Hear me out: the case for taking audio seriously
Motion design has become the go-to medium for companies looking to explain complex ideas, showcase products, and tell brand stories. It’s fast, engaging, and scalable. But if sound is an afterthought, you’re only telling half the story.
Turn your sound on! 🔊
Author: Parissa Motamedi, Motion Director
What we hear shapes what we see
Sound design in motion graphics isn’t only about filling silence. It shapes how we perceive, how we feel, and how we remember what we see. When executed well, audio isn’t a layer on top of your visuals, it’s a core part of the storytelling.
You could have the slickest, most beautifully designed animation going, but if the tempo doesn’t align with the music, something just feels off. Music doesn’t just complement visuals, it defines them.
Film sound scholar Michel Chion observed that even children intuitively understand this. When playing, they’ll vocalise the movement of a toy aeroplane with a rising and falling sound tracking the motion. Glissando, for the music nerds. That instinct isn’t learned. It’s hardwired into us. Audio helps our brains interpret and make sense of movement.
“The exact same animation can feel like a moment of calm, a joyful surprise, or pure adrenaline — all by changing the soundtrack.”
— Michel Chion, Audio-Vision
Sonic storytelling: why music leads the dance
This is something animators understood almost a century ago. The early Mickey Mouse cartoons, Steamboat Willie (1928) being the most famous example, were built entirely around music. Every action, every movement was choreographed to the beat, giving rise to the term ‘Mickey Mousing’ in sound design: where music mirrors onscreen action so precisely that the two become inseparable.
Fast forward to the John Lewis Christmas ads and the same principle is at work. The 2011 ‘The Long Wait‘ tvc used a slowed-down, sparse cover of a Smiths song to reframe what could have been a generic Christmas ad into something moving. The visuals are simple, a boy waiting for Christmas morning. The music however is doing almost all the emotional heavy lifting. Change the track, and it’s a different story altogether.
Sound as a core brand asset
This isn’t just a production insight. It’s a branding one. Sonic branding, the strategic use of sound to create a distinctive identity, is one of the most underutilised tools in B2B marketing.
In B2C, sonic branding is well established. We’re all familiar with the heavy hitters: McDonald’s five-note jingle, Netflix’s ‘tudum’, the Intel chime. I can imagine you’re humming these in your head as you read this. These aren’t accidents. They’re deliberate, researched, and deeply embedded in how we recognise and feel about those brands. Even newer consumer brands have caught on. Monzo built an identity around their ‘kaching’ notification sound. But in B2B? The equivalent thinking is almost entirely absent. Most companies invest heavily in visual identity, logo, colour, typography, but largely leave sound to chance.
Kantar’s BrandZ research shows that brands with strong brand assets, including sonic ones, achieve 76% higher brand power. Sound isn’t decoration. It’s a memory device.
Yet despite this, an IAB report found that digital audio accounts for just 2% of digital ad spend. Behavioural scientist Rory Sutherland has noted that music often has no budget in advertising because it’s left to the last minute. Which is pretty ironic to me as music is perhaps the only art form where repetition makes people like it more.
Sonic assets aren’t a nice-to-have. They’re as foundational as your logo or colour palette.
For B2B brands investing in motion design, the opportunity is significant. If motion is your next brand pillar, then sound is the other half of that system. How an element moves and how it sounds should be as recognisable and consistent as your visual identity.
So why is audio still an afterthought?
One word: budget. Audio almost always comes last in the production pipeline, squeezed by time or funds. Stock music and generic sound effects might seem like a good choice, and sometimes they are, but they rarely land with the same emotional punch as custom sound design.
There’s also a widespread misconception in B2B that sound doesn’t really matter for corporate content. But in a digital world where first impressions are everything, bad audio or no audio thinking at all, is a missed opportunity.
See/Hear below the custom made sound we created for Gravitee as an example.
Let the audio lead
In live-action films, visuals come first. You shoot, then you score. In animation and motion design, the reverse can be a genuine game-changer.
Building your visuals around the sound, leads to better rhythm, tighter pacing, and more natural transitions. In video, rhythm is how you experience time. Tempo, beats, phrasing, and accents are how you structure a viewer’s sense of duration. When the audio is locked first, the animation has something real to breathe with.
Animatics (rough storyboards timed to audio) are a powerful tool here. They let you map how visuals and sound will interact before a single frame is polished. For explainer videos in particular, where syncing key messages with sonic cues can dramatically increase retention, this approach has significant impact.
The takeaway
So hopefully I’ve convinced a couple of you to give sound design more consideration. It might not save a bad video, but it will make a great one unforgettable. When audio is built into the creative process from the beginning something shifts. Visuals feel more intentional. Pacing feels more human. And you’ll create content that resonates.
