Finneas O’Connell — better known simply as Finneas — has composed a fresh sonic logo for Apple TV, the streaming platform once called Apple TV+. Developed in collaboration with Apple’s longtime creative partner TBWA\Media Arts Lab, the rebrand extends far beyond a memorable audio cue to deliver a bold, cohesive visual identity.
At its core, the new look revolves around dynamic layers of shifting colored light, evoking the diverse genres and emotional depth of Apple TV’s catalog since its 2019 launch. While the effects appear digitally rendered, they were achieved entirely through practical means—using glass elements and captured in-camera for an organic, tactile quality that sets the branding apart.
The five-second version of the new branding, which will run before Apple TV shows, nicely highlights the colored-lights effect. The lush visuals are meant to capture the platform’s cinematic ambitions and remind viewers that Apple TV is where prestige storytelling lives.
The choice to shoot practically aligns with Apple’s love of tactile detail and camera-first artistry, a point emphasized by Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, in a speech at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last summer. Myhren said Apple would continue to value human artistry even as it embraces AI tools.
Along with the five-second version, Apple TV made a one-second sting for trailers and a 12-second cinematic version for films…
The new identity will ripple across Apple TV’s ecosystem in the coming months, from app interfaces to marketing campaigns.
Mnemonic, Finneas says, “is sort of a beautiful word for a logo” accompanied by sound. “The things that I think of as real classic mnemonics are NBC — you can hear that in your head — or HBO has its static.” Finneas is well aware of how modern streaming consumption might make this especially ubiquitous, household by household. “If you’re binge-ing the whole season of ‘Ted Lasso’ or ‘Severance’ or ‘Disclaimer’” (the last of those being the limited series that he composed the score for himself), “you’re going to hear the mnemonic 10 times in one day. So it’s gotta be something that’s like the bite of ginger between rolls or something, you know?”
Speaking via Zoom from his home studio, Finneas points to the piano behind him as a starting point for a fleeting piece of music whose instrumentation isn’t easy to pin down before it’s gone in one ear and out the other at the start of a viewing experience. “I have my upright piano back here, so I sat and started there. I’m always more able to make something quickly on a real instrument than I am with software. I played a chord that felt kind of hopeful and kind of optimistic, but had gravity to it and hopefully had a little bit of an enigmatic, mysterious quality. And so I had this chord thing happening and then I started building the sounds around it. I had these pieces of zinc and I was hitting them and then reversing the audio, and I was playing real piano and then reversing that, and playing these bass synthesizers and then pitching those up and gliding them down.”
Never thought I’d get to do something like this but I am so honored and truly couldn’t have enjoyed working on it more. hope this very short piece of music feels like it matches the things I love about Apple so much- They make such beautiful tools. Lucky to use em
MacDailyNews Note: Here’s the 0:05 version:
Watch the 0:12 version here and the 0:33 BTS video here.
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