Context
Senso Systems is Cornwall’s premier distributor of high end audio and visual equipment. With over 25-years of experience in the industry Senso specialises in delivering premium audio products, ranging from wireless headphones, turntables, and hi-fi separates to loudspeakers, bespoke home cinema setups, and multi-room solutions. The showroom in the heart of Truro includes a bespoke cinema room/demonstration suite and individual demonstration rooms meticulously designed to exhibit the diverse range of specialist equipment in controlled settings. By immersing customers in these environments Senso is committed to creating personalised audiovisual experiences, showcasing the best brands available and drawing on their knowledge and experience to offer highly bespoke solutions to their customers.

Brief
Senso reached out to Multivitamin looking to take their brand to the next level and develop a look and feel that was synonymous with their products and services.

As proud partners with Bang and Olufsen on the high street, the goal was to ensure the new brand seamlessly complemented the B&O brand, but also moved the needle for Senso, creating something that was far more dynamic and thought provoking, and underpinned by a concept that connected users to the brand in a new way.

Process
To realise this concept it was important for us to understand the product, Senso sells high end audio, but the real connection for the customer is in the emotional connection with the product. Music and audio have such a powerful way of changing our emotions, and we wanted to lean into this concept as a key part of our development process.

We started by anchoring the brand with three core values: Passionate, knowledgeable, and emotive. These pillars were the starting point for the concept work, drawing on the expertise and experience of the Senso team, to connect the customer to the product.

The design theory was Inspired by the emotional response to music, our tagline “the way music moves you” emerged as a key driver of the concept development, and inspired us to look at different ways in which “music moves” steering us into the fascinating realm of music, sound and emotions.This investigation prompted us to delve into the intricate relationship between various frequencies and their impact on our emotional connection to music. In particular we examined the distinctive emotional shifts associated with different hertz frequencies (Kumar et al., 2022).

By introducing a Chladni plate into the concept development we were able to use Solfeggio frequencies to build a brand world around the manifestation of different frequencies and tie them back to a physical and emotional response to sound.

This paved the way for our primary logo. Clean, simple and powerful, the minimalist mark features the ‘N,’ symbolising the frequencies that link to different emotional responses, these include; Sadness, Calmness, Happiness, and Anger, creating more than just a mark, but a dynamic reflection of Senso’s approach to crafting unique experiences for their customers.

Our colour palette, black base, exudes luxury, while strategic pops of colour infuse a modern and expressive flair. The result? A design that doesn’t just speak but resonates, creating an unforgettable Senso experience.

Demonstrate value
The idea here wasn’t just to update the logo, it was to create a brand that connected on a deeper level. The result is a brand that is intrinsically connected to the product, the service and the emotional connection to the brand offering.

The client has already committed to using the Chladni plate in a showroom setting as the centrepiece of the brand roll out. This will form a key part of the strategy of the company moving forward and change their overall messaging and positioning of their products and services.

The new identity is a true reflection of Senso as a brand. It resonates with the client and the customer and captures the raw emotional response of the product in a clever and succinct way that connects on a variety of different levels.

Reference
Kumar, M., Abhayapala, T.D. and Samarasinghe, P. (2022). A Preliminary Investigation on Frequency Dependant Cues for Human Emotions.Acoustics 2022, 4, 460–468. https://doi.org/10.3390/acoustics4020028