It has been a while but I finally got around to posting the second episode for my little side project!
In this episode, I received four letters in response to a letter of mine that was part statement and part question. Picking up where Habiba concluded the previous episode, I thought about the connection or disconnection of work and life. I asked Habiba to respond and invited three others to contribute their thoughts as well.
Note: This is episode will be released in two parts. In this first part, you’ll hear from Habiba and Mike. In Episode 02B, you’ll hear Nick and Crystal.
I don’t have much to say about it at this point, but wow that was quite a learning curve and a process to edit. In college I used to edit four different podcasts with my friends, but those were pretty linear, conversational types of podcasts. I’m trying to push myself with this personal project to go a step further and give it a more polished feel as well as a (hopefully) unique format.
Anywho — that’s all! I hope you check out the first episode and let me know you what you think. It’s a lot of musing about life and work, so I wouldn’t recommend multi-tasking during this one.
I’ve been thinking about starting up another podcast (I had four of them in back in College) and after setting a personal deadline of the end of January, I finally got it together!
You can learn more about the podcast from visiting the site or listening to the introductory episode, but basically it will have a different topic in each episode and feature opinions, perspectives, and thoughts from other people.
Since all the podcast stuff has its own home online, I’d like to briefly share my process for getting everything set up here:
1. Site & Hosting
This was the easiest step for me, because I already have hosting (thanks Dreamhost!) and a domain name set up. I might buy a unique domain name for the podcast, but that’s a bit premature right now. For the time being I set up a sub-domain (anything prefixing the main domain) as letters.robrogan.com.
If you don’t have any of the above, you’ll want to shop around for some affordable hosting and a domain name. Both of these should be super easy to find with Google and I don’t feel like writing a tutorial. ;)
2. Setting up the CMS
A CMS is yet another tech acronym for Content Management System. You’ll have lots of content—blogs, podcasts, etc.—and you’ll want to manage it. WordPress is by far the easiest to set up in my opinion so I’m using that.
With WordPress, you can quickly get it set up to distribute your podcast with a single plugin. There are a few to choose from but so far I recommend: Seriously Simple Podcast. What a godsend. Literally all I had to do was fill in the title of my show, author, description, and a few other pieces of info and it was good-to-go.
There are a few other details that I put into my WordPress, but you should set it up however you like. I’m trying to find a balance between practical, low-maintenance customization with just a dash of unique design. Using the plugin Easy Google Fonts I changed the typeface to a much softer sans-serif called Nunito. Note: I would not recommend using more than one or two web fonts as each font file increases the loading time for your site.
3. Making the Podcast
Well this point could be all sorts of things, but let’s just say that at some point you’ll have to sit down and record some audio, then edit the track, save it as a reasonably sized *.mp3 and upload it to your blog’s “Media” (if using WordPress).
In my case, I have a USB microphone (even a cheap one is a lot better than the built-in source) and I recorded with Adobe Audition. If you don’t have Adobe then Audacity is 100% free and gets the job done. Podcast editing a pretty big topic that is covered elsewhere better than I could here, so I’m not going to go into detail.
4. Album Art, Finishing Touches
People can agonize for hours—nay, days—trying to create the perfect artwork for their show. Right from the start I told myself that it will never be perfect, and it’s not going to ooze symbolism either. Erring on the side of simplicity, I just typed up the podcast name in a few fonts and colors and went from there.
I ended up using a strong serif font for the base, and then I masked-out most of an ornamented font, retaining just a few interesting characteristics, and overlayed that in a bright color. I think it has an interesting effect, so that’s good enough for me! Lastly, I needed something else to give it a bit of weight and not feel like a word just floating in the middle of a square. In addition to adding the two lines (reminiscent of lined paper), I added a thick border so that the light background didn’t get lost in the mix of a white web design or podcast app.
5. Now It Really Begins
So, setting up all of this was a bit of a chore, but in reality it’s just the beginning. I think the interesting challenge remains in creating each episode, especially if I require the participation of other people. I hope it turns into something great, but if not, it’s been a fun design and build process.
