Hasta La Ideas

Stockholm creative agency Perfect Fools has recreated London’s skyline in soundwaves as part of a campaign to promote mobile internet start-up Fogg.

Visitors to Fogg’s website can listen to a specially commissioned track by music producer Prova through soundcloud. As the track plays, soundwaves depict London landmarks such as the Shard, Big Ben, the Gherkin and St Pauls.

The video is part of a campaign, Soundcloud without Borders, to promote Fogg’s mobile internet access card, which allows customers to use the internet abroad without incurring roaming charges.

The idea was thought up by Perfect Fool’s Karl Nord, art director for the project. “While listening to a song on Soundcloud, I noticed the soundwaves reminded me of the look of the New York skyline. Soon afterwards, every song I listened to became a city in  my head, and different famous cities started to look like different pieces of music. When Fogg came to us asking to tell the story of their borderless mobile technology, I realised I had a perfect match for the idea,” he says.

As Tony Högqvist, an executive creative director on the campaign explains, the music and the track had to be created simultaneously to ensure music and visuals were in sync.

“We started by studying the skyline to really understand how to approach the arrangement build up of the song [London’s tallest building, The Shard, represents the highest point in the song]. We used the skyline as an inspiration for the underlying structure of the music – the rises, falls, tempo and length. After that, we used different types of compressions and played around with lots of synths and to build the actual buildings,” he says.

Perfect Fools are considering creating future soundwave skylines, but are yet to decide what cities will be next. It’s a novel idea – although we’re not entirely convinced Prova’s continental ‘electro-house’ really captures the sound of London.

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The July issue of Creative Review is a type special, with features on the Hamilton Wood Type Museum, the new Whitney identity and the resurgence of type-only design. Plus the Logo Lounge Trend Report, how Ideas Foundation is encouraging diversity in advertising and more.