Michaelbox

While the name “Jon Phillips” may not be instantly rec­og­niz­able to you, if you attempt to keep your thumb on a gen­eral pulse of the web design com­mu­nity, chances are you’ve come across him already, or at least his online mag­a­zine Spyre Studios.

I recall the day that the idea of inter­view­ing him came up. Selene M. Bowlby and I were talk­ing and I went to my twit­ter list to see who I could inter­view next. Jon’s pro­file showed up and to me, approach­ing him felt like aim­ing for the stars. I men­tioned the idea to Selene and she was for it 100%, She sug­gested to men­tion her­self in my intro­duc­tion email since her and Jon had con­versed a lot in the past. Thank­fully, Jon agreed to par­tic­i­pate and here we are, about to get to know Jon Phillips.

On top of being a designer, you are also a musi­cian in your spare time. Have you been priv­i­leged to work with other musi­cians and help them with their brand­ing and marketing?

Jon Phillips: Actu­ally I haven’t. I try to keep design and music sep­a­rate as much as pos­si­ble. I’m usu­ally too involved with the music to be able to design some­thing with an out­side per­spec­tive. I did design my band’s blog, but it was a one shot thing and it felt like design­ing my own site — and we know design­ers often have trou­ble design­ing their own sites

The smart­phone mar­ket is hot­ter than really really really hot things. Which smart­phone are you? Has any­one approached you about design­ing for any apps?

Jon: I doubt the smart­phone mar­ket can be hot­ter than my apart­ment right now but once I get a new air con­di­tioner I’m sure it will be con­sid­ered hot again. I’ve never designed any apps and to be hon­est it’s not some­thing I’m par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in. For some rea­son the whole ‘apps’ mar­ket gives me a weird feel­ing of deja-vu — remem­ber when CDs were all the rage?

If you put a gun to my head and gave me a choice, I’d go for the iPhone (well I’d go with the iPhone even with­out the gun part).

Would you be inter­ested in join­ing a harmonica/kazoo/cowbell/wawa pedal exper­i­men­tal music group? We’re look­ing for new members.

Jon: Totally! That’s exactly what I’ve been look­ing for for years! Just tell me when and where and I’ll be there! (if you pro­vide the cow­bell I’ll explore the stu­dio space like there’s no tomorrow!)

Word­Press 3.0 was released in late June, with a plethora of new fea­tures. What ele­ments are still not part of a Word­Press default install that you’d love to see made default?

Jon: I’m very happy with all the new fea­tures in WP 3.0, but there are def­i­nitely some things I would’ve liked to see. Things like a built-in spam flag­ging sys­tem and a stats pack­age that offers more than the Word­Press one would have been nice. You can do so many thing with Word­Press with cus­tom tem­plates, func­tions and plug-ins, but those two things should really be in the WP core in my opinion.

Pre­tend for a moment that you were asked to gather, from your twit­ter list, a team for a record label’s web and mar­ket­ing depart­ment. Who would you tap on the shoul­der for the task?

Jon: I think the first per­son I would ask is Marc Davi­son (1000wattMarc (Twit­ter)), not only cause he’s a cool and pro­fes­sional guy but also because he knows a ton about the music busi­ness and he’s got years of expe­ri­ence in the music and web fields. I would also ask Tean Schultz (Schrecker (Twit­ter)) for sim­i­lar rea­sons, of course we’re in the same band, but he’s also a sick pro­ducer and songwriter.

I know I would also post some­thing on my Twit­ter feed ask­ing for rec­om­men­da­tions. That’s the beauty of a ser­vice like Twitter.

What are some of the best and worst uses of typog­ra­phy you have seen by musicians?

Jon: There’s a lot of extremely unread­able logo­types in the metal scene, espe­cially in the more obscure branches of metal. I can’t just pick one cause that wouldn’t be fair, but just to give you a taste of how unread­able it can get some­times, have a look around the Bru­tal Death Metal Logos blog.

As for great uses of typog­ra­phy, I really like John Mayer’s web­site, I think the typog­ra­phy there is pretty sweet. There’s also Jamie Cullum’s site, nice typog­ra­phy and a great min­i­mal­ist lay­out with good color con­trast. In case you didn’t know, I like sim­plic­ity and min­i­mal­ism

Rumor on the street is that you failed art class in the 4th grade. Did the teacher give you low grades due to you claim­ing all of your doo­dles were you play­ing with wingdings/webdings?

Jon: Haha, well I failed my art class mostly because I didn’t care too much about draw­ing and paint­ing and all that artsy stuff when I was that age. I didn’t get into design until I was much older. I got into music at around 12, and then years later started get­ting inter­ested in design.

Have you devised any dig­i­tal “Sub­scribe to me” pull­out cards to replace the ones from print magazines?

Jon: I have not, but it’s a great idea! Can I use it and give you credit?

What are some chal­lenges in run­ning a dig­i­tal mag­a­zine that peo­ple may not expect com­pared to a print mag­a­zine? Advantages?

Jon: I can’t really com­pare the two because I’ve never run a print mag­a­zine but I’m guess­ing that some advan­tages would be the very low start-up, oper­at­ing and main­te­nance costs of an online mag­a­zine com­pared to a print one. Of course run­ning an online mag­a­zine will incur some costs (in both time and money) such as host­ing, pay­ing writ­ers, main­te­nance, mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion, but at the end of the day it’s cheaper, eas­ier to get up and run­ning and reach­ing a large audi­ence may hap­pen sooner.

Have you expe­ri­enced an 80s heavy metal hair phase yet? If so, did you use bad client sto­ries to poof up your hair instead of Aqua Net ? If not, you now have an idea to achieve the effect.

Jon: I have! I kept the long hair for about 7 or 8 years and about 3 years ago I decided that phase was over (a bit tired of head bang­ing to heavy bands). As for Aqua Net, to be hon­est I had to Google it to find out it was hair spray cause I had no idea what it was. Then I found out there’s also a band called Aquanet — that really really made my day!

What is your posi­tion on the whole music piracy topic, being a musi­cian your­self? Is it per­son­ally a ben­e­fit for your band The Gods of Now or more a harm? Have you given any con­sid­er­a­tions to less restric­tive licenses like Cre­ative Commons?

Jon: Of course being a musi­cian, mak­ing money from CD sales is great, but I believe music should be free. The whole music indus­try is not even about the music any­more any­way! That’s prob­a­bly why a lot of the major labels are going belly up and you see more and more inde­pen­dent labels pop up every­where. A lot of bands and artists these days make more sell­ing t-shirts and stick­ers at shows and live events than sell­ing CDs.

I still believe it’s wrong to steal music though. If an artist chooses to sell his or her music, don’t steal it, buy the album instead. I sim­ply believe more artists should fol­low Radiohead’s and Trent Reznor’s steps and give the music away for free and find other means of mak­ing money.

Where can we find online, both your designer half as well as your musi­cian half? Also, any last thoughts?

Jon: You can find my designer’s half on SpyreStu­dios and my musician’s half on the TGON web­site

Bor­row­ing this word­ing from a very pop­u­lar topic. Team Pirates or Team Ninjas?

Jon: Def­i­nitely Pirates. Nin­jas don’t drink Whiskey, Pirates do.

What is the most inven­tive way you have mashed up your two trades, design and music?

Jon: Well I haven’t tried to mash the two together (like I said I like to keep them sep­a­rate). It could be inter­est­ing though.

What trends in design would you love to see fade away, never to return?

Jon: The glossy and mir­rored Web 2.0 logos. Oh, and design­ers call­ing them­selves rock­stars, nin­jas or gurus (pirates are ok). What about Porn­star Designer? That would be cool. (Editor’s note: said like a true rockstar)

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Like with all of my inter­views, I’d like to thank Jon for agree­ing to par­tic­i­pate and hope that he had fun answer­ing the hair­brained ques­tions I man­aged to come up with.