I also designed a center label fe the record. This ended up being really annoying because it did it myself on illustrator ad didn’t write a script for it. This meant that the concept was a bit damaged, but perhaps in the rendering of a different kind of information a human hand is legit. All the same the strange considerations of the record label conventions and the world this record is for made the design quite hard. The track information needs to be on one side for quick reference. The world that consumes these records can quickly understand what is happening on the record, where otters would be baffled by the information layout. Anyhow the outcome is strong and works fine. What I want. I also ended up using a logo Carla made the other day for the record label logo, she didn’t even know I was thinking of calling it Good Vibes Records!!!

Then I printed in the studio. The screen didn’t work first say but the next it was all fine. The gradients were inspired by graphic equalizers and then also the purple drank of southern rap music.

Everyone keeps saying that they like it which is very nice and I’m very happy with the outcome. Rad.

http://www.says-it.com/record/

http://mediawiki.gianticebox.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page

I now have a mediawiki but it seems too much like a normal wiki to be of any use. I think that the wiki software is not well suited to the open source website. Wiki softwares seem to work best for information gathered onto a single source and not for the kind of  gathering of people and ideas I wish to achieve.

but it takes ages to render and to fill the box would require the track to loop a long time.

So I tried it small and scaled it up pixelation style:

looks pretty freaking cool. But perhaps to much of a barcode. Might be fun to try and read with a barcode scanner. Still worth a try, and I’ll render a size somewhere in between soon…

And here are a load of things from this eve:

That is a pretty rought mock up of how I imagine the open source graphic design website to look. Clearly there are some design issues in the mock up, and plenty of pages like posting pages and register pages to be created, but that shows a pretty clear way of making the website work.

Places that might need futher conceptual work are:

• The main front page. it shows just a list of projects whereas some imagry might be nice. However I do think that on many levels the design site doesn’t need to appeal to those who are not previously interested in the concept. A way of browsing the projects on the site is pretty imporant, but more so for the members than visitors.
• The project pages content needs to be slightly better separated to make it clearer.
• The user/member system. How much social network should be involved? Should there be a internal message system or just rely on emails sent thru the website to users emails addresses?
• Hosting content on the actual website, such as thumbnails for projects, project resources, and the like.
• The level of public private. Interestingly for an open source website I am feeling like I want quite a lot of the site to only be open to registered members. While the open source is about openness, I don’t want people to abuse the system. I think that having to register would put off some people who might just take from the system.

I also am being very sure to realise that this site [if i build it for the deadline] will be a very rough version of something. However of course because it is open source that almost makes more sense than not; the site will need to be improved after it is created. Because I am being careful to remember this I don’t need to worry too much about implimenting complicated features such as internal messaging or rss feeds of changelogs etc.

This is the index page for a logged in user. Here they will see all the projects they belong to listed with recent changelog posts and a link to the project. [In time projects should be tagged and then it could have a possible interests section at the bottom or similar]

This is the project page. This would have all the changelog posts and resources as well as giving a description and the list of members/users on the project.

This is the settings page. I think at first the site won’t have too many options for user details. I also want to start off using real first names not usernames, but also include small avatars. I think that using first names might make the site feel more professional, but I guess in time people might add that feature or just use the First Name field for a username. No matter…

I think at first I am just going to make the site use links to externally hosted resources and also external images for avatars. That way I won’t have to worry too much about coding things for file upload and treatment. The website will mainly be users posting different kinds of content that is pulled together into the project pages. I think I should try and get it working a while before hand in and encourage other students to use it so that the site has some content.

I’m not totally sure the main index page. I think it will probably just have to be a list of most recent projects by title and description. Perhaps a lot of user avatars too…