AV1 Processor Information / 210 x 210 mm
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Edit. I meant the 102 of course, not the 180.
No subwoofer or centre speaker necessary, just DBL’s and SBL’s!
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thanks for posting this! my Aro is from 2006 and I now see that 1,545 was the list price then. this is about what I paid for it in 2015, except that mine came without a tonearm lead. AV Options here in the US was kind enough to arrange for the Naim factory to make me one (for $500); I’m told that my arm lead used the last remaining parts Naim had in stock.
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Finally… the elusive onslaught of the black boxes! Many thanks for finding this!
No worries, sheer luck really that I found it this morning while sorting through all the various designs. The Price List was done independently of my Product Guide design by naim themselves, hence the reason it looks different (font etc). I think that I grabbed a few extra file copies off a shelf at the factory on a visit and one of them had the price list tucked inside.
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Surprising what you find when not looking.
My original layout mock-up for Paul and Julian, with hand written text of the Naim Product Guide.
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A4 brochure spread - tonearm / armageddon / nait - English / German / French / Italian
The English version uses the font Melior for copy and Futura for the headings. I used Helvetica for the foreign language versions, and the German text was all ‘justified’ not ranged left like the others.
The nait photo (by Andy Cahill at Photoworks) was all done in camera by ‘painting with light’ during different exposures with the case slipped off to include the internals.
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Great layouts and photography, especially considering that the images were produced with real lighting, rather than the tricks available with PhotoShop, etc., today. The translations also read very well and are not simply literal renditions of the (presumably) English source text.
Was there a reason to use justified format for the German text? On average, German runs approx. 5% longer than English, so there isn’t usually a problem in fitting it into a layout designed originally for English. The romance languages tend to run 20 to 25% longer than English, which poses a much bigger challenge to fit them into a cramped layout designed for English text lengths.
For “aesthetic” reasons, people in sales or marketing seem to like justified text because it looks tidier. However, it often creates awkward spacing, which is not conducive to good legibility.
It is refreshing to see physical examples of good work kept in an archive. After the advent of PDF files, it was easier to keep everything just in digital format. In this digital age, I still prefer to read real books, rather than a transient representation on a screen.
David
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Hi David, thank you for your kind comments.
I think the reason for the German being justified was to make it a better fit perhaps without too much hyphenation with the longer words. I probably did some tests and found that I needed all of the spare space there was around the pictures! Also I didn’t want to reduce the type size but keep it consistent with the English - though I really can’t accurately recall. It might of been Paul, Julian or one of their close associates in Germany who suggested it, and I didn’t mind as it was still an enjoyable typographic challenge, and provided an interesting finished variation.
Yes, the English was created first then the others followed, each produced and originated by a chosen naim representative(s) from the country in question. I understand they were ‘allowed’ to tailor the translation for their region as long as ‘facts’ were kept intact.
By the way, I have a Spanish version too, but didn’t include that here. The images above are reductions from my larger scanned files to fit the upload / size limits of the Forum. When time allows, I plan to add some more here which might be of interest - today, I found some ‘interesting’ drawings in the naim loudspeaker manual I produced!
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For marketing material, that is by far the best approach as local sales and marketing will nearly always be better informed about their local market needs than even the best translator.
I look forward to seeing what else you have in your treasure chest.
David
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Loudspeaker Owners Manual - intro and credo / passive bi-amplified page
The plastic plugs / collars allowed a simple conversion if you wanted to use an additional amplifier.
I wonder how many intro and credo owners actually did this!
2001 must of been the final year of the SBL (discontinued and replaced by SL2 in 2002)
£2,360 active (without XPOs)
£2,540 passive (with PXOs)
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Somewhere round there, yes. My SBL’s are late 2001, so I imagine fairly close to the end of the production run before SL2 took over.
Was going to ask who did the photographs for the brochures back then. It did the trick as the brochures caught my eye long before I was able to afford any Naim gear. It’s a real challenge to make black boxes look interesting - Andy did a great job there. Product photography is definitely one the hardest things to do well.
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(Sharp intake of breath) How very dare you, those are not “just boxes”, those are the venerable SL2’s!! 
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