Polk Signature Series

Here is a new one from my team and I. Lead designer was Jeremy Savage who also posts on these boards. The team also designed the website, shot and edited the launch video, shot all of the product photography, designed the print ads, and designed all of the event materials for the press launch. Really complete project.

http://signature.polkaudio.com





Really great work. I love the colors, I feel like I haven’t seen that kind of brassy metal look on speakers before. The website flash video is cool too. It treats them like sculpture, as they should be.

I really like that you guys did the video with the real thing… and not another keyshot rendering a la apple. Great job. Around the 00:40 marks you can clearly see the editing: the rectangle around the speaker and the not quite black background. Easy to miss unless you have a bright display, but if you do it’s quite distracting.

We basically shot it in a garage so it turned out well. I cranked up the brightness on a display and caught the same box, but I haven’t seen it at normal brightness levels. Just for reference, what display are you using?

Thanks Ray. We have been using that specific pantone metallic for a couple of years on our soundbars and we were excited to bring it over into the component home theater space.

I am using a cheap acer IPS Display here, nothing fancy really. It is very noticable on that one and it’s using the “out of the box”-brightness level. When I view it on my iPhone for example it is a lot less visible, but still possible to see if you know where to look.

Thought you guys might like this video describing the design inspiration that the team was looking at when we worked on this line. Some great historical ads in it as well:

Nice little video Michael, product looks sharp. I like the power port concept, how significant is the 3 Db gain vs models without the power port?

It is noticeable in three ways:

    1. the speaker plays a lot lower, so in many 2.0 applications you really don’t need an external subwoofer unless you really want the extra thump.
  1. the transition from mid to low is much smoother so the sound blends more seamlessly

  2. sometimes other bass ports will make a whooshing sound when cranked up too loud. Instead of hearing the music you are hearing the air turbulence caused from the speaker being pushed. This eliminates that turbulence

It has the potential to add cost with additional molded and shaped parts so it has to be carefully designed to hit these price points.

In the studio with the original mood board and concept sketches.

" The team also designed the website, shot and edited the launch video, shot all of the product photography, designed the print ads, and designed all of the event materials for the press launch."

So great that your group was able to take ownership of this. At SU is this typically the domain of a marketing or other internal/external marketing design resource, with this body of work being something you wanted to bring internally?

We have battles over website/product photography/layout issues weekly with our marketing dept as they have the need and requirements all figured out, but lack a strong art direction POV.

I was able to realign all of those functions under me a couple of years ago. It is really starting to pay off now in my opinion. Right now I have two teams. 1) ID, which is what you would expect it to be. 2) Brand Design, which is every other design activity. On that team I have graphic designers, a photographer, a motion graphics designer, and a copy writer. So it becomes very efficient to have all of design aligned under one head and I report directly to the CEO.

We announced a new walnut finish today at CES. The front baffle is a matte graphite with the trim panel being a high gloss graphite that almost has a glass like feel. The drivers and tweeters stay the same titanium finish as the black. This new CMF really shows off the design language.










@Yo - Just picked up a set of the 5.1 Signatures for the new home theater…the ID sold these over the supposedly fantastic sounding but kind of chintzy looking Elac Debuts. I’ll probably never turn them up loud enough to be worthwhile so they better look good. :smiley:

Nice! Congrats Mike! If you feel comfortable, I’d love to see a picture of the set up.

In my listening experience the Elacs do sound great, but they tend to need the proper amplification (i.e. An expensive AVR) to really drive them and bring them to life. The Polks are designed to sound really good with a more realistically typical AVR… plus the ID :slight_smile:

Sure, in the process of finishing our basement as we speak. Will probably have it all together in another month or so. Found a great deal on an LG OLED set as well so excited to get it all together.

you might have seen the new subwoofers were just announced as well:

I’m proud of how those turned out. We were able to push that power port patent even further.






Nice! I was wondering why I couldn’t find the matching sub online…may wait to add that on as an Xmas gift then.

These are fantastic. The wood finish is not my thing, a bit too retro though I am sure it will appeal to a very large market in a sector suffering from a sort of design monoculture. Sometimes I talk about the design of home electronics and the first thing many people say is that it is too boxy and does not have character. These are a nice answer to that being more like furniture or jewelry for the home. If you can integrate Wifi, DAB and Bluray/DVD as well you will have a complete solution.