Yuri Suzuki

Opening our ears to the atmosphere of sound

Opening Our Ears To The Atmosphere Of Sound

As coronavirus swept the world in 2020, workers decamped to their kitchen tables. This universal displacement of staff and subsequent culture of working from home defined a new normal — but with it came a new awareness of sound. No longer was your colleague’s breathing muffled by the water cooler, nor the constant updates from your computer inaudible under the din of office chatter.

“With the pandemic, people were spending more time in their domestic environments, thinking about acoustics and noticing everyday sounds much more. They became fed up with notification sounds — like for Slack. These things are easily noticeable and when you hear it 100 times a day, it gets tiring. At Pentagram, we do quite a lot of investigative work to see how sound can change our everyday environment.”

Yuri Suzuki is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician. Hailing from Japan but now based in London, he joined Pentagram as a partner in 2018, working at the intersection of sound, installations, product design and art direction. Yuri grew up in Tokyo in the 80s, consuming British and American culture, which would make his move to the UK 16 years ago all the easier. However, some things still exasperate him: “There’s no punctuality in the UK, everyone is very casual. It was frustrating in the beginning but I’m getting used to it.”

‘With the pandemic, people were spending more time in their domestic environments, thinking about acoustics and noticing everyday sounds much more.’

Yuri Suzuki, 2020

While Pentagram is universally recognised for graphic design, the consultancy didn’t have a lot of experience with audio and sound work, so Yuri got the opportunity to carve out his own space. “My role has really opened up abstraction in the field of experiential design, sound design and audio communication — that’s never ever been done by a partner before. It’s new for them so I have a lot of appreciation for Pentagram for investing in me to open up that field.”

Sound has long been overlooked when it comes to branding but change is afoot, according to Yuri. “When I first joined Pentagram, there was not much about sound identity being discussed, but in the last few months — after lockdown happened — I’ve had so many enquiries for sound design. People are starting to realise how important it is.”

In collaboration with the Japanese publishing and toy company, Gakken, Yuri created the EZ Record Maker — a DIY record maker that can cut blank vinyl discs and play them back instantly. He recalls how he came up with the concept:

‘If you look at the history of media, records are the only ones to have stood the test of time. Vibrations making sounds — it’s a really physical process and doesn’t even need electricity.’

Yuri Suzuki, 2020

“I’m quite skeptical about technology — especially archiving. People don’t physically collect or save film and music media any more and are saving everything on the cloud — in the middle of nowhere — and what if you lost access or the server was broken? I used to collect records but when I moved to Europe, I couldn't bring my collection so put them all on a hard drive, which I dropped. I lost the whole collection. That shows how insecure collecting and saving music and cultural heritage in that way can be.”

“If you look at the history of media, records are the only ones to have stood the test of time. Vibrations making sounds — it’s a really physical process and doesn’t even need electricity. And to think that Edison created the Cylinder Phonograph and we’re still using that technology in this life. That sort of longer life media doesn’t exist in our world. As well as this, you can duplicate other media like MP3 or CDs quite easily, but with records you can’t do that in your domestic environment. So I was dreaming about this idea for years.”

When it comes to the sounds of his everyday life, Yuri has an affinity with the sea. “When lockdown happened, I moved to the small seaside town of Margate because the sound of the waves is very special for me. It has the effect of white noise but the patterns of the sound are also really soothing. One of my fundamental interests is in how we can recreate sounds from nature, which are totally random — human beings or computer programmes can’t make this sort of randomness.”

‘One of my fundamental interests is in how we can recreate sounds from nature, which are totally random — human beings or computer programmes can’t make this sort of randomness.’

Yuri Suzuki, 2020