Category: MetaBrainz

Moving more quickly now, here is yet another round of logos!

Based on the last round of feedback, here is another round:

MusicBrainz_logos_13-05-15

If something isn’t being shown, you can assume that it isn’t really up for discussion anymore. (Except perhaps for color schemes, which this round may change.)

As usual, hit us with your comments, but do it soon as we’re iterating faster now.

Thanks!

Nearly final round of logos!

Most of the logo decisions have been made and we’re ironing out the last details of font placement. Open questions are:

  1. What text placement do we like?
  2. Which of the new AcousticBrainz logos we we like?
  3. For the large MusicBrainz logo, do we want to have the drop shadows?

MusicBrainz_logos_12-05-15_v2

As usual, let us know your thoughts on our blog!

(P.S. Some of the logos have some minor artifacts on them — we’re aware of them and we’ll fix those in the final logos)

Congratulations to our Summer of Code Students!

This year’s Summer of Code participants have been announced. For the MetaBrainz Foundation, we will have these four students hacking:

  • Roman Tsukanov (Gentlecat): After having made a name for himself last year, Roman returns to hack on AcousticBrainz for us this year. His project, that he is already a good ways into (surprise!), is to create a data set creator for AcousticBrainz. This project will allow anyone to create a data set that will be used to train the high level descriptors in AcousticBrainz. We’re hoping to crowd source this data set creation task in an effort bust open the walled gardens that normally contain this type of work/research.
  • Shadab Zafar (dufferzafar): Duffer is also a returning student for us. Last year he hacked on the Picard website and this year he will pick up where Roman left off working on CritiqueBrainz. He will work on the moderation interface and if there is time he will add support for reviewing places, events and works.
  • Ruchiranga Wickramasinghe (ruchiranga): Ruchiranga is new to MetaBrainz this year and will be working on a unified browse and search interface for MusicBrainz. Our current search facilities are still quite primitive and we’ve recently turned off our browsing features since they were effectively useless. This project aims to bring MusicBrainz browse and search into modern times.
  • Jeff Weeks (weeksio): Jeff is going to continue Mineo’s work on moving our search infrastructure over to SOLR. This project was started last year, but we knew that it might not be completed in the course of the summer. Unfortunately Mineo was not available to continue the work on the project, but we have high hopes that Jeff will move the project along, in hopes of us pushing it live towards the end of the summer.

I wanted to give a warm welcome and wish our students the best of luck for the summer! Now one final parting observation: This is the first time that we have an equal number of MusicBrainz projects to non-MusicBrainz projects. We’re finally growing the scope of efforts of the MetaBrainz Foundation!

Next round of logos

If you happen to have any comments on these new designs, please leave them!

I may form a small team of people to whittle down these designs into a final set of 1-3 logos. Please leave a comment if you’d be interested in being part of that team and have some time in the next few days. Or perhaps the feedback will be concrete enough for us to proceed; let’s see what the comments bring.

MusicBrainz_logos_23-04-15

UPDATE: Thanks to our friend Nicolas at Monkeydo.digital

Branding brief

My friend Niclas Ljungberg overheard me complain about how discombobulated and disconnected the MetaBrainz branding currently is. There is some cohesion between MusicBrainz and MetaBrainz, but almost none to the newer projects like CritiqueBrainz and AcousticBrainz. And very few people are fond of the current logos (plus, they haven’t aged very well). When Niclas heard this, he said: “I can help you!”.

Getting help in the area of marketing and business is rare, so I jumped at the chance. Niclas and I sat down where Niclas interviewed me about how all the pieces currently fit together and how I  think they should fit together. The deliverable from this conversation is a “Branding brief” (PDF). It talks about the current state of things, the goals and then gives context and some suggestions that a graphic designer can use to start designing cohesive logos and cohesive site designs that we can use for our sites. It does not propose any concrete actions — please keep that in mind when you read the brief.

The next step is to work with a designer to turn Niclas’ branding brief into some logo concepts that meet the outlined goals. At this point, we’re not exactly ready to take any concrete feedback from the community — I’m mostly sharing this to show that I’ve started a process to fix our current branding situation.

I’m very happy with how far things have come in this process and I wanted to give a heartfelt thanks to Nicals for donating his time to help us improve our overall presence on the net.

Thank you Niclas!

We’ve been accepted to Summer of Code!

I’m pleased to announce that we’ve been accepted to Google’s Summer of Code program for 2015!

If you’re an qualifying student who is interested in working on MusicBrainz or its related projects, check out our ideas page! If you are new to the MusicBrainz community (welcome!), we have also made a “getting started” page to get you going.

Welcoming Rassami Hok Ljungberg to the MetaBrainz Board of Directors

I’m pleased to announce that Rassami Hok Ljungberg of 2Pears, the organization that puts on the Music 4.5 seminar series, has joined the MetaBrainz Board of directors! Rassami is well connected in the music scene in Europe and has an extensive network of contacts in the music industry. Rassami has already been informally helping spread the word about MusicBrainz and its related projects for the past couple of years. I’m quite pleased that I get to work with her more formally now — welcome Rassami!

Rassami replaces outgoing board member Brian Zisk. Brian has been a board member for over 9 years and has done amazing things to help raise the visibility of MusicBrainz and to generally support our projects. Thank you for all of your support over the last 9 years, Brian!

I find it interesting and lovely that we’re swapping one amazingly connected maven who puts on music conferences for another amazingly connected maven who puts on music conferences. This is a conservation of mavens, while at the same time increasing the diversity of our board of directors.

Win-win! Thank you Brian and Rassami!