Axel Hartmann, one of the best industrial designers for Synthesizers revealed today on his private Facebook page some very old first Alesis Andromeda Design studies. The Andromeda is in my opinion of the best Synthesizers ever made and I really hope on a reissue one day.
Axel Hartmann’s explications:
Anytime, I see the Andromeda popping up at FB, I remember the days, 20 years ago, when we have been working on this Mega synth together with the Alesis team around Erik Norlander and Rob Rampley. The working technique was a bit different from today back then . . . It was the time, when we have just been exploring the possibilities of 3D modeling. As most of the work of designing a user interface can happen in 2D, we have been using Freehand, to arrange the functional elements. We then built huge 1:1 cardboard mockups, to check the layout. I am still keeping these in the lowest drawer of our big paper Schrank, that we only use to keep these kind of memories today. I thought; – maybe, it is cool, to share these memories with all of you here . . . To me, the Andromeda has been the pinnacle of Analog synthesizers “of the past”. . .
The “clowd” modules have been an idea, away from the typical straight engineer approach of a synthesizer setup. The Alesis people did like this approach a lot, and they recognized something like small galaxies in the graphical setup of those clouds . . . – this is, where the name “Andromeda” came from . . . There has been a lot of discontent inside our community for this layout, and sometimes, I was full of doubts myself, if this layout was too far outside . . . Seeing the beautiful instruments from Modal Electronics, using this kind of approach for their high class synthesizers helps, to overcome these feelings
When working on a design, we tend to give our clients 3, maybe more basic options with the first step of the process. Usually, we deliver something that is close to what the market may request, something in the middle, and something more radical. This was the very common design language version . . . classy setup of modules . . .
Really lovely design studies for the Andromeda Synthesizer. Quite happy to see that the first one was chosen for the final design and not the second. This looks not very nice but more horrible. Thanks Axel to sharing this to us.
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