YouTube has been making changes to many areas of its brand recently. Most recently, it released a Shorts player for Smart TVs and even revamped its user interface for the web, giving it a more modern look. Now, the service is giving YouTube a new sound when it starts up, giving it a jingle that will be easy to recognize every time that app is opened.
The company says that the original idea behind the sound was to have something lively, interesting, and easy to recognize so that when you hear it, even if you’re not looking at your TV or device, you know that something is about to pop up on YouTube. Importantly, it had to be compatible with YouTube’s broad and widespread user base. With the intention of producing the following audio:
- Human: a sound that captures humanity’s richness, emotion, and inherent imperfection.
- Connected: a sound that reflects the idea of uniting interests, people, and cultures through musical gestures like melody, harmony, and modulation.
- Expressive: a sound that ranges from small to vast, close to far, and intimate to bold, with dynamic textures and sparkling melodies.
- Story-driven: a brief sound that gives the impression of a narrative arc with a clear beginning and end.
The sounds are further divided into sections with names like “deep plunge,” “upward flourish,” “melodic signature,” “tactile motion,” and “sentimental harmony.” Additionally, the business that uses art, design, and technology to bring brands to life produced the following cool animation.
- Power up: A CRT-style power up begins the animation, and this references early YouTube. Also, the colour transitions make a poppy introduction.
- Playhead: Google’s playhead and timeline bars expanded swiftly, and this is a tribute to YouTube’s iconic UI.
- YouTube logo lockup: The company says it culminates in a left-to-right motion across the playhead and timeline bar to form the YouTube icon as the logotype slips into lockup. This forward-motion branding evolves past YouTube motion.
Availability
The new YouTube sounds and animations will start to roll out to users over the next few weeks and months.
Speaking on the announcement, Andrew Lebov, Motion Designer, YouTube Art Department, said:
If you’ve fired up YouTube on your living room TV recently, you probably noticed the new sound and animation that plays right before your app starts up. Ever wondered how something like that gets created and where it comes from? Well, here’s a peek behind the sonic curtain.