Maikel van der Wouden
Designing What We Hear
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I Am a Design Engineer
I excel at converting creative energy into practical, result driven and delivery orientated design that meets the needs of people.
Exploiting the power of audio
I’ve designed a methodology that enables me and my team to create designs that demonstrate the value of a structured approach to achieving goals. We focus on audio and voice branding. Want to create a stronger brand?
Building stronger Brands
I’ve helped companies and organizations around the world to answer a simple but powerful question: What does your brand sound like?
Most companies have extensive guidelines for their visual Brand identity, but when it comes to sound… They realize it’s important but haven’t figured out how to deal with it.
That’s where I come in: I design what people hear.
More information
Current role
I am the chairman of Whoozy Agency, a full-service audio agency, and the active Head of Strategy at VoiceBranding, an agency that specializes in designing brand voices, servicing clients across the world.
Experience
- I’ve designed the audio branding for a health care company from the UK valued at more than $2 billion.
- I’ve designed a unique voice brand for the biggest insurance company in the Netherlands
- Designing a TTS voice for the Dutch public broadcasting organization KRO-NCRV
- I’ve designed the UX sounds and audio branding strategy for the most popular Dutch app used behind the wheel by more than 2M users per day.
- I recently gave a 3-hour workshops for more than 80 people in NYC.
- I designed sound and music for a documentary that premiered at Tribeca Film festival. It was nominated for a “Gouden Kalf” (Dutch Oscars).
- I’ve designed the sound of sustainability for the third biggest bank in the Netherlands.
Speaking and Training
I like speaking a lot. I most recently spoke at The World Innovation Summit. In 2019 I spoke at the Voice Summit, Conversational Superpowers, Cross media awards, amongst others. I also spoke for dozens of companies.
I enjoy speaking about…
- The essence of Audio Branding: Because every Brand has an audio identity, whether you are managing it or not.
- Creating a unique Voice Brand: Managing your brand identity through speech.
- Creating a unique Brand Voice.
- UX Sound Design.
Podcast
I have a podcast called ON-Branding. In each episode we discuss a new statement such as: “It’s a great innovation that products and services start to speak with their own unique voice”. We invite experts to respond and share their knowledge.
On our website, everybody can respond and share their opinion. We pick the most interesting stories to further discuss during the show.
For more information check: www.on-branding.com