Roland TR-909 "Different Drummer" colour advertisement from the outside back cover of Volume 2, Number 3 (1984) issue of Roland Users Group Magazine.
Happy 9/09 day!
And you know what brings happiness to my 909 day? A new... er... old... TR-909 advertisement of course!
Don't worry - I'm keeping it short and sweet!
I haven't come across this TR-909 advertisement anywhere other than Roland's own users group magazine. It's part of the "Roland Makes It Happen!" series of neon-inspired ads that have included quite a few sweet pieces of gear from the time period, each paired with a different neon colour.
I've posted a few other Roland ads from the series including the Juno 106 "Synful" blue ad and the TR-707 "Digital Dynamite" yellow ad, and the TR-909 red ad makes a lovely addition to the collection.
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There are others too - check out the new Roland timeline for more!
I've also posted a few of Roland's family ads that also play off the same design elements (dark backgrounds, lots of neon), both of which also include... you guessed it...
The TR-909!
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I'd love to see all of these poster-sized. Like Dave Smith did for many of his Mattos-designed ads.
Like the other ads in the series, the ad copy is a little hard to read, but definitely worth it. We get Roland promoting the new MIDI standard, Roland software, the works.
In particular, I'm digging this little line:
"We start with digital recordings of real drums, then through a 3-D waveform analysis, re-create the sounds through a hybird digital/analog process."And no... not because of the spelling error (hyBIRD), but that they thought it was important to talk about the process they used to create the sounds found in the 909. Sprinkling a little bit of tech into the ad. Letting users see the magic behind the curtain.
The text layout aside, I gotta say I'm totally digging the design of this series of ads. Neon was big in the '80s, and its easy to see why it inspired many designers to find a way to make it work in print during this time period.
Today we see neon making a come back in the visual packaging of one style of music in particular - Synthwave! And, not coincidentally, a lot of that synthwave is being produced with hardware that was introduced in the 80s through neon-themed advertising like those you see above.
How's that for full circle!
Don't believe me - just do a Google images search for 'synthwave'.
Heck, even if you do believe me, do the search anyways...
...just for the happiness it will bring to your 9/09 day. :)
