We recently bought a 2007 Toyota Highlander so I could cut my commute down from an hour and a half to 30 minutes.
It has a CD player, cassette player, and two built-in ashtrays. That’s about it.
I’m trying to lean into the limitations of this vehicle instead of avoiding them.
So I’ve been buying and listening to CDs.
I used to have a lot of CDs in a sweet iridescent CD wallet and my 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee had a six disc changer in the trunk. Once I got a newer car and a laptop without a CD/DVD slot I foolishly got rid of my CD collection.
Now I’m in the process of building it back up.
Here are my thoughts on rediscovering CDs (so far):
There are no subscriptions, there are no streaming platforms.
As long as I have the CD and a CD player I can listen to the CD until the CD breaks, the CD player breaks, or I die. This can never be taken away from me unless it’s ripped from my hands (or stolen out of my car). I’m going to start buying DVDs next and can’t wait to stop searching “Where to watch Grinch Jim Carrey” every winter and signing up for a free trial on another random streaming service because we’ll OWN Jim Carrey as the Grinch and we’ll watch it every year forever.
The artist intended for you to listen to the album, song after song, in that order. The album is structured that way for a reason. I love a good playlist, but there’s something about listening to an album front to back.
Looking through stacks of used CDs is a treasure hunt. As a family we frequently visit our local Finding Place (aka thrift store, used bookstore, goodwill) to see what treasures we can find. We took “finding place” from Tumble Leaf (IYKYK).
Also, finding something I wasn’t expecting while looking for something else brings me joy. I was looking for Hello Nasty by the Beastie Boys, but found Paul’s Boutique instead and discovered some great songs I’ve never heard before.
Animator & filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt on the difference between crate digging & streaming (via Kottke).
It takes time to switch between CDs. Not everything needs to be instant. Being forced to slow down is good sometimes.
(However, this is dangerous to do while driving.)
My options are not infinite. I currently have six CDs in my car so I’m limited to what I physically have with me. When I’m on my phone I can listen to basically anything ever recorded.
I think the history of music and design are closely related: album art, music videos, screen graphics, merch, websites, gig posters, AND the CD insert. It’s a shame we don’t really design for this specific thing anymore. It’s a fantastic little book tucked into the CD case.
I don’t know a ton about R.E.M. but I think they’re pretty cool now based solely on the design of the CD insert for Monster.
If you’re interested, I have an are.na channel where I collect album art I like and there’s a great newsletter dedicated to album art: The Art of Cover Art
Lyrics? No need to look them up! They’re printed right there in the CD insert.
I use Spotify for all my music and kinda forgot physical musics takes up space. Where am I going to put all these CDs?!
Do you own CDs? Maybe you’re young enough and have never owned a CD… Or maybe you’re old enough and grew up on vinyl…
Technology has moved so fast and the world has embraced it in stride so we have people that are close in age but have totally different experiences with technology. I’m fascinated by that.
I’ve been enjoying some other physical media and analog things recently, but I’ll get into that some other time.
ALSO
“Eat snacks with chopsticks to keep your hands clean.” Bekka Palmer’s rules for resourcefulness while making art.
Keep warm and brush up on your aspect ratios with a blanket from A24.
The Infinite Corpse is a chain comic by 558 artists.
I swear Japhy Riddle uses a different medium for every single animation (thanks Brandon).
Thank you for all the feedback on creating a website ecosystem! Here’s what you said:
Create subdomains of volk.design (like blog.volk.design) that point to other sites. I tested this with my Squarespace site and a google doc and it works! I think I could combine this with some other suggestions to get a pretty good setup.
Host static sites on GitHub. I’m unfamiliar with GitHub, but it seems like a good option (especially with templates).
Use Netlify for hosting and Replit for building and hosting. I have never used these things, but I’ll be looking into them.
Adobe Portfolio, Carrd, and Notion. I’ve played around with each of these a little bit, but definitely worth looking into again.
Use micro.blog
Use Framer and Figma to build something from scratch.
This will be a thing I work on slowly and I’ll keep you updated on my progress. More feedback or ideas are always welcome!
*points at me* “Look at this big fella.”
👋 M, C, K & O
I’ve got about 1000 cds collected over 30ish years. A couple of years ago I resorted them by spine colour, blacks and blue and red etc.. looks great but I can never find what I’m looking for but I will end up with what I need…curating a road trip is just a matter of picking a colour…
I loved reading your thoughts about buying CDs, especially the ownership details. I've certainly noticed that we are now dealing with commercials for every streaming channel and have really felt the desire to return to DVDs. I've also decided to try out an actual/physical newspaper subscription service to gather news. I'm a few weeks into just having the NYT Sunday edition delivered (it's enough information to last a week, if not more). I have already really started to enjoy it and feel much more intentional while reading.