely as we hear strange beeps and bloops. We're challenged to analyze the audio with a spectrogram and the voice suggests there’s something yet to be identified. Suddenly, the transmission ends, but it's not over yet. By roleplaying as an intelligence officer in the Navy and analyzing the audio file with a spectrogram, listeners are rewarded with something unexpected: a hidden image in the form of sound that revealed the role in the Navy we needed to recruit for.
This was an incredibly complex sound design challenge, with the objective being that the audio needed to be crafted for an image, and the image needed to be crafted for audio. Naturally, this called for a unique collaboration between an audio engineer and visual designer. First, a designer created a poster, which was converted into audio using an image synthesizer, before the voice and soundscape elements were added. Extensive use of additive EQ, subtractive EQ, compression and the micro-automation of volume were meticulously used to ensure each sound had its own sonic space in the frequency spectrum. Essentially, the audio engineer was painting with sound. The audio also contained other hidden sounds to misdirect the audience, such as sonar pings, whale sounds, muffled communications, and Morse code – with its own hidden message that spelled out ‘Keep Looking’.
2023 Awards
Total Points: 45
Gold Cube
Credits
Agency
VMLY&R
Music / Sound Production Company
Squeak E. Clean Studios
Chief Creative Officer
Paul Nagy
Creative Director
James Wills
Robyn Bergmann
Designer
Simon Gray
Editor
Leigh Cook
Executive Creative Director
Jake Barrow
Executive Producer
Ceri Davies
Producer
Annie Thiele
Fiona Norman
Head of Sound
Paul Le Couteur
Holding Company
Wpp
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