David Emery Online

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

It is inevitable, I guess, that every now and again you get a little wrapped up in a project almost to it’s – and your – detriment. You go on and on about it until everyone’s stopped listening to you.

It’s like the boy who cried wolf, except with good things.

I feel like I’ve rather deftly barrelled straight through that boundary with The Big Pink already, but yet here I am; back again, chattering on about them again. Quite frankly it almost makes me bored of them; overhyped even within the confines of this little corner of the internet.

Alas, that’s hardly going to stop me (especially when I’ve taken the photo that accompanies this post already).

The reason for this latest telegram from the front is that finally you can hear what I’ve been going on about, as we’ve put up a full stream of the album on the band’s site which is also embedable via this handy widget:

Velvet is probably my song of...

In defence of the 2012 logo, 2 years on

It’s just over 2 years since the London 2012 Olympic logo was launched to such derision. Being a prominent design blogger I wrote about it back then. I’ve just reread that post and I agree with everything I said. Which is reassuring.

Actually I think I agree even more. I like the logo even more.

I liked the logo when it was announced, and I still like the logo. It’s far better then this one, at the very least:

Hands-On with the Spotify iPhone App

We’ve been testing Spotify’s iPhone app since last week for this U.S. exclusive. Based on that, our prediction that it could generate big profits for Spotify — and for an ailing music industry — appears to be on the money. This slick app grants instant access to over six million on-demand tracks and your customized Spotify playlists, and it sounds great even on planes, subways, and other places where you can’t get a decent cell signal thanks to an offline playback feature.

Nothing unexpected here, but it looks like it works and works well, although the offline caching stuff looks a little over complicated. Also, I still don’t believe that they haven’t added a way of browsing the catalogue yet – you can still only search, and I can never think of the right thing to search for…

Update: There’s a video of it in action up now as well:

Print Isn't Dead

A couple of months ago the lovely folk from .net magazine dropped me a line and asked if I’d like to take part in their ‘build-off’, which this month was on unsigned bands websites. Sure enough, I said yes and if you turn to page 95 of the current issue you’ll be able to see my ugly mug.

The idea behind the build-off is that they get 3 people to do a design for a brief, and expound upon the reasons behind all their choices. I thought it might be useful to share my solution with you lot as well – hopefully it might be useful for someone.

Gone are the days where if you were an unsigned band it was good enough just to have a MySpace page. Sure, they’re still useful but as more and more people migrate to different social networks (like Facebook and Twitter) having a decent website that acts as a ‘hub’ into all your disparate online presences makes ever increasing sense.

The key focus of the design – for the fictional band ‘The Electric’ – is to get information across as quickly as possible. You’re competing against a flood of other bands vying for attention,...

The Big Pink - Dominos

We’ve just put up the forthcoming single by the Big Pink up as a free download on their website – also below for your listening pleasure:

I think I’ve gone on about them enough, now.

Blur - T in the Park 2009 by Danny North

I heard the bands security telling all the togs he was going to run in to the crowd 2nd song, so I set the fisheye to manual focus, focused on infinity (everything in focus from 2.5 feet) and gauged an approximate exposure – which ended up being bang on…

Not only is this a great photo (although I’m not a massive fan of the fisheye look), but click through and have a read of the description of how he took it – inspiring stuff. Must work on that manual focus lark…

Photo by Danny North

A Ruby Retort [not a report] from 15 year old Chantelle...

On music:
I never buy CDs, I have a CD collection from when I was younger, but I can’t even remember the last time I bought a CD, it was from ages ago. I don’t use Spotify, I don’t know what it is at all, never heard of it. I use Limewire, to download all my music , though I have sometimes got music off of iTunes, though that’s just when I had the vouchers. I don’t do music streaming, what is it? It sounds interesting especially if it’s free, and it would be interesting… It has to go on my iPod though, if not then no! Actually I dunno, I’d probably use both… Actually no I wouldn’t use Spotify if it didn’t go on my iPod.

It’s going to be very interesting when Spotify gets its mobile app out the door (although I’m sure the kids will bulk at the monthly subscription it’ll need), as there’s a whole generation now that not only hasn’t really ever bought CDs, they’re not too interested in music ownership full stop.

40 Years

Web fonts — where are we?

With all the talk about web fonts, I think it’s time I tried to outline the present situation. I’ve not attempted to do so before, owing to the complexity of some of the material, and the speed at which things are moving.

A very useful writeup of the current state of using embedded fonts in web pages. The webfont proposal sounds interesting to me, although I don’t really see what it’s adding on a practical note as it looks straight forward enough to tamper with the metadata. On a pragmatic note though; if that’s what the foundries want we should give it to them, so hopefully we can start making some progress.

I wonder if they’ve considered watermarking as an alternate solution – I imagine that with the kind of data that makes up a OpenType font file it would be fairly easy to embed enough information – without visibly altering the font – to make tracing who has a licence for that particular file (and what sites it’s licensed for) simple. Most of the benefits of .webfont, without having to implement a new format.

Also, it’s interesting they mention that EOT is as good as dead, while simultaneously hyping up TypeKit – I’m fairly sure that they feed IE EOT versions of their fonts…

Finally, A New Face For Topspin

(From the comments): “Are we supposed to believe that a sales widget with data capture is somehow ground-breaking? Granted, this is a great tool for indie musicians, but what TopSpin doesn’t talk much about is the high distribution fee they take when they don’t handle any physical fulfillment like Music Today et al, and there are plenty of other great solutions out there to sell your music digitally and direct market to fans. The data they capture isn’t leaps and bounds beyond what other great e-commerce innovators are doing, and as anyone who has dealt with widgets before knows, there is no viral magic that happens unless the act is great and is doing a decidedly low-tech activity of personally being in front of their fans performing their art. The problem I have with TopSpin supporters is that they’re heralding this company as the future when it’s really just following best practices other industries are familiar with. Until the music business catches up with others in its knowledge of how to leverage technology, companies like this can come in and sell a bill of goods to a lot of people.”

Quoted for truth. Nice response by Ian from Topspin further down as well.