Aaron Rester – Page 13

May 25, 2009January 2, 2018

Project Update: On the Table

My stepfather, Gary Allen, is a professional food writer/editor/eater (ok, he doesn’t technically get paid to eat, but he takes it at least as seriously as any paying gig). Last year, as a birthday gift, I offered to redesign his website. His original site (which he had built himself using Dreamweaver) had served him well enough over the years, but I felt that I could improve upon it and help him generate more leads, more jobs — and, of course, a bigger inheritance for myself.

I had three goals for the redesign of the site:

1) Give the site a more professional look without losing the personality and sense of humor of the original. While Gary had been a professional illustrator and print designer earlier in his career, he didn’t quite know how to make those skills translate onto the web. I felt that, if the web site was going to be his professional face, it needed a cosmetic overhaul. But I wanted to be sure that the look retained the quirkiness (and faint whiff of curmudgeon) that seemed to be part of what set him apart from his peers. As it turned out, this was actually the easiest part of the project. One of the advantages of having a close family member as a client is that you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of time getting to know them, their likes and dislikes, and so on. I initially pitched a “tongue-in-cheek antiquarian” approach, and Gary, while suggesting a few tweaks (the curve on his name, which really helped smooth out the header, was his idea), loved my first draft.

2) Refine the site’s information architecture to highlight Gary’s wide variety of skills. The original site contained a lot of information. Because it had grown up rather organically, it was not always clear how certain pages were related to others, and there was no consistent navigation. Since the the site’s primary purpose was to land Gary more jobs, I decided to focus the information architecture around the different skills he can brings to, ahem, the table. This way, the visitor is quickly made aware of what Gary can do for them and their food-related projects.

3) Make it as easy as possible for visitors to sign up for his newsletter. For years, Gary has sent out a weekly email featuring culinary quotes, links to food-related sites and other such miscellanea. With nearly 600 subscribers, this newsletter has been Gary’s primary promotional tool for many years; however, it was nearly impossible to find out how to sign up for it on his old site. So I wanted to make sure that there was a sign-up for the mailing list on every page. I also wanted to ensure that visitors could use subscribe an RSS feed of his updates, so I convinced him to turn the mailing list into a blog (“Just Served”) that is integrated seamlessly into the site. This gives him the advantage of consistently adding new content to the site (a plus for search engine optimization) as well as the ability to archive his weekly updates on the site.

Below are images of the original site (left) and post-redesign (right).

April 22, 2009January 2, 2018

For the Record (Store)

Last week was the second annual Record Store Day, the admirable goal of which is to get people to support their local record store. This past weekend, Sound Opinions devoted their show to interviews with some of the heavy hitters of independent music stores, including Chicago’s Reckless Records, the Bay Areas’s Amoeba Music, and Austin’s Waterloo Records. They also spent a great deal of time rhapsodizing over the nostalgic wonders of the record store that can not possibly be replicated by digital downloading.

I have to admit, it’s been a while since I bought anything in a record store (I get most of my music these days from eMusic). But I find it slightly bizarre that Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis spend much of their time applauding the changes in the music business that are leading to the collapse of the major labels’ outmoded business model, then spend an entire show lamenting the challenges wrought by those changes on the record stores’ outmoded business model.

The problem for record stores, I should note, is not that the internet has enabled people to illegally download music that they otherwise have bought in hard copy — studies indicate that those who download music illegally actually buy more music — but simply that no brick and mortar store can possibly offer the range of choices one finds on the web. If I want an album by a relatively obscure band like the Pine Hill Haints, I could get on the CTA, go to Reckless Records and try to find it… or I could get on the web and order a copy in the time it would take me to find my keys.

These days, services like iTunes make it almost effortless for independent bands to get their music online, while sites like CDBaby make it possible to get hard copies in the hands of individual consumers without the hassle of finding a distributor to get their music into record stores. The record store as middleman no longer has much reason to exist, unless it can find some way of adding value to the experience of shopping there (and I don’t consider being smirked at by a 25-year-old who thinks he’s the second coming of Lou Reed but still lives with his parents to be value added). Unfortunately, the future of the record store may very well be that rack by the cash register at Starbucks.

Now, don’t get me wrong — I have fond memories of teenage years spent browsing record stores and blowing my meager summer paychecks (I’m looking at you, Rhino Records in New Paltz), and I still enjoy having a physical copy of a cd, with album art and liner notes and so on. I would love for the Lost Cartographers‘ music to be able to help support independent record stores, but our label doesn’t have a distribution deal, and our fans will only be able to get our music online. And until someone starts a CDBaby-like business aimed at distributing physical product into physical stores (rather than just to individual consumers), record stores simply won’t be able to compete with the abundance of music available online.

March 24, 2009January 2, 2018

Moving Pictures

While I’ve always had a healthy (or maybe less unhealthy than some?) appreciation for comics and animation, I’ve never been an obsessive fan. Lately, however, it seems that these related media have been popping up in my consciousness quite often. First, my friend Charles gave me as a birthday gift the comic adaptations of two of the Indiana Jones movies, films which we were both deeply enamored with as kids (he found them at a flea market in Michigan). My friend Kim just wrote an excellent blog post about what The Watchmen loses in translation from paper to the big screen, and I listened to an engaging and hilarious conversation between cartoonists Marjane Satrapi (whose graphic novel Persepolis was turned into an excellent film) and Chris Ware, who designs incredibly elaborate comics that defy the standard conventions of movement across panels. Finally, I learned that Nina Paley, who created an amazing retelling of the Ramayana using Flash animation and old blues songs, will be appearing on campus at the University of Chicago to discuss her work.

There’s little I can say about the power of these media that hasn’t been said better by others, but it did make me realize that this a form of both graphic and narrative design to which I should be paying closer critical attention.

March 2, 2009January 2, 2018

Design Help Needed: Digital Signage

Anyone care to lend a poor blocked designer a hand? Last week it was brought to my attention that one of the Law School’s digital signs is a plasma screen (which, unlike the LCDs that display the signage throughout the rest of the building, carries a risk of burn-in from static images like the background image below (designed by Four Winds Interactive, the company that created the content management software we’re using for the signs).

Right now, the top left hand box features live TV, while the other boxes feature text that rotates periodically. The bottom bar contains a left-ward scrolling list of recent additions to our blogs, podcasts, etc. I need to figure out a way to keep the same color from being in the same place for longer than an hour. I’ve tried moving the various boxes around, but they’re all the same basic color. Changing the colors periodically might work, but will be ugly and inconsistent with our brand. Perhaps periodic “commercial” interruptions, where we expand some of our rotating content? Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

March 2, 2009January 2, 2018

Project Update: “Walk On” Album Cover

It’s been nearly as long in coming as “Chinese Democracy,” but The Lost Cartographers‘ debut album is about to be sent off to the manufacturers. The album features cover and disc design by yours truly, working off of a photo of a South Side food & liquor joint that I found on Flickr (the photographer generously offered use of the photo for the price of a complimentary CD.
The goal here was to come up with a design that was timeless, reflected the sound of the band, and — as our bassist Karl put it — would look awesome on a t-shirt.

January 31, 2009May 12, 2018

Concert Review: Frightened Rabbit

For Christmas this year, I was given a copy of the video game “Rock Band.” I guess the thrill is a little less vicarious for those of us who are actually in rock bands, but there is still something about strapping on that plastic guitar and pounding out the power chords to classic rock songs while the (virtual) crowd sings along. And aside from not having to carry your own gear, the best part of the game is the fans — they consistently go crazy, pumping their fists in the air and engaging in call-and-response choruses without a hint of self-consciousness. “Wow,” I thought the first time I noticed this, “when was the last time I went to a show where people had that much fun?”

At the Empty Bottle on Saturday, I got a pleasant reminder of what it’s like to be a fan at a show like that. Frightened Rabbit are four guys from Scotland who I first heard about last year on Sound Opinions; their album The Midnight Organ Fight was one of my favorite albums of 2008. In concert, they manage to be both achingly sincere and exceedingly funny, and give the impression that there is nowhere else they’d rather be, and nothing else they’d rather be doing — an attitude that is truly infectious to a crowd. Take a listen to this encore, for which lead singer Scott Hutchison came out with an acoustic guitar and perched atop a speaker, singing with no amplification. The crowd may not have been pumping their fists during this number, but they were certainly hanging on every word.

January 20, 2009January 2, 2018

Is Having Music Stolen Good for Bands?

As we near completion of our first album, my band has been discussing the best ways to a) get our album heard and b) get our album bought, in order to recoup the rather substantial investment we’ve made in it. There are some in the band who feel that we put a lot of hard work and cash into making this record, and that we should be adequately compensated by those who will enjoy the music.

I certainly understand that feeling, but my contention is that the more people who hear our music — whether they’ve paid for it or not — the more people will come to our shows and the more cds we’ll actually sell. So I’ve advocated things like streaming the whole thing online, licensing songs for free to other aspiring artists for use in their art, etc. My reasoning for this is that the value of recorded music as a product is — in economic terms — quickly approaching zero. It’s simple economics: supply and demand. The ease of digital recording and distribution have greatly increased the supply, while demand has generally stayed the same. And, in our case, demand is — at the moment — pretty much zero. The only way we make our musical valuable is by creating demand; the only we we create demand is by getting people to hear our music. And they won’t hear it if they have to pay for it — there’s just too much other music out there that they don’t have to pay for.

While I get most of my music via the subscription download service Emusic, I’ve definitely “stolen” music — burned friends’ cds, etc. — that I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend money on. Sometimes I listen to the album, am unimpressed, and forget about it; but if I like it I’m far more likely to buy the band’s next album or spend money on tickets to go see the band when they come through town. Sometimes I’ll even buy a copy of the album that I already got through illicit means so that I can have the physical artifact itself and provide additional support to the band. For example, I wasn’t sure that I would like Art Brut‘s first album, but having burned a copy from a friend, I discovered I loved their sound. I wound up buying both their second album as soon as it came out AND a copy of the “stolen” album, and have gone to see them live three times. That never would have happened unless I had been able to spend some quality time listening to the album, and I would never have gotten that quality time without “stealing” the album.

So I’m curious: am I an anomaly, or part of a larger trend? Do you steal music? If so, does it make you more or less likely to pay for future albums, and more or less likely to to go see a band in concert?

January 2, 2009January 2, 2018

My Top 5 Albums of 2008

While I downloaded or purchased physical copies of over 50 albums in 2008, only about 20% of them were actually released in 2008. So I really ought to be doing a list of the albums I listened to most during the year, but who am I to buck the conventions of rock criticism? (Except, you know, by being lazier and only choosing 5 albums.)
5. The Whigs, “Mission Control” – Drum-pounding, melodic, no-frills rock and roll, with just enough indie swagger to keep it interesting. I like the Hold Steady, but in a battle of the bar bands I think the Whigs would eat Neil Finn and company’s lunch.

4. Okkervil River, “The Stand Ins” – On paper, Okkervil River sounds like a cynical combination of some of the darlings of college radio’s last few years: the desperation-filled but enthusiastic crooning of Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, the relatively complex orch-pop arrangements of the Decemberists and Beirut, the dark humor and Americana-roots of Wilco. But somehow, this Austin band manages to make it all sound fresh and new.

3. Frightened Rabbit, “The Midnight Organ Fight” – With their frantic sound and plaintive vocals about heartbreak, these Glaswegians would probably be considered emo if they took themselves seriously — which, thankfully, they do not. Plus, they put on an amazing live show.

2. Murry Hammond, “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m on My Way” – As the bass player in the Old 97s, the laid-back Hammond contributes a few (usually excellent) songs to each of that band’s albums, but has often been outshined by charismatic lead singer Rhett Miller. On this solo disc, however, Murry really shines as an interpreter of gospel and old train songs. Many of these songs, especially the ones featuring just his lonesome voice and the drone of a harmonium, are just breath-takingly beautiful.

1. The Old 97’s, “Blame It On Gravity” – Hammond, Miller, lead guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Philip Peebles make a return to form after 2004’s muddily produced “Drag It Up.” In the accompanying DVD (which also features a driving tour with Miller of the band’s early days) producer Salim Nourallah says that his goal was to be able to capture the energy of the band’s live shows. He succeeded admirably, producing the band’s best album since 1997’s “Too Far to Care.”

December 17, 2008January 2, 2018

Building (Virtual) Community in the Big Easy

Last week I was lucky enough to be able to attend Do It With Drupal, a conference on the open source content management system (Drupal) that we’ll be adopting at the Law School in the near future. Aside from the chance to experience Abita Turbodog, great jazz at the Spotted Cat (and more great jazz across the street at D.B.A.), beignets at Cafe Dumond, absinthe, the earliest measurable snow ever in New Orleans (thanks to Avi Schwab for those photos), and the greatest snack food in history, I had the chance to rub elbows with some of the leaders in the Drupal movement, including the conference organizers, the Drupal consulting firm Lullabot.

Now, I’m not a programmer by trade or by inclination, so there was plenty of full-frontal nerdity at this conference that flew well over my head (I’m pretty sure at one point folks at one presentation were actually talking in PHP), though the introduction to the Views module by inventor Earl Miles was worth the price of admission to me. Most fascinating to me, though, were the talks about community building, particularly those by Brian Oberkirch and Lane Becker. They really got me thinking about how we can continue our mission to make the Law School’s site into an extension of the very distinct community it represents, to function as a virtual Green Lounge (the main gathering place at the school) where people can debate, argue, and laugh together.

What’s great about using Drupal as a tool for this task is that it is more than a content management system — it’s a community of people building a platform for building communities. Interaction and community are, as one presenter put it, “baked into the code.”