Design and aesthetic

Design-conscious sonifications are the most impactful kind — here's why.

The Value of Design in Sonification

Audio is a powerful modality because it is immediate, and often even emotionally impactful. Thus, sonification practitioners hold a responsibility to bring intention into their designs. This will benefit the sonification community as a whole and get more people excited about this unique storytelling method!

People probably won’t be interested in a sonification that is hastily thrown together, jarring, or difficult to understand. In contrast, data sonifications that are well-designed, aesthetically intentional, and contextual will land on listeners’ ears with better success. Why not bring the listener on a journey, and make it fun in the process?

Examples of intentionally-designed sonifications:

• A sonic memorial to the victims at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub — Jim Briggs from Reveal at The Center for Investigative Reporting

• Two Trains: Sonification of Income Inequality on the NYC Subway — Brian Foo, Data-Driven DJ

From article for A sonic memorial to the victims at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, which sonifies victim life spans over a 50-year period.

How Do Sonification and Design Go Together?

The practice of data sonification, is by nature, a design problem. It requires creatively finding a solution for conveying some message or piece of information. The sonification developer must consider:

1. Their own perspective in crafting a story;

2. The experience of the user or audience; and

3. The [potentially fallible] truths embedded in the data.

With all this in mind, it is up to the designer to craft an aesthetic composition, while providing the context to make it meaningful.

Need convincing? Here's the research:

Researchers Sara Lenzi and Paolo Ciuccarelli (co-founders of the Data Sonification Archive) have delved into the synergy between design and data sonification. They point out that design-conscious sonification can be incredibly poignant, especially for communicating social issues. They emphasize that carefully crafted work could shift the practice of sonification from a “scientific research domain” into a tool for broader communication with the public. This is especially applicable for journalists who are sharing data-driven stories with a wide-ranging audience.

In their paper on the topic of design conscious sonification, they write:

“…data sonification involves different degrees of intentionality, meaning deliberate decisions to address specific needs, in a given context and with a purpose, when transforming data into sound” (2).

Sonification that is reductive in approach or lacking context is unlikely to move listeners in a signifiant way. If the intent is to reach people at their core, purposeful design choices can be transformative.

“To effectively serve [a wider non-expert public], recognizing the inevitability of a communicative relationship in every translation process — and the need to design it intentionally and responsibly — is essential” (6).

Design Resources for Sonification

The sonification design space is vast and may seem overwhelming due to the many possible approaches available. But this opens up an opportunity to get creative:

• Consider ways to customize to your sonification.

• Use vocal sketching for sonic brainstorming. Vocal sketching description: The Data Sonification Handbook, page 98.

• Create visual drawings of sounds to explore components of sound and aesthetic.

Color-coded, digitally drawn sketch of sonic layers for a sonification of the 2024 total solar eclipse.

An example from the Dear Data Project by Stefanie Posavec and Giorgia Lupi.

Check out the Data Sonification Canvas, from the Data Sonification Archive (downloadable template available, or see below). It offers a framework for mapping out the plan of a sonification, and exploring how project goals will be achieved.

The Data Sonification Canvas, from the Data Sonification Archive