Wersi Digital Multi-Sound System (DMS) System "The Impossible No. 3" ad, Keyboard 1985

Wersi Digital Multi-Sound (DMS) System  "The Impossible No. 3" full page colour advertisement from page 13 in the January 1985 issue of Keyboard Magazine.

Been going through a bout of insomnia. Not fun when it happens, but I do tend to get a lot more done. Unfortunately, lately "a lot more" more often refers to Skyrim adventuring and noodling on my ever-growing modular. Less often does it mean getting more actual work done.

Point is, my schedule and routines gets a little messed up.  So, rather than writing this blog post on a Sunday or a week night like I usually do, I'm writing this early in the morning, outside, sitting on my deck. I'm hoping the sun will help change my mood and help me get started with my day.

I was just starting into my Wersi kick when I was distracted for a few posts by Vako/TRI and Viking/Voyager advertisements. But I knew I'd get back to this new Wersi advertisment soon.

If you recall from the last Wersi blog post on the DMS Condor, I went on a little too long about it's design relationship with punk and scrapbooking. Yeah... scrapbooking. This design is just as "80s" as that previous one, but in a more contemporary way.

The strong blue and close-cropping have been kept, but gone is the black backgrounds that were used to separate out the different elements of the ad.  It's been replaced with horizontal blue lines that run from the top to the bottom of the ad, gradually getting thicker along the way. The only angles to be found in this new ad is the cut-out portion that readers can use to send in for more information.

As much as I love the design of this new ad, the ad-copy leaves a bit to be desired. For a number of reasons.

The first issue is how crowded that ad-copy is. The designer obviously wanted the three thin columns of text to fit *exactly* within the same number of lines, and was willing to sacrifice readability to do it. But it went a little too far.

Another issue is the title "The Impossible No. 3". I'm not going to get into how crazy-annoyed I feel about the "P" and "O" touching each other (again - the designer wanted to squish text together). I'm more confused about what exactly the title means.  The only reference to "three" in the ad-copy is just that there are three columns of text. Then I thought that maybe that the "3" had to do with the keyboard itself. But when I zoomed into the photo, the keyboard is the "Beta DX400". No three there.

I don't know enough about the history of the DMS series, but if the series was released in the order they appear on this page of DMS keyboards, then the Beta was the third in the series, after the Condor (DX100) and Alpha (DX 300 and 350).  So maybe that's it.

And that brings me to my last little issue with the ad - the name of the Wersi keyboard being advertised actually doesn't appear anywhere in the ad-copy. Only in really small letters on the instrument photo itself. Maybe Wersi were promoting all the DMS line in this one ad, but that wouldn't explain why the ad-copy always seems to reference just one keyboard - not the whole line. Or the reason why they only included a photo of one keyboard.

Bah. Obviously still grumpy. Best to stop here and convince myself its time to go to work.