If you’ve enjoyed the website, please accept my apologies. I’m in two minds whether to continue with the site or not. My reasons are as follows:
- - Hard Format is such a strange pastime! It involves sourcing designs (I get sent some work by labels and designers, but not enough), photographing them, post-processing and setting up each weekly post (uploading the images, finding music samples, typing out the credits and writing about the design). It’s pretty repetitious and though I’m proud of the website and think it makes for a valuable/unusual/eccentric/interesting resource, I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing over and over since April 2007…
- - My day job is as a web manager for a large art college so there’s overlap of the mundane tasks
- - The site is up and down like a yoyo on Slicehost which is frustrating, but moving to a new host is quite a hassle
- - I’ve never managed to get the site mentioned in the places where I think it would have a chance of gaining a bigger audience, specifically The Guardian and The Wire magazine
- - I’m as huge a fan as ever of an ever-growing range of music, but as the result of the ending of a long-term relationship I’m also broke and unable to keep buying records like I used to
- - I’m increasingly passionate about my photography which takes up much of my spare time.
I still believe in the importance of physical media, even if it’s becoming a niche area. I’m not a big fan of the ever-growing number of expensive special editions. I think the work of Second Language and Kraftwerk best represent the twin poles of what I love about music design.
All of the above doesn’t mean that Hard Format is over. I’m still thinking about it. I have a few more posts to publish. In the meantime, I suggest you follow the site on Twitter/RSS/Facebook so you’ll get a notification of new posts. You should also read DJ Food’s blog and { feuilleton }, both great resources for intelligent and passionate commentary on visual matters, frequently music-related.
Thank you for reading.
Thanks to you for your wonderful work! It’s made me discover (and sometimes rediscover) some beautiful sleeves and records.
I’ll keep your blog in my RSS strzam.
Colin,
Been following Hard Format on for a while. I love it. You do amazing work. It would be sad to see such a valuable resource disappear. Of course I appreciate it is a labour of love and you give a lot for very little return. Therefore I completely understand all the reasons you lay out above for thinking of taking a break. Best I can do is let you know how much I love what you are doing here and offer my support for the future.
Best,
Stewart
I love the site and have thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful design of the music you highlighted. For the musicians and the designers including yourself its all about the labor of love. Most of these albums don’t have a voice without people like you. So I applaud all the hard work you put into the site and understand your reasoning. Maybe a break, will bring back the fire. As a graphic design student I get inspired by some of the work I seen here. I thank you for not just disappearing.
Music Design—Hear with your eyes.
Cheers,
Mike
Whatever you decide, good luck!
I really enjoyed your work here.
Colin, I think your site is excellent (I just discovered it today) and thanks for posting the video made for Mark Fry and The A-Lords… I noticed Mark here and also Christer Hennix, who is another dear friend from an era when we all lived in Woodstock, New York and Christer was a student of Pran Nath… good luck with your photography.
I’ve been subscribing to the site for a while now. Thank you for all of your hard work.
Thanks for the mention Colin, it’s a shame to see this entry as the site is, as said above, an amazing resource of design. I know how much effort you put in to taking your own pictures which seems to be a rarity in our cut and paste world. Maybe rest is a good idea and you’ll drift back into it when the time is right. I know the site is highly regarded by several people in the industry as a benchmark for quality design.
Sad news – I love the site
Thank you for all the great work – Some of the great music and sleeveart I’ve only discovered here and ordered it from labels or musicians.
Hi_5
Hello,
I have Hard format in My Google Reader.
Discovered a lot of good music and super music objects: Thank you so much for this.
And plz consider to continue.
Good luck
Thanks for all your kind comments, they’re really appreciated. As I said, I have a few posts still to publish and having finally managed to do the first of those, I’m wondering whether I might be able to build up momentum again. I will see how things go. Thanks again.
Thanks for putting together this web site. It is beautiful and significant in so many ways. Such a great exhibition and documentation of magical intersections between design and music. I appreciate all of the hard work you’ve done…it’s really something special.
Hi Colin
Sad to hear you’re news.. it’s hard work keeping these going and you have my sympathy and understanding. Best of luck with whatever you decide and thanks for the enjoyment I’ve had from your wonderful site over the last year or so.
Joe Blogs
i was wondering what had happened and i am sorry that you are going through a hard patch. whatever your decision, i would like to thank you for all your hard work and for introducing me to such wonderful and eclectic music, art + design. without your site, i would never have discovered richard skelton, the hardy tree, klima, second language or auris apothecary… thanks again and i do hope you do decide to keep hardformat alive… for selfish reasons. all the best!
Inspiring site, only a month after this post you got a mention on The Wire: http://thewire.co.uk/articles/8113/
That’s how I found it!
Hello Sam, welcome! Aye, the site was mentioned – not by The Wire, but by a kind reader. Hard Format’s nearly 5 years old and they’ve never seen fit to give it a mention themselves.
That is a shame, but I’m pleased you’re still posting. An inspiring resource.
discovered this site yesterday throught roa who is the artist who painted the airecords album with the rat. i spend a while surfing your site and it’s fantastic! i’m hopefully making a vinyl of my own and was thinking about how the cover should look like. this site is a big inspiration to want to create something beautiful. thanks!