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dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

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There is no doubt that most humans spend a lot of time listening to music. Music is clearly important to us. Neilson (a global measurement company) says that Americans are listening to 4.5 hours of music a day; another one says it’s 2 hours. Many others like me spend between 2 and 4 hours listening to something musical. So why is music so important to us?

Fun Fact: The oldest instrument known to man is a Flute made out of a vulture’s wing bone. It is at least 35,000 years old. Researchers consider the existence of instruments as a clear marker of advanced societies. (source)

Music is essentially something that stimulates the auditory nerves (hearing sense). But, music is perhaps one of the only stimuli, received to a single sense organ, which stimulates almost all of the brain in unique ways. A lot of “music” happens within the brain. Our interpretation is necessary for differentiating between music and noise.

No person perceives music in exactly the same way. Bearing this in mind, one can say that every person is uniquely motivated to listen to music. People will also have specific reasons to listen to music. Some common reasons are:

Enjoyment

Special emotion

Structural parts of the song which are preferred (chorus, beat, etc.)

Unique sensations like ASMR (head orgasm), piloerections (goosebumps), euphoria, deep trance, etc.

To not get bored (after all, music stimulates the whole brain)

Social/Interpersonal bonding

Theoretically speaking, you can listen to any music at any time for any or no reason. Research by Jenny M. Groarke and Michael J. Hogan points to 11 important adaptive functions of music which describe the role music plays in our lives. Those factors are:

Stress Regulation: We use music as a way to distract ourselves in stressful situations. It helps us escape a situation and comfort us.

Anxiety Regulation: We believe music helps us regulate our anxiety and comfort us. Sometimes by increasing positive emotions, matching anxiety to music, distracting and comforting us, or even re-evaluating our thoughts.

Anger Regulation: Music can calm us down or even validate our emotions. We listen to music because we believe it helps us regulate our anger.

Loneliness Regulation: Music helps us reduce our feelings of loneliness.

Rumination: We sometimes dwell and focus on anxious and sad thoughts because music lets us do so in a unique way.

Reminiscence: We remember our past experiences – good or bad – and dive into those with a small sense of reliving those memories.

Strong Emotional Experiences: We seek out profound emotional experiences through music.

Awe and Appreciation: Sometimes, listening to music is all about appreciating its beauty.

Cognitive Regulation: Some of us use music to improve our concentration and focus while studying or working. This includes streamlining attention, buffering against sensory inputs, changing the sensory landscape, etc.

Identity Formation & Relatability: Music helps us express ourselves and develop an identity. This extends to a social identity shared by a larger group of people too (subcultures, genre-fans, musicians, etc.). It works as a social glue and a tether between people.

Sleep Aid: Many of us music (songs, noise, and auditory podcasts) to help us sleep.

When can you listen to music?

I can say ‘always’ but let’s break it down. There are specific perspectives to this question that will be subjective to you. I’ll highlight a few common ones here.

A lot of people listen to music to pass time. In fact, some of us do this unconsciously that we end up estimating the total driving time as the length of songs heard.

Some music is traditionally meant to be heard during specific times in a day. This is seen in Indian Ragas (the traditional-classical music structures of India). Read more here.

Strictly speaking, in the context of tradition, Raag Poorvi is ideal during the prevening. Raag Bhairav is ideal during mornings. This is strikingly specific. These Raagas have a unique musical structure and they come with built-in rules to follow. So music based on these Raagas has a uniquely distinguishable ‘feel’ or texture. When you are listening to Raagas, you might want to consider these traditions. The link I’ve provided gives a comprehensive list of them with their ideal time of the day. I am unaware of other cultures which have these specifics, feel free to explore more.

Heavy metal music is, generally, loud & raw. Consider how you feel during different times of the day. Can you enjoy something loud and raw right after waking up or right before sleep? The brain chemistry comes into play here. People have different levels of ‘excitation’ during different times of the day or across climates. That is, chemically speaking, your nervous system could be excited in general (with or without symptoms like restless legs) and you might feel that you want strong stimulation. So heavy metal music could work for you if you want more excitation.

A polar opposite scenario: If you are biologically excited, you may also not want more excitation. So soothing ambient music could work for you during those times. Fundamentally, music is a form of stimulation. Your choice of music could deviate from your genre preference (that is if you have any) based on your current psychological, social, and biological arousal.

Time, for us, can also be with respect to ‘before work’ or ‘after work’ or ‘weekend party time’. Your biological and psychological state would be different during these times. Understand the level of excitation or stimulation you want. It has some influence on your choice of music.

The Social Psychology Of Heavy Metal & Rock Music: Research On Metalheads

11 reasons why music is important to us

I’ll begin by saying that music affects everyone. It’s universal. The human condition as a whole is encapsulated by music and musical phenomenon – from feelings of joy and sadness to cultural bonding. Music has been a constant throughout the ages. However, there are exceptions. Some people suffer from an inability to comprehend music – a condition called amusia. And, some derive zero pleasure from music – musical anhedonia. For them, there is lesser interaction between 2 brain regions: the auditory cortex (sound perception) and the nucleus accumbens (reward center). The lowered interaction reduces the inherent pleasure of music. One estimate suggests 5.5% of all people have low music-reward sensitivity or musical anhedonia.

Anyway, let’s break down the involvement of music in our lives into 11 parts. Each part will address specific functions music serves.

These 11 reasons are not directly mapped to the 11 functions of music described in the previous section. The factors below are more anecdotally-relevant and re-grouped based on day-to-day habits around music listening. Essentially, the functions of music and the list below are different perspectives of each other.

1. Music & Emotions: We humans have a large set of emotional experiences. And they dictate our behavior in odd ways. You may listen to some specific type of music when you are in a certain mood. Your mood could affect your choice of music quite a bit. That’s just one side of the coin. It’s a 2-way mechanism. Just like your mood/emotional environment affects your choice of music, the music you listen to affects, and sometimes change, your emotional state. Your choice of music can change your mood too; sounds obvious right? The general research consensus is that music makes us feel better. Even sad music makes us feel better. Listening to sad music usually evokes 3 types of responses – genuine sadness (negative valence), comforting and uplifting sorrow (positive valence), and sweet sorrow (positive valence). Self-chosen music (as opposed to prescribed music) can also help regulate negative emotions induced by other taxing activities. Research also shows that listening to heavy metal music can be a healthy way of processing anger. People often use it as a way to regulate their emotions.

2. Music & Attention part I: This is a tricky spot to understand. Many many people will say that they can concentrate with specific music and then say it works for them. Here are some actual scientific findings: Vocals, Guitars, Violin, and Trumpets are instruments which have a frequency range that gets amplified in the ear. These instruments also resemble speech in some ways; therefore, the brain is distracted when you hear music with these instruments – speech has priority. It is not the best idea to listen to this music when you are reading, writing, and trying to memorize. (read post-script) When it comes to working, some music can help us. That’s the sweet spot some of us find and music becomes a part of our productivity-culture.

3. Music & Attention part II: If a person is generally calm, music with a lot of detail might distract you. But if you are a hyperactive person, electronic music can engage some of your attention and the remainder can be focused on productivity. People may seek out a mood/personality-congruent music or may even do the exact opposite.

4. Music helping Creativity: Do you ever feel you need to think creatively? Well, some music can help you relax. But ANY music can help you with creativity. Say you had a difficult math problem or an architectural floor plan to make and you just can’t figure things out. It is great to let your brain work on these problems at an unconscious level (a process called Incubation). And to enhance this, music activates many regions of the brain and that might just help you get your creative breakthrough. You can read more about how music affects creativity and productivity here.

5. Music & Exercise (non-professional): Music while exercising helps break the monotony and lets you sync with a beat to keep you motivated. One example is how music at around 170BPM can lower one’s perceived effort for endurance-based exercise. Nonetheless, many professional athletes will say that music is not good for physical training. Mainly because of the 2nd point I mentioned. It takes away attention from things like breathing.

6. Music & attention part III: Sometimes you need your attention to be taken away. Perhaps when you are sad or you are highly disturbed because of a scary incident like watching an accident. Music will take your attention away IF it doesn’t relate to your experience. You can listen to 80s pop music to get distracted from paranoid thoughts if it is neutral to you. (read post-script)

7. Social facilitation OR Music-ing: Listening to music with people fosters a certain type of ‘coupling’. People readily sync with each other and find each other more favorable under a shared musical experience. It isn’t necessary to speak about the music. This also includes the most obvious reason. Dancing. Humans connect via movement. Music and dance share an intimate relationship from the dawn of civilization.

8. Deep thought: Music can act as a projective and reflective surface. Many times, due to the stimulating nature of music, one can think in unique ways because the music is modestly guiding your thoughts. While listening to instrumental music, you could interpret the music in certain ways. That interpretation is likely to reflect some of your core thoughts on life, people and yourself.

9. Enjoyment & Environment: Can’t say much here. You could get your entertainment with music, you could spend time appraising music and you could spend time listening to it for no apparent reason. It could also just be a part of your environment. Music does play almost everywhere where people are present. So you could listen to music as a comfortable ‘background noise’.

10. Instrument learning & Musicianship: Learning music is similar to honing a wide range of cognitive processes- attention, sensitivity, abstraction, memory, spatial and motor concepts, etc. Some of these cognitive processes could help learning in other areas such as computer science. Converging lines of evidence show that music buffers against old-age and Alzheimer’s related cognitive decline via the development of a cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve is the totality of cognitive enhancements as well as structural and functional changes in the brain that are utilizable resources. These resources create an in-built resistance to damage and aging.

A musician listens to music for the aesthetic as well as technical aspects of the structure, tone, timbre, lyrics, etc. That helps to separate the craft from aesthetic appreciation. This can be considered as a different form of active and passive engagement with music.

11. Music for special purposes: You could listen to specific music through habit or incidental reasons. For example, some music could help you sleep, or you could use it to induce a trance. Or some music just goes well with what you are doing because you had pleasant experiences in the past. For example, one could listen to death metal and share happy memories of bonding with friends and then use death metal while eating because you miss them. Many many other purposes for music listening can be mentioned under this heading. They are almost always subjective. One of the best outcomes of research in music psychology is music therapy. Music can be used to heal and cope with a number of psychological and physiological problems.

#self #music therapy #music blog

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josephkchoi · 5 years ago

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Here’s How the Illustration Design Trend Caught Fire and Why Every SaaS Is Rebranding

I’m sure you’ve noticed this ubiquitous illustration style by now. Depending on who you ask, these drawings and animations are either fun and whimsical, or strange and faceless. Maybe you see them as friendly-looking doodles … or maybe you see them as just plain weird.

Whatever your opinion, one thing is for sure: these little buddies are everywhere right now. For better or worse, they have completely taken over the visual identities of many high-profile SaaS brands.

Now, many marketers are wondering—how did this happen? Why are there so many similar-looking illustrations on so many different websites? How did all of these brands decide to use this style at the exact same time? And doesn’t this go against the very idea of positioning your brand as something different?

For example, Jimmy Daly, Marketing Director at Animalz, recently called out this design trend on Twitter. And while he says he doesn’t dislike the style, he also isn’t sure how it got to be everywhere at once.

i genuinely respect all of these companies and use these tools but saas websites are perpetually homogenous. what gives?

— Jimmy Daly (@jimmy_daly) June 4, 2019

Here at Unbounce, we recently went through a rebrand of our own. And while we considered illustrations, our design team ultimately decided to go in a different direction. Instead of flat, geometric shapes, we chose to use custom photography to help us put our customers in the spotlight. (Although we’re not alone—custom photography seems to be another growing design trend for SaaS brands.)

But going through the long, long, very long process of a rebrand got us thinking. As marketers trying to stand out in an increasingly competitive industry—is it bad for us to follow design trends? What inherent value is wrapped up in visual branding? Is it worth a heavy investment in design to look different? And how vastly different can we all truly be?

Let’s dust off our old-timey magnifying glass and investigate…

Image courtesy of the Stubborn Free Illustrations Generator.

Why Marketers Are Obsessed with Visual Branding

In our heart of hearts, I think every marketer is a “creative” type. We were the kids in school doodling on our notebooks, coming up with ideas for the next great Goosebumps novel, or filming half-baked comedy skits using our one friend’s video camera. (Thanks, Brad!)

So really, it makes sense that we care so friggin’ much about the way our brands look. The logos, fonts, photos, illustrations, and other visuals we use are all opportunities for us to show off just how creative and different we can be. We want you to be impressed when you look at our website—or any other part of our brand’s visual identity, for that matter. It’s in our DNA.

According to Sabrina Chan, Interactive Designer at Unbounce (and huge contributor to how the Unbounce brand looks today), this is part of the reason why companies seem to rebrand so often.

Coming up with a new visual brand is absolutely exciting, whether you do it by yourself or with the help of an agency. It’s a great creative challenge because—unlike most other marketing projects—you aren’t forced to play within a sandbox, or follow a specific set of rules. When you create a new visual brand … you actually get to shape the sandbox itself.

Marketers also obsess over visual branding because we’re under constant pressure to keep up with the times. (And the web changes fast, yo.) One second we’re all using gradients on our buttons and adding drop shadows to our form boxes, and the next we’re making every page element as flat as a Kansas-style pancake. If you’re still using styles that have fallen out of public favor a few years after the fact, it can raise a few eyebrows.

Sabrina says the goal is for your brand to either fit in or stand out—but never fall behind.

Nobody wants their brand to look like it hasn’t been updated in years. You only get one chance to make a first impression … and most marketers and designers will do anything to make a good first impression. Especially if your competitors are all out there looking fresh and up-to-date.

At the same time, this obsession with visual branding can come with a heavy price tag. Whether you hire an agency to rebrand for you or work with a team internally like we did at Unbounce—the process can take many, many months. It’s never as simple as making “just a few quick updates to the company logo.” You almost always need to scope out a big chunk of your marketing team’s time, budget, and brainpower.

According to Andy Crestodina over at Orbit Media, a “fancy site from a big web development firm” can easily run you up a bill of more than $100,000.

A graph created by Orbit Media shows how costly a new website or rebrand can be.

Here at Unbounce, we spent over half a year doing research, running impression tests, creating mockups, and iterating on our new brand before we launched. And while we have gotten (mostly) great feedback on the finished results—it can still be really tricky to connect the design’s impact of a new visual brand to actual ROI.

Sure, there are lots of ways to calculate how well your website is converting. But can you attribute that to the branding itself? It’s not so simple to draw a straight line between your looks and your bottom line.

But Your Brand Does Matter—Maybe Now More Than Ever

Even if you can’t easily attribute direct revenue to your visual branding, at least you can take comfort in the fact that almost every marketer agrees it’s still pretty dang important. Potential customers take one look at your brand and form an instant impression—long before they explore your products or check out your pricing.

Here’s what Vicky Bullen and James Ramsden of the design agency Coley Porter Bell said about the benefits of visual branding earlier this year.

Over the last few years we’ve seen many brands and their identities evolve into a state of homogenization … [But] many categories are having their traditional ‘design codes’ turned on their head as new or artisanal, challenger brands come along and create a completely new way to interpret a tired category.

They were speaking specifically about food brands, but the same line of thinking can apply to many software companies as well.

Because in the world of SaaS, branding is particularly valuable. The space is so saturated with competition (there are over 7,040 marketing technology companies alone), that most companies are eager to stand out from the competition. A unique and authentic brand is a great way to elevate your software over everybody else.

On the The Re:Growth Podcast, Dave Gearhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, even went so far as to say that branding was a key differentiator that helped their team to succeed.

We knew in order to win, we needed to do things the opposite of how everybody else was doing it. We needed a different way to stand out. And for us, that was brand.

Chris Savage, CEO of Wistia, has also been exploring the importance of branding in a new original series called Brandwagon. According to Chris, branding is more important today because traditional marketing tactics are breaking down.

A more fragmented and less measurable customer journey means that if customers aren’t positively disposed to you before they begin their product search, you’ll never make it to the consideration set. Consumers now have access to all the information they could want on your product/service at their fingertips, including how it stacks up against competing offerings … [so] we need to move beyond solution-based value propositions.

But design trends in branding aren’t anything new, either. As part of our research for this piece, we dug into some of the many different styles that have flared up over the years.

Timeline Sources:

Business Insider, AIGA Design Conference, Codeburst, Web Design Museum, Instani, Line25.

Image Sources:

Bass Brewery’s original logo. Digital image. Zythophile.com. 28 June 2013, http://zythophile.co.uk.

A vintage ad for Coca Cola from around the late 19th or early 20th century. Digital image. Smithsonian.com. 29 March 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com.

Michelin Man educational advertising, circa 1907. Digital image.

LogoDesignLove.com. 21 December 2012, https://www.logodesignlove.com.

Betty Crocker, 1955. Digital image. PBS.org. 15 February 2013, http://www.pbs.org.

Apple.com screenshot from 1996. Digital image. The Telegraph. 2 September 2009, https://www.telegraph.co.uk.

Website design from the early 2000s. Digital image. UX-App.com. 23 July 2018, https://www.ux-app.com.

Airtable custom SaaS illustration. Digital image. InternetFolks.com. 22 October 2018, https://internetfolks.com.

So Where Did This Illustration Design Trend Come From?

Travel in time with me all the way back to January 2017. Barack Obama was serving his last few weeks as President of the United States. Serena Williams was busy winning the Australian Open (while pregnant, no less). And a movie about sentient vehicles called Monster Trucks somehow made $33 million at the box office.

It was around this time that Alice Lee, an independent illustrator and designer, started working with Slack to help them create a new illustration voice and library. She partnered with their team to create over 40 separate illustrations that they could use in a variety of different places on their website and platform.

An example of an illustration on the Slack website.

Many designers point to these 40 original illustrations as the possible beginning of this current visual branding trend. And in a blog post on her website, Alice details where her original inspiration for these designs came from.

I wanted to look outside the tech industry for inspiration … I referenced much of Mary Blair’s legendary body of visual development at Disney for designing warm, whimsical characters. And it was hard not to fall in love with the ‘minimal realist’ compositional balance that Charley Harper strikes.

Another possible origin of this trend is Facebook. In 2017, the social media platform was also going through a rebrand of their own. Their team worked with a design firm named Buck to come up with a new style. And in a recent post on the AIGA Eye on Design blog, illustrator Xoana Herrera described her inspiration for the project.

I started to draw characters that were defined by their actions … Dancing with their open arms, bending their bodies to play the trumpet, for example … I wanted to portray that sense of joy we feel when we’re sharing things together in community, like celebrating a goal in a bar or singing a song with a crowd at a concert.

An example of the illustrations used by Facebook, featured on the Buck website portfolio.

We saw this trend continue to evolve over the following year. When Mailchimp pulled off their rebrand in September 2018, it created shockwaves that influenced the entire marketing community. The typeface! That yellow! The illustrations! It was like a breath of fresh air for an industry that was drowning in a sea of stock photos.

An example of a more abstract illustration on the Mailchimp website.

Here’s what Gene Lee, VP of Design at Mailchimp, said they hoped to inspire with their new brand.

With this redesign, we set out to retain all the weird, lovable elements that endeared our earliest customers to Mailchimp…We champion authenticity, originality, and expressiveness because it’s what helps us—and our customers—stand out. We hope to inspire them to be more bold and creative in their own branding efforts.

This is when the butterfly effect really started to take shape. Since September 2018, hundreds of SaaS websites have rebranded using a similar—albeit, less abstract—illustrative style.

Now, there are thousands of these flat illustrations turning up on stock photo websites, entire Twitter accounts dedicated to calling out this trend, and even mix-and-match design libraries that make it easy to create your own unique cartoon scenes.

Image courtesy of the Stubborn Free Illustrations Generator.

Why These Illustrated Humans Started #Trending

At this point, you’re probably wondering why so many companies decided to go with this Nickelodeon-esque style. And actually, there are a number of very practical reasons why these illustrations became popular…

They’re representative – With illustrations, the humans you show can come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. This can be an important distinction for socially conscious brands who want to make sure they’re being inclusive for all types of people and communities.

They’re flexible – A lot of SaaS companies struggle to show off their software using stock photos. (Let’s say you’re selling accounting software, for example. I hope you like messy desks with calculators.) Illustrations can help you represent complex or abstract ideas in a much more clean and simple way.

They’re scalable – You don’t have to have a pricey photoshoot for every new hero image. With illustrations, you can just iterate on a style or framework that you’ve already created. What’s more—you can use them to execute fast, which is a huge win for startups in growth mode who don’t have a ton of money to invest in branding.

They’re unique – I know a lot of the illustrations we’re featuring in this blog post look similar, but you can still see some wildly different approaches out there. For example, check out the style of a company like Officevibe and compare it to what Intercom is doing. Nobody is going to confuse those two companies based on their visual brands.

They’re full of personality – For SaaS companies in particular, this trend is appealing because of how much personality each image can contain. The illustrative approach harkens back to children’s storybooks, making the software seem more friendly and approachable. (Take a look at the Mailchimp website, for example, and tell me it doesn’t remind you of Curious George.)

At the Same Time, There Can Be Trouble with Being Trendy

When it comes to design trends, there are always potential dangers if you jump in without doing your research first. It’s almost never a good idea to change your entire brand overnight just because “everyone else is doing it.”

This is why Alice Lee, one of the originators of this trend, warns other companies to think things through before adopting a similar illustrative style.

I am often approached by companies who simply want me to reproduce work I’ve already created for past clients’ specific brands … But I do believe that to create an illustration identity that’s distinctive, new, and powerful, it’s important to take an intentional, process-driven approach.

There are other potential challenges with this trend as well…

These illustrations might not match your brand personality – Well, unless your brand personality is ‘Playful’ with a capital ‘P’. If that ain’t you, then these quirky cartoons might come across as inauthentic or off-brand to your target audience.

They might not be as scalable as you think – While they might be less expensive than custom photo shoots, unique illustrations also don’t come cheap. If you want non-generic doodles for your brand, you’re going to have to pay an artist to create them and have a plan in place for when you need more.

This style isn’t as unique anymore – If you jumped on this trend a year or two ago, you might have been ahead of the curve. Now, you run the risk of just looking like everybody else.

And while illustration can help make your brand appear more friendly, real photos of real people can be powerful in their own way. Alex Kracov, Head of Marketing at Lattice, explained in a Tweet why they moved away from illustrations.

Tried to buck this trend w/ the redesign that we launched today at https://t.co/gPtdvXY4wV We used to have the same illustration style, but as a People product, we felt the need to switch to photos of real humans. The CGI backdrop helps maintain the playful, approachable vibe. pic.twitter.com/F1tLaD7pCE

— Alex Kracov (@kracov) June 7, 2019

The bottom line is this: as marketers, it’s our responsibility to do our due diligence and discover what resonates best for our particular brand, industry, and customers. This is something Dan Cederholm, Co-Founder of Dribbble, talks about in a recent blog post.

My advice was to not worry about trends, but rather use the style best applied for the task at hand and stick to it. Go with what feels right for the problem you’re solving.

Image courtesy of the Stubborn Free Illustrations Generator.

Design Trends Are a Flat Circle

This illustrative trend caught on fire so fast that many marketers were caught off guard. But this is the type of thing that happens all the time in the fashion industry. Bell-bottom jeans, choker necklaces, lumberjack plaid—they all became massively popular, died down, and then came back around to being “cool” again. It’s the circle of life, folks. (Cue The Lion King soundtrack.)

Matthew Strom, Senior Product Design Lead at Bitly, noticed that more and more websites were starting to trend in a similar way, and he linked this idea to the economic principle of minimum differentiation. In short, most marketers and designers are going to put in the minimum effort and risk in order to succeed—and that means we’re going to end up making a lot of the same choices.

Here’s how Matthew describes the inevitable “same-ification” of the internet.

The convergence of competition to nearly-identical products is not just a coincidence: it is inevitable. It seems irrational, but the math is sound. This is an emergent phenomenon … even if they try to differentiate themselves, all websites will eventually flock together.

So hey, maybe there’s nothing inherently wrong with following a design trend if we’re all gonna end up looking the same anyway. Marketers use up a lot of collective brainpower trying to create unique visual identities that set them apart—but perhaps we’re all just fighting a losing battle.

Because in the end, there’s no real evidence that any design trend—whether it’s illustrations, custom photography, or even 3D images—is good or bad for your brand.

You just need to make sure that whatever decision you make, you make it deliberately.

Here’s How the Illustration Design Trend Caught Fire and Why Every SaaS Is Rebranding published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/

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jjonassevilla · 5 years ago

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Here’s How the Cartoon Design Trend Caught Fire and Why Every SaaS Is Rebranding

I’m sure you’ve noticed this ubiquitous illustration style by now. Depending on who you ask, these cartoons are either fun and whimsical, or strange and faceless. Maybe you see them as friendly-looking doodles … or maybe you see them as just plain weird.