Modal Electronics

An electronic musical instrument company designing and manufacturing innovative ‘Machines for Musicians’. As the sole designer I develop and design all hardware products, user interfaces, branding, websites and marketing assets.

COBALT5S

Product Design

A 5 voice extended virtual-analogue synthesiser based on the COBALT8 synth architecture and housed in an ultra-portable go-anywhere footprint. The USB-powered COBALT5S is made-to-move and ready to spark your creativity wherever and whenever inspiration strikes.

The main challenge with this product was how to condense the controls from the larger COBALT8 down to just one row of control knobs in order to meet the required size while still keeping a simple user workflow.

I believe I managed it pretty well, including a unique modulation assign mode that didn’t involve any shift combinations, an improvement even on the original COBALT8.

MODALapp

UI / UX Design

MODALapp is a multi-platform application which forms the central command of the Modal synthesiser ecosystem.

With something as fully featured as a synthesiser, it is always difficult to create a user interface that provides a functional balanced workflow, maintains a pleasing visual aesthetic and also encourages the user to dive deeper into sound design.

It was important to make sure parameters were within a couple of interactions to be accessed. Controls deemed to be most important would be permanently available at all times. To invite a user to produce and understand more complex sounds all modulation was presented front and centre rather than buried in sub menus.

ARGON8 + COBALT8

Product Design

These two 8 voice synthesiser families combined ultra-modern sound design with a sleek and compact anodised aluminium chassis. With a build quality that far exceeded the standards set by competitors at this price position.

Available in 37 key, 61 key and desktop formats, each design featured a near knob-per-function interface, intuitive modulation routing and informative feedback for the user on the OLED screen.

Modal Electronics Style Guide

Branding

The Modal Electronics Style Guide provides the brand guidelines and how these should be used to keep all content on brand.

002 + 008

Product Design

These were the first products I designed at Modal Electronics. These flagship instruments used the very best quality components and construction to create a one-of-a-kind musical instrument.

We wanted these synthesisers to look unique, avoiding the standard columns and rows that has been the norm in synthesiser design for the past 50 years. In addition to the 002 and 008, a 37 key 001 and 19″ rack versions 002R and 008R were also made.

Each synth featured a 5″ TFT full colour display, which needed to be programmed with an interpreted language created by the display manufacturer. I mastered the coding language and took it far beyond any other to draw waveforms, filter visuals and envelope graphs.