ARP Odyssey "You cannot duplicate the sound of the ARP Odyssey..." black and white and orange full page advertisement from page 41 in the August 1978 issue of Contemporary Keyboard.
Oooooh - Halloween is approaching and I think I'm finally getting into the spirit of the season. My gothy/industrial-influenced teen-age years give me a natural affinity for skulls. Even earlier, as a child, a glowing skull is one of the few things I brought back from Disney. No mouse ears for this young pirate.
If you haven't seen the trend yet in these blog posts as of late, ARP has also been approaching full-on Halloween-ess in their ads.
And so here we have ARP going full-on jack-o-lantern in this new Odyssey advertisement. It makes sense that this ad first appeared in the August 1978 issue of CK and then continued to run monthly through September and into spooky October as well.
I really like that the designer of the ad took the next logical next step and incorporated the new synthesizer panel colour scheme ARP first introduced on their gear last March into the actual ad itself.
And speaking of spooky, doesn't Tom Coster look just a little bit spooky in that black and white ad photo. I'm not saying I don't like that image. Its actually quite awesome because if you look closely, I'm pretty sure that's a maple leaf on Tom Coster's shirt. Go Canada!
In fact, it kinda looks like an NHL Maple Leafs jersey, no? But, if Google images is any indication, it doesn't really look like a 1978-style jersey. Not really a hockey fan anyways. But still get a kick out of the idea.
I checked his Wikipedia page and did a few quick Google searches to see if I could confirm he is/was a hockey fan, but nothing came up. But Wikipedia does tell me he was born in the hockey-town of Detroit (although raised in San Francisco).
Like the ad in Monday's ARP post, this ad has a lot of text running across the page. But this time at least a large portion of it is quotes from Tom - makes the ad more personal. And, this time the ad copy isn't running all over the imagery. Let's face it, that last ARP Omni-2 ad was a bit of a dog's breakfast.
For comparison, I've put them side by side above.
We still have a lot happening in this new Odyssey ad, but just that little bit of extra white space (er.... black space) makes it a much more visually balanced ad. The eye has places to focus on. Even the ad-title at the bottom of the page that is in such close proximity to the ad-copy looks good. And those oange accents on the name of the synth and the ARP logo also give this ad a nice kick.
So, yeah... ad itself, less spooky on the readability front. More spooky on the Halloween front.
Just the way I like it.
1 comment:
"You cannot duplicate the sound of the ARP Odyssey..."
he-he-he - was that a node about their fight about the "Octave Cat"??? ;)
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