​Paul Sumpter: Creating the new sound of ITV and ITVX

The old saying goes, “trying to describe music is like trying to dance to architecture”. As a music and sound studio, this is the exciting dynamic we face with every new project that comes our way. Creating a bold new sound for ITV and an identity for its new streaming platform ITVX, was no different.

As with all of our work, the first step was to really understand the intention behind the brief, and then slowly start translating it into the language of sound. Over a period of several weeks, we worked with DixonBaxi - the award-winning design agency heading up ITV’s brand refresh - and ITV Creative on a series of workshops, questionnaires, and interviews to extract the insights we needed to start creating an effective audio strategy.

The challenge here would be to create a sound that would retain what people love about ITV whilst breaking new ground and sonically positioning the brand as a global leader in the digital streaming space.

Our unorthodox approach experimented with literally hundreds of creative ideas. For example, we created a ‘virtual choir’ from recordings of people from around the UK singing into their iPhones.

We scratched an X (from ‘ITVX’) into the groove of a vinyl record and sampled the sound as a rhythm. We made ambient field recordings from outside the ITV Studios on London’s Southbank to inspire the sound design. We paid homage to the birth of streaming - the humble video rental store - by ‘printing’ musical ideas through a custom modded 1980s VHS player, and used VHS tape like a studio tape machine.

While somewhat unusual, we knew this creative direction would allow us to craft a truly unique sonic palette - completely ownable to the ITV brand, unavailable anywhere else and impossible to mimic.

The final route chosen for the ITVX mnemonic was a bold, sonic articulation of the ‘Spark, Amplify and Discover’ story that DixonBaxi had created for the visual ITVX animation.

Using sounds such as sugar dropped on a balloon, a cinematic booj (bass downbender), and synths processed heavily through outboard guitar pedals, the mnemonic sounds open, engaging and exciting, setting up people’s discovery of the seemingly infinite world of streaming options on the new ITVX platform.

When it came to working on ITV’s broadcast channels, we delivered a suite of music beds that could be used across all 5 of ITV’s channels (ITV1, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4 and ITVBe). We knew this would help create and solidify one, holistic ITV sound.

However, we needed to balance creating pieces that felt nuanced enough to work across the diverse set of channels whilst having a recognisable sonic thread throughout.

Our response was to create a brand new ‘virtual voice instrument’ - one that was inherently human, but wasn’t a predictably sung melody. We recorded and sampled multiple sung notes and then programmed them in such a way that they could be reperformed like a synth. Merging unconventional, yet recognisably human voices with modern production techniques built a sound world that is distinctive, modern yet familiar. And one that the ITV brand can truly own.

Our trademark ‘anti-obvious’ approach may have been somewhat of a departure for a branding project like this, we can only thank the incredible teams at ITV and DixonBaxi who set us up with the conditions that allowed us to challenge them with such bold ideas and that ultimately allowed us to craft something truly unique.

The new ITV brand refresh began rolling out across the ITV broadcast channels in November, with the ITVX streaming platform launching on 8 December. We hope you enjoy it hearing it as much as we enjoyed working on it.

• Paul Sumpter is creative director of music and sound house The Futz Butler