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Name a 'beautiful' amplifier.

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Kenwood L-08M
 
Rockmeister said:
I guess it may be possible that the designers know that most blokes actually like ‘biscuit tin and lights’ designs and are just playing to that market? Nah, I know.
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You've got it in one. If you are selling polyester comfort slacks with elasticated waistband, then provided you have beige, Lovat green, and blue covered, you're good enough.
 
Rockmeister said:
I guess it may be possible that the designers know that most blokes actually like ‘biscuit tin and lights’ designs and are just playing to that market? Nah, I know. Well then I think we have stumbled on the fact that a Designer never saw the product at all. Engineers yes but designers?
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For the 500 range onwards Armstrong employed industrial designers. This was prompted by the 400 range being a bit of a disaster. The firm thought it looked OK. But lots of the potential buyers decided it looked awful. So sales dragged. They got in a rated designer and the same innards were used for the 500 range. Which sold like hotcakes and won a Design Council tag! Message learned from then on. Hence the 600 avoided the 'biscuit tin' appearance and had a nice style that also sold well.

Only snag was that it was a booger to assemble as a result. 8-]

The circuits were the easy bit. Getting things to fit together was harder. Largely because most physical components maker that provided things like the wood sleeve, plastic under-tray, etc, weren't initially able to make the items with the required physical precision. Fortunately they eventually were pushed into learning. But it was another episode that explains why over the following decades Japanese kit *and components* trounced UK makers. Result being most 'UK' HiFi was from then on made mostly using Japanese or other non-UK components. :-/
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
For the 500 range onwards Armstrong employed industrial designers. This was prompted by the 400 range being a bit of a disaster. The firm thought it looked OK. But lots of the potential buyers decided it looked awful. So sales dragged. They got in a rated designer and the same innards were used for the 500 range. Which sold like hotcakes and won a Design Council tag! Message learned from then on. Hence the 600 avoided the 'biscuit tin' appearance and had a nice style that also sold well.

Only snag was that it was a booger to assemble as a result. 8-]

The circuits were the easy bit. Getting things to fit together was harder. ...
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I have a non-audio example where the circuits were emphatically not the easy bit.

I watched the engineers working in the same lab where I did shifting heaven and earth with previously untested technology to miniaturise a very complex piece of kit. But its Design Council Award for excellence in design was actually given to the person who designed the case to put around their hard-won result. That didn't seem quite fair.

But in the context of this thread, external appearance, whether beautiful, striking, purposeful or way-over-the-top does sell the product to whomever finds it pleasing.
 
Tony L said:
There seem to be three schools of audio design; a) don’t try at all (lazy black boxes with no discernible aesthetic design or ergonomics), b) get it right, which is anything from vintage Braun, Quad, Lescon, B&O, Meridian, silver-face Pioneer, Marantz, chrome-bumper Naim etc, and c) try way, way too hard and fail catastrophically, e.g. all the hideous oligarch bling-fi Daytona600 is posting. Some of it looks like the design team was Donald Trump and Homer Simpson FFS!

As ever good design tends to be form dictated by function and ergonomics. That has never changed and just because it is incredibly easy to CNC bizarre shapes does not make it a good idea! The best audio design is a real asset to any room and timeless IMO, e.g. you could put say a Pioneer SX980 or a Quad 34/306 in any room decor and they would look great IMO. Same with a lot of proper vintage valve power amps (Leak, Quad, McIntosh etc) as they are beautifully executed form dictated by function design.
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Except lots of iconic designs don't follow function. An Alessi lemon squeezer is useless, juice everywhere. Rietveld chair, looks great, but sitting on a plank. Rover chair, not bad to sit on but try moving one. The one with leather strips on chrome, bloody awful to st on. So not necessarily.
 
My fave bit was (And why I went around to the back) Seeing the subtle use of some power blocks as cable lifters. I had no doubt that without them the system would’ve sounded crap.
 
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