Summit

Launching Novation’s halo synth. A 16 voice polyphonic beast.

Brand
  • Novation
Date
  • May 2019
The Team
  • Simon Peacock – Creative Director
  • Christien Michaels – Lead designer
  • Seb Green – Lead designer
  • Alex Green – Director & Videographer
  • Hinako Omori – Composer

The book

The Summit is an absolute monster of a synth. There’s so much depth to the synthesis under the hood that it was immediately apparent that this information was what was going to be the driving force to get this added to a synth wish list. Unlike many synth manufacturers who present this amount of technical information in a black and white photocopied mountain of A4 paper we wanted to approach this with the same love and attention that went in to every aspect of this £1,899 machine.

Accepting that the primary goal of this had to be legibility we couldn’t let the design get in the way of presenting that information, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have some fun making this a joy to read. A simple blue and coral colour palette and stripped back illustrations ensured each page was visually engaging and delivered the vital information, but wasn’t overbearing and intimidating to read.

The performance

In addition to the raw technical detail that was going to sell this synth, it was obviously the sound that would whet the synth buying communities appetite. We brought in the incredibly gifted, Hinako Omori. We didn’t want an EDM banger, that would not work for this market, glow sticks and UV paint wearing teens are not in the market for this machine. We needed an intelligent, slow and evolving track that built up and showed off all 16 voices of the Summit.

We chose not to present the synth in a studio setting as we needed the Summit to be the focus, the moment you place a synth like this next to another synth you immediately fire up the synth buyers GAS (gear acquisition syndrome!). A trigger to start thinking about that other synth or the one they’ve seen just tucked away out of shot. We needed their full attention so we looked for something that was visually calming but had detail and character that the track had.

"…it was obviously the sound that would whet the synth buying communities appetite."