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Trends and Insight in association withLBB Events
Why the Loudest Advertising Needs the Most Silence
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17/09/2026
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BUCK’s group creative director Alex Moulton explains how applying Dieter Rams’ minimalist design principles to a sound mix creates truly memorable audio
In the advertising industry, silence can make people nervous. There’s a natural inclination to optimise every second of a commercial, but the instinct to add one more layer is often the enemy of impact. Alex Moulton, group creative director at BUCK, believes that the secret to memorable audio lies in the art of the pause.
While his current role involves orchestrating broader campaigns, Alex’s perspective is rooted in over a decade of hands-on audio experience. Before joining BUCK, he owned a music company and focused heavily on sonic branding, composition, and film scores. It is precisely this deep background in the craft that makes him uniquely qualified to defend the quiet moments in a final mix.
Dieter Rams’ 10th principle of design states that good design is as little design as possible. For Alex, this is his favourite creative principle and the foundation of his approach to audio.
“I don’t think that sound designers or composers for that matter get enough credit being designers, but all the same principles apply,” he says. “Some may not articulate it through the language of design, but for me, those two things go hand in hand. So if I can have some principles like Dieter Rams’ 10th principle, it’s a way to describe it to a client and they can go, ‘Oh, yes. That is important. Yeah, we need to do that.’ It’s a reminder that those levers that we have are really key to making something feel emotional.”
The patron saint of minimalism is a personal idol for the creative director. Alex adds, “He’s especially key for me because not only is he someone who I admire, I got to meet him. I got to work on just a great documentary about Dieter Rams that a filmmaker named Gary Hustwit made a number of years ago – the title sequence and a number of the interstitial moments that happened throughout the documentary. Brian Eno wrote the score, of course. And you’re not going to find a better minimalist than Brian. It’s something that I got to make a small contribution to, but also it kind of keeps me tied to those principles, like they are locked into my mind as something that I hold in high esteem and I find very useful to discuss with people when I feel like things are going off of the rails.”
He notes that this restraint is vital in today’s media landscape. “I do think the default setting of our world right now, between scrolling and watching ads, is impact all the time.. It’s grab your attention and overload. If we can find those moments that we’re able to pull back, that actually stands out far more than the total overload of sound.”
Why Dynamics Matter
Applying this minimalism is not just an aesthetic choice; it is the fundamental mechanism for creating emotion within a commercial.
Alex explains, “It gets to the core of good advertising and storytelling. It’s like, it can’t be rushed all the time. It can’t be hyper-optimised. It’s inherently emotional. So you have to figure out what those levers are to make something feel emotional. And so if you are at 100% all of the time, you’re going to see there’s no emotions coming through.
“If you’re doing a comedy spot, then you want that moment to either let a joke land or to build up to it,” he notes. “If you’re doing something that feels like it’s the opposite, where it’s tension, you have to build into that tension and so you’re only going to get that with that dynamic contrast.”
How to Engineer Audio Space
Silence in a sound mix rarely means absolute dead air. Instead, Alex focuses on manipulating layers to create perceived space.
“It’s never going to be total silence. That is unnerving,” Alex says. “I think of it more as creating space. And so that’s going to be, from a technical perspective, about something else trailing off. You’re still going to have the long tail of something. It requires that you’re going to have layers within a composition or a bed of sound that you can kind of come back down to. So we would call that foley sound or pad or bed, but you can pull things away from and then layer things back on.”
He points out that the best mixes rely on subtle underlying elements, “You may have loud sounds that are layered in that you don’t notice as well as they’re there, but they’re always there and they give a little bit of texture and vibe and then when you pull everything back, you still have that. I think a lot of the best music that still sits with me is music that has that kind of textural quality to it, regardless of genre. You want some of those little things that you don’t know why you love it… why did they bring in that little extra bit of crackle or noise or texture? It just makes it feel cooler.”
However, he warns that beginning a short-form commercial with silence rarely works. “Beginning with silence is not effective in short-form storytelling,” he says. “I don’t think you can start from nothing. You have to grab someone’s attention right away. So if we’re talking about something that’s a 30-second length, you need to draw people in really fast, a sharp sound, a loud sound, something that just grabs your attention. And then you can pull back. Or you’re gonna find that space in your third act where you’re making your point and you need the impact.”
Designing Space in Practice
Putting this theory into practice requires a delicate balance of tension, messaging, and restraint. Alex highlights three specific projects where silence was used as a powerful design tool:
Alex says, “Perhaps our most visually ambitious Airbnb spot in our long creative partnership at BUCK. At 14 seconds, the VO pauses, the music stops, and we’re left with only the sounds of the city to create a moment of silence before we enter the second act of the story. There’s a beautiful pause there lasting a whole three seconds.”
Alex explains, “This is a gem from a campaign we made last year at BUCK. This ad embraces silence and simplicity, with no music at all. At 13 seconds, as the handshake ends, there’s a lovely moment that lingers a beat, making the end card that much more impactful. Notably, the title card doesn’t have a sound. This unusual combination of silence and messaging makes the product feel even more easy and fun.”
Alex adds, “In 2013, I creative-directed sound design for a set of teasers to build anticipation for ‘Bates Motel’, a series that acts as a prequel to the movie ‘Psycho’. Each of these one-shot sequences grows tension by using ambient sound that builds very, very slowly. These also follow the ‘rule’ I mentioned about always needing to start with an attention-grabbing sound before you drop everything away. That was an important learning on this project.”
Defending the Final Mix
Having a great philosophy means nothing if you cannot defend it to collaborators and, importantly, those footing the bill for the work. The final mix is where a commercial’s breathing room is most at risk.
“Selling in sound is super challenging,” Alex notes. “It almost has to be – people have to hear it before they can react to it. So, especially if we’re talking about clients… Executive stakeholders talking about it is not going to give it half the weight of playing it so they can hear it. It’s going to make that impact.”
He explains that a group creative director must act as a guardian of the gaps in sound. Alex says, “These choices that can happen early on where you could try and sell it, or you can convince someone that this is the right range… can devolve really quickly in that final mix stage. I think it’s so important for that final mix stage to have the right people in the room to defend those silences or the spaces. We are now hardwired to optimise every moment. If you have a 30-second story or even a 15-second story, everyone’s trying to layer on or get what they need from that moment. And so you’re just in this business mindset of optimising everything.”
He concludes, “The first thing to go is the silences or the pauses. People want to layer on. So really it’s about defending those moments. Trying to describe why that has an emotional impact on our resonance and a feeling of either building anticipation or letting something land with impact. The quietest moment in a great spot leads right into the one everyone will remember. Let’s not talk over it.”
Trends and Insight in association withLBB Events
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