YouTube Kids Audio Brand
Enhancing the World of YouTube Kids With Delightful Sound
Audio Branding is, often, one of the most overlooked pieces of any app experience. Somewhere along the way, it was decided that sound for an interaction was a distraction (my theory is too many people got caught sneaking on websites when they should have been doing other things and the audio cues gave it away). Within the world of YouTube Kids, my philosophy was that the audio experience within the app was almost as important as the visual experience. In working with an amazing company in New York, by the name of Audio Brain, we created an extensive and sonically rich world in which the kids could immerse themselves and feel like they've teleported away from their lives for a bit.
Building Foundation on the Main Canvas With Icon Sounds, Swipe Sounds and a Background Loop
The most heavily traveled space in the YouTube Kids world is the Main Canvas. It is the place where every user dropped into after enjoying the fun splash screens. This was my initial focus for building a strong foundation from which a brand could emerge from. When building brand assets, I always like to build a sizeable toolbox to work from so that any future piece can use that toolbox as a starting point. Our toolbox was created out of the background loops of the Main Canvas. Because it's a larger piece of audio, it's the best place to start forming elements that could be referenced in other parts of the brand. The very first order of business was to create a sonic signature. A sonic signature is a piece of melody or combination of notes that, when experienced over and over again, begin to bring a connection between the audio and correlating interactions. While listening to the numerous background loops and splash screens below, there is a base commonality that they all share. Utilizing the sonic signature, the background loop on the Main Canvas became the foundation of the sonic experience, with the sound elements of swiping and category icons being layered on to fill out the experience.
Adding Sountracks to Splash Screens
Upon entering the app, every user got to experience the splash screen. The time spent in this area was significantly less than other parts of the app because it was solely for loading assets and providing a bit of fun to welcome users, but it was still an extremely visible piece of YouTube Kids. In this area, I focused a lot of effort on telling fun stories, featuring characters and trying to evoke a laugh or two. The splash screens lended themselves to strong audio elements. Each splash screen that was launched with the app, whether it was the original, rebrand, or one of the many takeover assets, were paired with custom tracks and audio elements to enhance the narrative. Below are some different examples of how the audio brand was implemented across the evolution of the app.
Original Splash Animation from Initial Launch
Rebrand Splash Animation With Bottleflip
Updated Splash Animation With Slime
Halloween Takeover Splash Screen With Audio Branding
Holiday Takeover Splash Screen With Audio Branding
Reading Takeover Splash Screen With Audio Branding
Monthly Takeover Background Loops
A big part of bringing kids back to the app was utilizing content-focused experiences that would be implemented for periods of time. Splash screens were a large part of making the users aware that something had changed from the last time they had been there, while updated background loops carried those sonic themes into the interactive parts of the app to reinforce that aspect. Below are examples of background loops, associated with the splash screens above, to show how the audio brand is carried from one element to the next and how the sonic theme evolves in the process.
Halloween Takeover Main Background Loop
Holiday Takeover Main Background Loop
Reading Takeover Main Background Loop
Adding Character and Delight to Commercial Intersticials
When designing for children, there are parts of the app that have to be overly explained and upfront about. One of those areas is letting kids know that an advertisement is coming up. Below are some different exmaples of those intersticials from before the rebrand, as well as after. These elements are separated from most other aspects of the app and live, strictly, in the player. Even so, they still needed to sound like the rest of the audio brand and were built in a way that they had their own sonic vibe, but still fit into the bigger experience of YouTube Kids.
'Dood' Chemistry Commercial Intersticial
'Dood' Video Game Commercial Intersticial
'Dood' Singing Commercial Intersticial
Rebrand DJ Unicorn Commercial Intersticial
Rebrand Gamer Girl Race Commercial Intersticial
Utilizing Sound Brand to Set Voice Search Apart
Shortly before I left, I had the pleasure of rebuilding the voice search experience within YouTube Kids. As the design team was moving forward on evolving the YouTube Kids world, I was looking for ways to make interactions more immersive and game-like. One of the goals I wanted to acheive, while working on voice search, was to make it feel distinct. I wanted it to feel like a world of it's own, within the larger cartoon world that already existed. One of the best ways to make that reality happen was to build audio brand elements that were directly related to the main audio pieces, but have it's own sonic vibe and feel. Below are examples of how we built background audio elements that carried the rich sonic signature and styling of the main brand, but shifted them towards a water/reef/harbor feel. This was very important to the world of voice search because I was trying to convey the idea that YouTube is an ocean of content, but we wanted to keep our users, the kids, in the shallows near the reefs. What we ended up with was a really fun take on the YouTube Kids audio world with some delightful ocean-related elements.