Cassiopeia built polyphonic synthesisers in Turin from 1983 until the factory closed in 1991. The name was bought back and reissued in 2026. This identity is not 1983: it is 1983 as 2026 remembers it, which is the only honest way to draw this style. One horizon, one vanishing point, one sun: the height of that sun is a single number from which every colour in the system is computed.
Cassiopeia is a W of five stars, the one constellation a non-astronomer can find. Drawn at a fixed angle it is the mark; the wordmark sits under it, letterspaced to the same width. Nothing else is needed and nothing else is permitted.
Constellation over word · tracking set so the two match in width at every size
Move the sun. The horizon stays where it is, the vanishing point stays where it is, and every colour in the system (sky, grid, glow, the two ends of the sun) is computed from the altitude of that sun. Nobody picks a colour by hand.
Horizon fixed at 62% · vanishing point on the centre line
A single scalar, 0 to 24. Everything below is derived from it.
Sky, sky, grid, glow, sun, sun
The same function, called four times. These are the four hours the catalogue is allowed to use, one per product family, so a range of instruments is a range of times of day rather than a range of taste.
Michroma for anything that names the company or the instrument: wide, geometric, and set at heavy tracking, as the fascia engravers set it. Chakra Petch for everything a person actually has to read.
This is the whole discipline of the identity. Advertising is drawn in perspective, because it is selling a place. The instrument is drawn dead flat, in plan, because a musician has to find a knob in a dark room. The two never borrow from each other.
CS-5 fascia · orthographic, matte, no bevel, no gradient
Five pieces, one geometry. Wherever there is a horizon it is at 62%, the vanishing point is on the centre line, and the colours come from the hour that product family owns.
Two oscillators a voice, one filter board, and a chorus you cannot switch off. Reissued from the 1983 drawings.
Catalogue page · 19:40, the polysynth hour
Carton end panel · one colour on kraft
Merchandise · 03:20, the drum machine hour
Manual cover · the horizon cropped to a footer band
Eight poles, two cabinets, no voltage control. It does one thing.
Web hero · 12:00, the filter bank hour
Module faceplates · 07:40, the modular hour
The pictures are romantic. The words are not. Everything written about an instrument is a specification a technician could check, because the one thing that stops this style becoming a mood board is a maker who knows what is inside the box.
Two oscillators a voice. Six voices. One filter board.
Countable. A dealer can repeat it without learning it.A dreamlike analogue journey into infinite sonic possibility.
Nothing in it can be true or false, so nobody believes it.Reissued from the 1983 drawings. Revision B boards are supported.
Nostalgia stated as a fact about parts, not a feeling.Recapture the lost magic of a golden age of synthesis.
Sells the decade rather than the instrument.This is the most imitated look of the last decade, so almost every failure is someone reaching for the surface of it. Four we have had to refuse, and the last is the one that kills it.
The obvious request, and the first one we refuse. A photograph brings its own light and its own depth, so the horizon stops being the world the instrument is in and becomes a backdrop hung behind it. Everything here is drawn, including the instruments.
It is the prettiest thing in the system and it fits a circular avatar, so it gets lifted out and put where the W belongs. But the sun changes with the hour and the mark cannot: an identity whose logo is a different colour each time is not an identity.
Chromatic fringing applied to the wordmark because the style is expected to have it. There is no signal being degraded here, so it is a costume. The geometry is the idea; the artefacts are not.
This is the one that kills it. The hour belongs to the product family, not to the launch: give three families the sunset because sunset photographs well and the colour no longer tells anyone which instrument they are looking at. The system computes every colour from one number, and that number is the only decision anybody is allowed to make by hand.
Cassiopeia Instruments is invented, built as a portfolio exercise in retro-futurism. Turin and its instrument-making trade are real; this company, its models, dates and serial numbers are not. The work is after Syd Mead's production paintings, the Italian and Japanese synthesiser catalogues of the early 1980s, and the sleeve design of that decade. Those designers are credited as influences only. Part of the One Rule Each series.
One horizon at 62%. One vanishing point on the centre line. One sun, whose hour computes every colour in the system.