introducing a new way to enjoy music!

Mix your favourite music blogs with your social bookmarks, add streaming radio and folksonomy… integrate with new music web services plus the latest web trends and what do you get…?

What is it?

A fancy new website that collects your favourite music blogs, MP3s and net playlists into one universally accessible site. Read about music, discover new music, and listen to & download the latest songs based on your web-based bookmarks and the social bookmarks of thousands.

What does it do?

The use of a social bookmarking service allows you to bookmark practically any music service. You can save simple RSS or ATOM feeds from your favourite music blog, your XSPF playlists, even M3U radiostreams! The volume of music services is growing by the day, so you can aggregate all your favourite music from sites such as Imeem, IJig, The Hype Machine, BlogDigger or any blog from the thousands collected on el.bo.ws.

Furthermore, if you use last.fm webservices – which I highly recommend – you can save your recently played songs, find out which songs you already have in your collection and get advice on music that you would like but just haven’t yet heard.

How does it work?

The channels are saved in your favourite online social bookmark collection. If you don’t have one, look no further than Del.icio.us…

Simply save the RSS feed from your favourite music blog using the tag mp3blogfeed and your music-blog will be automatically available to everybody in the world on the home page with the most recent at the top. If you prefer to only see your own bookmarks, simply enter your del.icio.us username in the settings box, or if you are using another service, the correct RSS URL.

Playlists are automatically saved onto your hard disk as shared flash-cookies along with such useful things as volume and the last page you visited – dive back in from where you started!

Technical details

Written entirely from the ground up in actionscript 2 – no components, no templates.
Uses Shared Local Objects to save xspf playlist, volume and recent browsing history.
Features javascript data api to allow bookmarking and the emailing of blog links.
Uses your existing social bookmarking services – imports RSS, XML & OPML.
Intelligent caching of data and pre-empting of user desired information.

Features a scrolling data window with mousewheel input, inertia and variable speed scrolling.

Note : This project has been discontinued due to lack of time thanks to my new job as the head of flash at Last.fm!

Ajax Multimedia webshop!

Dripping with high-tech features, this new music label offers free previews, podcasts and chances to buy digital songs or vinyl! This one stop site will cater for all your eclectic dance needs. Don’t forget about the secret button!

This new music label that cut its teeth releasing party vinyl has gone digital with a fresh new music website and shop!

Play music whilst shopping for music, previewing any track live. That was the main objective… well that along with high quality music delivery using Web2.0 features such as podcasting and rss feeds.

With a stark graphic style by Vacant Design we needed some strong visual animations as cue points for actions. The Flash-based music player is autonomous and animated as it loads an artist’s playlist or swaps between songs. For those not of a nervous disposition, there is always the secret hyper mode (*top dial on the left) if you find it too tame.

Speaking of the music player, let me mention a few unique features:

• automatic saving of your volume preference for when you come visit us again
• communicates with the artists’ pages so that songs can be selected outside of the music player
• wholly animated to reflect the party music is playing with regards to the volume
• super secret party mode for fast processors

If you would like to attend any events, join the mailing list and check out the news and live pages.

Technical details

⊗ ActionScript 2.0 Custom music player code with intelligent internal music database.

⊗ Flash mx compatible with ActionScript animated GUI.

⊗ Music Player loads XML, RSS and XSPF playlists from the netcast.

⊗ Javascript html music controls and feedback – communicating between flash and html.

⊗ On-the-fly xpsf and xml (atom or RSS) playlist creation with scraped coverart

⊗ Based on the Opensource CMS WordPress. Yes really!

⊗ SEO super optimised with analytical software to determine most important records.

⊗ All Artists and channels have relevant RSS and ATOM feeds.

⊗ AJAX page requests into dynamic html.

⊗ Down-gradeable to simple html shop.

Extreme Graphics

As the leading purveyor in action sports media, I had to do the brand some justice. Being home to over 12 publications and having a need to show all the logos, this wallpaper piece was a challenge! By tessellating the brands and logos and setting them as classic gun metal on black, the pattern was used separately on Factory’s homepage..

I know it is a cliche, but cliches sell!

Seamless Pattern

New logo, old school software

Want music making to be instant and fun again? Try Med. As version 2 is finally nearing completion I have designer a new logo for the product. Made up of musical clefs, staves and punctuation, this is a super-musical logotype!

Future Retro Kitch

Designed as the main logo for the reborn ‘Box Office Poison’ band. Commissioned for the sleeve art, T-shirts and PR material, the logo is sultry and exotic, with just a cheeky dash of kitsch.
Subversively there is a hidden face. Can you find him???

A co-operative freelance umbrella group

Originally designed as a 3D logo by Jim Lundblad, the Shogun Logo is up for grabs as one of the latest bounties. Here is my submission, or one of my submissions. Read more to find out about the many variations of the theme.

Cover art for the Urban Beekeeper

Created for the cover of the debut EP, nothing reaches higher than a giraffe on stilts.

To emphasise this theme I set the giraffe on top of Mount Everest and on the inner sleeve is a pyramid of giraffe.. all on stilts!

Giraffe on Stilts is a highly customised photoshop composite – see below for a larger version with all the detail.

Lock in the cool

Designed as the logo for an ultra efficient cool box, the logo was embossed on the product and used on all the print material.

It was an interesting project, and I kept my thinking very literal and simple – an ice cube locked in a zipper! There were many incarnations for the client, everything from full colour 3D rendered cubes to abstract interlinking boxes.

The Client settled on the original clean style – which incidently was favourite anyway

Dj set – electrobreaks 2002

For this printed flyer for an electro night, I airbrushed together a Hajime style robot getting busy scratching on some robo decks.

As a composite of six images it was very difficult to unify the images whilst keeping it dark to match the criteria.

Overall the night was a great success, and since this flyer I have been involved with many more.

21st Century Tap dancing

Tap Dancing is finally coming back into style – thanks to the Beatbox Sneakers!

With Kick drums in your heels, snares under your toes and crash hats when you kick, every step becomes a sound.

With a whole arsenal of percussion located behind pressure sensors mounted around the shoes, click your heels together for a cow-bell, swivelling the ball of your foot scratches the sound…

these all-in-one drumkit shoes really do prove “you’re the greatest dancer”.