An Identity Made by Sound

Optical Arts’ tests established which pitches produced usable ripples. Those notes became the material Fred again.. and NEST Acoustics had to compose with: a musical phrase could sound right and still disrupt the image.

In his interview with It’s Nice That, James Taylor, TBWA\Media Arts Lab’s global head of design, explains that sound was initially intended only to generate visuals. The ambition to make a sonic signature followed. The restriction appealed to Fred; Taylor recalls him saying, “I want to do this because this is hard.”

The brief connected the service to Apple’s wider Liquid Glass design language. Speaking to Marketing Brew, Taylor describes looking for a way to give that glass-like appearance a musical basis. TBWA\Media Arts Lab and Optical Arts had already collaborated on the Apple TV identity; here, sound would supply the movement.

Optical Arts placed acrylic versions of the note and wordmark beneath mineral oil. A transducer converted an audio signal into mechanical vibration, driving the movement that distorted the shapes through the liquid. The production accounts describe testing different oil viscosities and frequencies: too many notes, or pitches that were too high, could make the surface too turbulent for the image to remain readable.

The rig also required custom software. In the It’s Nice That account, Taylor describes translating notes into sine waves to control the mechanism, then compositing separately photographed frames for the finished animation. The tank supplied the photographic material; editing and finishing shaped its final presentation.

“We wanted all of the textures and layers around it to move and breathe together,” NEST explains in his process film. He is talking about the sounds surrounding the melody, which needed to remain clear within the arrangement.

Opening the music session, he plays discarded versions and isolates the layers of the finished signature. Synthesised tones are combined with low, underwater textures; samples are cut and stretched to give the splashes more weight. The breakdown shows how the liquid character of the image is carried into the sound through texture, timing, and the relationship between layers.

The closing piano flourish comes from a recording of “young Fred at 10 years old”. NEST says it was sped up for the finished piece. That detail gives the signature a personal history: a childhood performance is folded into a sound intended to identify a global music service.

Watch NEST’s account of the composition

The studio film makes the identity’s central relationship visible: sound moves the liquid, and the liquid changes how an existing shape is seen. Watching that process gives the finished distortion a cause the viewer can understand. It also makes the testing, apparatus, and people part of the public presentation of the work.

There is a useful parallel in Optical Arts’ earlier film Order in Space, where simple geometric forms appear and dissolve through physical effects, including ripples in water. Viewed alongside this project, it shows a recurring interest in the point at which a recognisable shape becomes unstable.

For a brand identity, that instability has a practical limit. The note and lettering can become unfamiliar for a moment, but still need to resolve into something identifiable. The strongest aspect of this project is the coordination of those demands: the musicians work within the image’s limits, while the visual treatment gives their sound a physical presence.

This could become a turning point in how Apple Music presents itself. An identity built from sound gives the service a convincing way to put music at the centre of its image, with the musicians’ contribution visible in the finished work. That might give people a reason to look at it again. Whether it changes the app’s reputation will depend on what follows: the listening experience has to make that renewed attention worthwhile.