IG’s offers clients an experience that encompasses so much more than trading and investing, from tools, platforms, and immersive content to the customer service they need to invest and trade with confidence. They get fast, flexible access to over 17,000 financial markets – including indices, forex, shares, and commodities. IG is part of the IG Group (LSE: IGG), a global FTSE 250 fintech company, giving us stability in an ever-changing sector.

Inspiring Confidence

As a leading trading and investing provider, IG have an ambitious strategy for the future. One that has seen their brand evolve from a functionally led brand to one of experience with the help of Saffron Brand Consultants. And more specifically one that aims to provide an experience designed to give traders and investors the confidence they need to take action.

Part of redesigning their brand for the future, was the inclusion of multi-sensory brand assets that would support elevating their brand experience in a digital environment. A key component of this was how they express the brand through sound and music.

Based on their needs, we assembled the following team for this project;

Frederik Max – Creative Lead & Audio Branding Consultant

Anton Sherar – Audio Branding Specialist

John Cleworth – Composer & Sound Designer

A Foundation for Sonic Success

When working with any brand, it’s always important to establish the brand personality that should be experienced by the customer – that is especially true for brands that want to shift their personality slightly.

Together with IG and Saffron Brand Consultants we started by establishing the different key attributes that the new personality had to highlight. With the key attributes in place, we could strategically create audio elements and layers that represented different parts of the brand personality. Through a thorough workshop we ended up with these attributes:

– Open
– Immersive
– Intuitive
– Aspirational
– Energetic

To represent “Open” we wanted to employ open-voiced chords, major harmonies and subtle acoustic instrumentation.

For “Immersive”, we aimed for a spatial and full spectrum sound that surrounded the listener with lots of small details.

With “Intuitive” we wanted to focus on having a clear and recognizable melody that was both easy to sing and remember.

As IG wanted to inspire confidence in its users, we established the attribute “Aspirational” to bring forth this feeling. To achieve this, we wanted to have an essential feeling of going from tension to release, representing reaching one’s goals. This would be helped along by utilizing big swells, an upwards contour of the overall sound, i.e., the overall melodic structure rising in pitch over time, and a general auditory feeling of being directed towards a goal.

Finally, we had the “Energetic” attribute, where our aim was to capture the fast-paced and exciting nature of trading. To achieve this, we incorporated rhythmic, dynamic, and surprising elements into the sound design, complemented by a brisk tempo and the inclusion of electronic instruments. These surprising elements would introduce unexpected twists and captivating moments throughout the composition, adding an extra layer of excitement to the overall auditory experience.

With regards to UI sounds, IG’s platforms are designed to make trading as accessible to the users as possible. Therefore, we also had the goal of increasing this accessibility by both approaching the designs modularly (meaning that the user could theoretically change most sounds from a selected library that fit the audio identity) and by having it so that each sound had a very clear and distinctive sound that could be easily understood by the listener.

Easy To Remember, Easy to Use

To ensure the most flexibility for IG, together with Saffron we established the need for and created one main audio logo that had a shorter variant for short form content. We also created 2 distinctive music tracks alongside a suite of UI sounds.

Audio Logo

In creating the IG audio logo, we wanted to experiment with incorporating the two letters “I” and “G” into the overall design. We did this in two different ways over the course of the audio logo. Firstly, we used two simple melodic notes to reference “IG” and make it easy to remember. We repeated these notes at the end with bass kicks to reinforce the connection to “IG” and create a strong and confident ending.

The instrumentation was designed to bring an element of excitement and modernity to the brand. Energetic drums were used as a percussive driver that pushed the audio logo forwards towards a goal, towards the future of IG. An immersive 3D spatialization feeling was used to highlight both the “Immersive” and “Aspirational” aspects of the logo.

Now we’ll break down the main elements in the audio logo, and what they represent for IG.

Two Note Layer

Let’s start with the “two note layer,” which consists of two melodic notes and two bass notes representing “IG.” The melodic notes are sharp, which adds an assertive, aspirational, and bold quality to them, allowing them to stand out in the mix. To give the logo a slightly more open and human feel, we have also included a subtle string layer accompanying these melodic notes.

To avoid the bass hits at the end from resembling heartbeats too closely, which could be unsettling for some people, we modified them by applying some reverb that gave them a larger-than-life quality. A sense of immersion was achieved by panning each hit to different sides. This enhances the experience and adds to the overall impact of the ending.

Percussive Layer

The “percussive” layer serves to infuse the logo with energy and a sense of forward momentum. The sound is punchy, modern, and conveys a fast-paced sensation. This effectively communicates the feeling that the audio logo is progressing towards a goal, intensifying the sense of aspiration for the listener.

Bass Layer

Similarly, we introduced heavy-hitting bass elements in the audio logo to enhance the same elements as the percussive layers. The bass layer, however, gives weight to the audio logo, giving it a sense of stability and trustworthiness.

Embedded within the bass layer are subtle whooshes and swells that contribute to a captivating sense of tension and release, infusing the logo with dynamic qualities. This further propels the audio logo towards a goal, creating an aspirational quality. Moreover, the bass layer draws inspiration from the immersive sound experienced in movie trailers, which are renowned for their ability to engross audiences. Hence, we opted for this approach to heighten the immersive impact of the audio logo.

Immersive Layer

The immersive layer functions as the glue that ties all the other layers together. It has a wide stereo feeling and a comfortable soft sound that is designed to make the other elements stand out more.

Music

We created two different brand tracks for IG called “Confidence” and “Ambient”. They were designed for two different types of emotional scenarios, namely having one for more calm communication and learning, and having the other for communication that had to be upbeat and aspirational.

Confidence

“Confidence” encapsulates the essence of aspiration and confidence. It builds upon the core elements of the audio logo, incorporating melodic and harmonic elements seamlessly into a modern electronic arrangement. With its diverse sections, the track lends itself well to various settings, evoking different emotions and moods as needed.

While predominantly electronic in nature, “Confidence” also aims to showcase the open, immersive, and intuitive aspects of the brand. It features a recognizable and uplifting melody, complemented by a pleasant harmonic structure and occasional touches of acoustic instrumentation, which enhance its relatability. Overall, this highly dynamic composition encompasses multiple distinct parts, exuding an energetic and bold statement.

Ambient

“Ambient” highlights the immersive, open, and intuitive qualities of the brand’s audio identity. Rooted in the DNA of the IG audio logo, this composition incorporates melodic and harmonic elements within a serene electronic framework. It is composed of distinct sections, each adaptable to various settings and capable of eliciting different emotions and moods.

The track encompasses long, flowing, and gentle pads, accompanied by a human choir element. It subtly references the audio logo throughout, aiming to create a pleasant and immersive experience for the listener. In contrast to “Confidence,” this track possesses a lower energy level, making it well-suited as a background element. It serves as an ideal foundation for voice-overs, specifically designed for that purpose, while also functioning effectively as a standalone piece.

Overall, “Ambient” exudes a human touch and relatability, making it suitable for various media projects that require a more laid-back and introspective atmosphere.

UI Sounds

When creating a range of UI sounds, it is important to make sure that they all belong to the same auditory family and that they all make sense in relation to each other. The fact that the sounds on the platform were designed to be highly modular made it even more challenging, allowing the user to change the sound they wanted for a certain action to whatever they wanted from a predefined list of designed UI sounds. This meant that in theory every sound had to work together seamlessly without interfering with the communication of one or another, whilst still communicating the intended type of action or notification.

Certain sounds within the platform could not be changed, and would always remain the same. We started by designing and establishing these to get a solid foundation that we could build upon, to ensure that the modular sounds would not interfere with these in any way.

To ensure that sounds wouldn’t overlap with each other in terms of communication, we assigned each sound to a specific “mapping slot”. Once a certain mapping had been taken, no other sound could communicate the same way, meaning that the likelihood of two sounds communicating the same way (for example, having three tones going upwards), would be minimized.

The same approach was used for the modular UI sounds, which were mainly notification sounds of different types. We separated them into three different groups; “Positive”, “Neutral” and “Negative”. Within these groups we established a certain way of communicating that would be common between the sounds, however we focused on making each of them unique and different enough so that the listener could easily separate one from the other. The challenge was also to make sure that they all had to sound like they came from the same family. This was done by using a consistent palette of instruments across all the sounds as well as finding specific melodic intervals that we either would or wouldn’t use.

Listen to a couple of the UI sounds below:

Conclusion

IG embarked on a journey to update their brand and enhance the trading experience for their users through the strategic use of sound and music. By carefully defining key attributes such as “Open,” “Immersive,” “Intuitive,” “Aspirational,” and “Energetic,” along with their updated visual identity, IG aims to create an emotive and experience-led brand that inspires confidence in its users.

Through this comprehensive audio branding effort together with Saffron, we successfully strengthened IG’s brand image and its connection with clients. The result is an audio identity that enhances the overall experience, evokes the desired emotions, and inspires confidence in IG’s clients worldwide.

Learn more about Saffron Brand Consultants here.

Words from Client

“The team at Sonic Minds demonstrated professionalism and expertise from the start and created an Audio Logo, Brand Music, and UI sounds that has given us the opportunity to elevate our brand experience. They took the time to understand the intention behind our new brand positioning and guide us through a process that brought our brand to life through music and sound. Their attention to detail and commitment to excellence truly set them apart.

Throughout our collaboration, Sonic Minds showcased creativity and responsiveness, exceeding our expectations, and triggering a whole new awareness of sound in the world. We highly recommend their audio branding solutions to any organization seeking results.

Thank you for awakening our audio perception!”.

Leigh-Anne Acquisto, Head of Brand Expression and Activation – IG