Creative Portfolio — Case 03
Keyfax
/Yamaha
One client, twenty-five years, dozens of launches.
The industry sold specs
A $2,000 workstation
is not a purchase.
It is a commitment.
Spec sheets told a buyer what the instrument had. Polyphony counts, voice architecture, sample memory. Nothing told him what his life with it would look like, and nothing helped him after the box was open.
Yamaha knew. A manager in the international music division called Keyfax directly, because the corporate process could not produce what the product needed. The launch needed a voice musicians would believe, and that voice had to live outside corporate control to exist at all. We were given free rein.
Julian Colbeck ran Keyfax and had spent a decade reviewing keyboards. He knew the instruments cold and he had the relationships. What he needed was someone who could turn concepts into shipped products.
2001 — 2002
The
Work
We did not build a product page. We built the world the instrument lived in.
The corporate default was the spec sheet. We did the opposite: real people talking to real people about how to actually use the equipment. Built the way a player thinks, not the way a catalogue is organised. The community responded to that, and the free rein is what made it possible.
- The motivator sites. Built for owners, not shoppers. Support, depth, and a reason to come back after the sale.
- Pro user video interviews. Session artists showing how they actually used the Motif. Proof from the field.
- MIDI packs. Content that made the instrument more useful the day it arrived.
- Apparel. Motif shirts, numbered to the 6, 7, and 8. An owner could wear the thing he played.
The Motif ecosystem. Support, community, content, and merchandise around a single product line.
The
Range
The first job was keyfax.com itself. A basic mid-90s site rebuilt as a full-colour, fully animated experience. Everything that followed came from that one job.
Across the next two decades Julian brought concepts and I built them out. Tenori-on: product site, navigation, community pages, forum, downloads, events, print. The Alan Parsons Art & Science of Sound Recording site and its Abbey Road workshop promotion. Musicians Guild. MIDI Samples, site and packaging.
Different products, different decades, different media. One working relationship.
Tenori-on, Alan Parsons, Musicians Guild, MIDI Samples. 2001 to present.
Years of one relationship
25yrs
Most creative relationships last a single campaign. This one produced dozens across two decades, because every time Julian had a new concept he brought it to me to work out.
2001 — present
Dozens
Launches across two decades
01
Client who keeps coming back
$6M
Motif launch over Yamaha’s sales forecast, 2002 — their figure
The
System
The approach stayed the same across every project. Build the world around the product, not just the page for it. Give the owner a reason to come back after the sale. Make the content that makes the thing more useful. Then hand the client something they can keep running without me.
Yamaha reached outside its own process because that process could not produce a voice musicians would believe. Mad Catz did the same thing eleven years later, for the same reason.
Yamaha in 2001. Mad Catz in 2012. Saéa now. Different products, different channels, and the same problem to solve each time.
Scope · Creative direction · art direction · web · print · product launch · packaging · apparel · video series
