Re: Looper development and production costs?

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

At 11:09 AM 10/16/2001, Tom Ritchford wrote:
>>Well, you have a point.  But how much flashy design can you put into a 
>1U 
>>rack space unit that's going to garner more sales from the target market 
>>that buys from the gut reaction of "oooh, that LOOKS cool"?
>
>black goes with everything.  what's wrong with black and silver if you
>can't think of anything else?

black is for losers. it's so late 20th century. black blends into the 
background and nobody notices it, because everything else is black. dull 
dull dull. This site is for you:  http://www.amigothornot.com


>I'm looking at all my gear -- most of it is black and silver.

exactly.


>The one really colored item is my great divide 2x4 splitter
>which is pretty pink purple white.

I bet that's the first thing people notice in your gear, right? because it 
is NotBlack.


>I hate to be cruel but the EDP looks like someone's home workshop
>project because of the choice of color (blancmange??) and lettering.

the color is classic Oberheim Cream. Chosen to maintain a consistent look 
over the whole product line and maintain tradition with past Oberheim 
products. That isn't the sort of decision hobbyist make, mostly hobbyists 
use black.

In fact the decision not to use black was intentional, exactly for the 
marketing purpose of making the echoplex stand out against a sea of black 
stuff. A cheap way to draw attention.

The type for the lettering is ITC Eras. I spent quite some time to pick 
that one, and liked it because it was a reasonably different sans-serif 
font that gave an interesting look, while still being very readable. I 
then 
went to quite a bit of effort to get the typesetting done well. Believe it 
or not, while I didn't study typesetting, I spent quite some time working 
at a printing company in the typesetting department. I learned quite a bit 
about typesetting there from real typesetters. But then, I'm not a trained 
"expert" like some of you. So please, could you explain to me what all 
these horrible mistakes I made are? Granted, all of the people making all 
these criticisms don't even own Echoplexes and probably have never looked 
at one up close, but I'm sure you wouldn't make such a criticism if you 
couldn't back it up with specifics.



>Another $2 per unit and $2000 in design would have gone a LONG way there.
>You could do a creditable job for half of that.

We spent far more than that on industrial designers and graphic artists 
for 
some other projects at that time. Guess what? they didn't come out looking 
all that much better. In a 1U rack it is real hard to do anything 
interesting while still fitting in all the controls.

kim



______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com