Abstract from the Sounddesign Symposium "Tonmeister Tagung" 2007 in Ludwigsburg (Germany) » Close window Sound follows function. Sound communication and the relevance of timbre. (Lecture - 30 min) Rainer Hirt, Kai Bronner (audio-branding.de) In many domains, e.g. industrial sound design or audio-branding, designers look for sounds to communicate certain values and to convey information. As computer displays get smaller on devices such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants, sound will become even more important for providing information to users. Sound can enrich a user?s information awareness. A better understanding of the relation between the physical characteristics (acoustics) of a sound and its perceived emotional/affective qualities (aesthetics) as well as its attributed function/meaning (semiotics and semantics), will improve creation and selection of appropriate audio content. An explorative study using auditory icons, auditory symbols (earcons) and a combination of the both (auditory symcons) was carried out to shed more light on acoustic communication with non-speech sounds. The study reveals amongst others, that further investigation on the acoustical parameter "timbre" is required. Thus an ongoing study that addresses the perception of timbre is presented.