BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY
OBJECTIVE
Bitter Sweet Symphony is a sound/taste experiment that explores crossmodal phenomena. This page was meant to explore the perception of bitterness or sweetness in chocolate and how sound affects the taste.
WORK DONE
Client: Studio Resonate / SXM Media
Role: Art Direction. (Design/Development: Manny Trevino | CD: Steve Keller | Audio: Brian Ostreicher)
I was in charge of the art direction of a the project. The turnaround on this page was fairly quick, but luckily for the team involved this project was loosely based on a page that we had previously created. I had a fairly quick interpretation come to mind and shared it with Manny (the lead designer/developer on the project). From there, they quickly got inspired with a direction of their own that was great and helped evolve the look and feel of it all.
PROCESS
Like I mentioned earlier, I already had a loose concept in my head. The initial imagery was flowy chocolate layers covering the screen with a white script/logo across the top. Below is a rough/quick mockup that came to mind and started the whole process.
After that, Manny had an idea/inspiration to go with much bolder shapes that they had been seeing on various chocolate labels and which led to their own iteration.
After a few iterations, we started pulling the strongest pieces from each our ideas and piecing them together. We went with the white script/logo to stand out a little bit more, smoothed out the beautifully illustrated shapes by Manny, and eventually shifted the controls below the art but above the fold. Manny also made it so that as you move the slider back and forth, the background gets darker when you move to the "bitter" side while getting lighter when you move to the "sweet" side.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This was a fun project that was able to combine multiple senses and was outside our normal scope of work. I love tackling experiments like this and being part of a project that challenges me in new ways. This was well received by all those attending the presentation and the team has noticed a good amount of sharing after the event.