A new approach to transducer design is introduced in which a transducer is viewed as a continuum of infinitesimal, locally reacting elements. The transducer response is the coherent sum of the responses of the infinitesimal elements. Hence variations in transducer response characteristics will be produced by variations in the relative contribution of each element. It is thus possible to produce designed transducer characteristics through selection of a suitable local sensitivity shading function. This new approach is used to design a foil electret acoustic antenna which achieves with a single transducer direction characteristics similar to these of a linear microphone array. Five methods for accomplishing sensitivity variation in the electret microphone have been identified: variation of active width, variation of charge density, variation of actual airgap, variation of foil thickness, and variation of effective airgap. It is shown that compared to a linear microphone array, the single transducer acoustic antenna offers advantages of lower sensitivity to small construction errors, directional behavior over a wider frequency range, easier construction, and potentially higher signal to noise ratio.