PH podcast artwork

[shehuphd]

The PH podcast needs artwork for different platforms, ideally square (1:1 ratio). Some pod-art design tips here. @lottiecoxon adding this to the Design project for triage. Thanks!

[corywatilo]

I searched our GitHub org but didn’t find much context about the podcast. Can you provide a little more info so we can make sure we nail this on round one?

• Does the podcast have a name?
• Any text/details we definitely want to have on the artwork?
• What’s the frequency?
• Typical topics or common themes between episodes
• Who’s on the podcast (host, recurring guests, or if we have different guests for each episode)

[shehuphd]

@corywatilo For now it'll just be a place to put the audio versions of our vlogs for those who'd prefer to listen rather than watch (you know, like country-crossing RV owners who need to keep their eyes on the road).

Name ideas:

• [ ] The Whole Hog
• [ ] Open Sauce
• [ ] [open to new name ideas]

Frequency: Based on the vlogs, which is about 2-4 a month (until we ramp up production).

Themes/Topics: Building an open-source company, lessons we've learned, blueprints for others to follow.

Guests: Internal PH people for now, external industry personalities later.

Host: Me.

Text to add to the poster(s): Depends on what name we go with, but the tagline can be "Building an open-source startup."

@jamesefhawkins @joethreepwood anything else to add?

[joethreepwood]

@shehuphd If it's just going to be a straight audio feed of the vlogs I don't think there's much to add right now, other than probably keeping the art consistent with Vlog art.

In time, we should think about the podcasts' value prop and how it can be distinct from videos and blogs, so that we're encouraging people to engage us on multiple channels. If we 1:1 replicate the same content on all three channels we'll only drive people to engage us on one. Would love to discuss that, but I think focus right now is correctly on maximising asset usage and getting on more channels.

On the tagline: I would change this to "How we built an open-source start-up" so that it's inclusive and clear that it's an inside story. I would also recommend not adding the tagline to the poster - it won't be very legible when shrunk down to a Spotify album-art size or when viewed on a phone.

[joethreepwood]

Just going to throw out some very rapidly brainstormed, very bad podcast title ideas

• The Hogcast
• From Start-up To Finish
• YCombinator & Beyond
• Radical Transparency
• The HogPost

Another way to go may be if we introduce something to guide the format? E.g. PostHog Hour

[mariusandra]

+1 for "The Hogcast"

[lottiecoxon]

seeing as this will probably be typographical can we settle on a name soon please? ( I like 'the whole hog' as it sounds more like a podcast to me)

[joethreepwood]

Don't let me name suggestions be a blocker here @shehuphd -- happy for the show to be called whatever you feel best.

[shehuphd]

I'm partial to 'Open Sauce' - we're an open source company revealing the secret sauce to our success (and failures).

Alternatively, to Joe's point about eventually splitting the two channels into separate entities tod rive traffic to both, we can name the podcast and vlog 'The Whole Hog' and 'Open Sauce', respectively.

[lottiecoxon]

I like this idea a lot @shehuphd - I can draw up some fun ideas but have a few things to get out of the way first!

[shehuphd]

@lottiecoxon - Sure, we decided on Open Sauce for the name.

[corywatilo]

Related: I (unsolicitedly) posted a naming poll yesterday.

Is Open Sauce supposed to be a takeoff on Open Source? If so, just not sure it's totally clear...

[lottiecoxon]

I think it depends on the artwork going with it - for instance (first idea that comes to mind) we could do a bowl of noodles with sriracha sauce pouring over it - but instead of liquid it could be code and the bottle could be PostHog themed. and instead of noddles the bowl could be filled with computers, graphs, wires etc - it could be fun and clever all at the same time ( ill mock up some drawings for both and see what people are drawn to/ understand

[shehuphd]

@corywatilo that's correct. @lottiecoxon spot on, also what I had in mind - and I agree that a mockup might help people understand the concept better.

[mariusandra]

@shehuphd I believe what Cory is asking is: "why is the name Open Sauce when everyone chose something else in the poll?"

Not saying I disagree, just want to get the context as much as the next person.

[joethreepwood]

@shehuphd I believe what Cory is asking is: "why is the name Open Sauce when everyone chose something else in the poll?"

Not saying I disagree, just want to get the context as much as the next person.

It is worth pointing out that Open Sauce wasn't an option in the poll, so couldn't have been chosen. I personally get and like the Open Sauce pun, so encouraged @shehuphd to make the decision as he's leading the podcast and Hogcast (which was my suggestion) was an ad hoc one.

[lottiecoxon]

Right so open source i actually really like as a concept + the whole hog version is a hedgehog going all the way to the top of a mountain following a path - it captures the meaning behind the phrase as well as includes our journey and the hedgehog element which is fun.

Obviously just ideas at the moment so take these with a pinch of salt

[shehuphd]

@corywatilo / @joethreepwood - +1 on missing Open Sauce option in the poll. We can run another one based on the mockups for these two options and pick the winner.

@lottiecoxon For simplicity's sake, we can try adding three hog scales (blue, red, and orange) to one side of the bottle (signifying our "special sauce") with the bottle pouring into a bowl of puzzle pieces (representing all the different aspects of a startup from HR, Sales, and Marketing to Engineering, Legal, and Finance). Picasso's rendering:

[lottiecoxon]

I wasn't fully satisfied with the spiky bottle with puzzle pieces in a bowl (sorry being picky) so I came up with two more versions. The first is more of an advert for open sauce -with a stamp and the blocks of a company in the bowl instead of puzzle pieces Then secondly taking the idea of puzzle pieces and sauce literally - making a weird but fun composition of sauce on a puzzle. What do you think?

[lottiecoxon]

OR we could do 3d puzzle pieces in a bowl that aren't put together yet -maybe that was your idea all along..? sorry my brain is slow

[shehuphd]

I like #2. But instead of splashing sauce on puzzle pieces on a flat surface, let's put the pieces in a baking pan so they look like freshly-baked fudge brownies being drizzled with chocolate sauce?

[lottiecoxon]

[shehuphd]

3D puzzle pieces FTW. Let's see what everyone else says - if no opposition then we can create this mockup and the one for the Hogcast and run the poll again.

[joethreepwood]

@lottiecoxon You asked for feedback: My favourite is the example above under the 'Whole Hog' title. I like the Open Sauce name personally, but the sauce-related imagery feel like it's starting to take it a bit far and become abstract. I also worry that these images won't be as readable or clear when they are shrunk down to thumbnails on a phone.

Don't take my feedback as a blocker, obviously.

[lottiecoxon]

I was talking to my boyfriend last night about these names and as a comms guy for WFP I do (sometimes) listen to his advice and opinions, he said - the whole hog makes more sense for a podcast about our journey as a tech start up, the meaning of the phrase paired with the hedge-HOG makes sense and is clever and witty. Open sauce - while a clever play between source and sauce - doesn't really make a lot of sense as what is the link between sauces (cooking, food) and source (open source, online, coding) .

From that discussion I think that the whole hog would be a better name to go with

[shehuphd]

'The Whole Hog' it is. Let's finalize the artwork and get the ball rolling.

[mariusandra]

I'm still not sure of two things:

1) How democracy works here

2) Apologies for my ignorance, and I'm definitely not trying to poop on anyone's parade, but since I was not involved in coming up with the "why" behind this project, I'm just going to ask it:

Why do we need a podcast?

Is it to just keep ourselves busy? To do SEO and have "something out there"? Everyone else is doing it? Are we going to half-ass it or... will we do something really amazing? If the former, just cut it now. If the latter, have we budgeted the man-hours necessary to source great interviewees for the next year, and make a production worthy of reaching podcasting top-lists?

I'm asking because "let's just do a bit of everything" is a horrible marketing strategy IMO (seen it fail before)... and I don't want us to start something only for it to end up like the vlog. :)

[lottiecoxon]

I don't want to be coming across as a dictator ignoring democracy but, I personally think the hogcast isn't the best name, PLUS it's already a fairly well known sonic the hedgehog podcast...? I think with the amount of interviews we are churning out on youtube it makes sense to put them into a podcast form. Podcasts are relatively easy to construct plus its expected that 'an estimated 100 million people listened to a podcast each month (2020) and it's expected to reach 125 million in 2022' (forbes) I think it would require smaller effort than lets say youtube - and we can dip our toes into the millions of listeners and potentially get some good traction.

[joethreepwood]

Why do we need a podcast?

From a PRM perspective the podcast is a no-brainer. We're already getting and polishing the audio for our video series; this is just putting that content out in another channel so we can 1) provide users a choice of how to engage 2) see how users choose to engage with our content.

As discussed above if the platform is successful, etc., we can invest more time in growing it out into a distinct offering. For now seeking ways to maximise our output (video, transcribed blog, podcast) from modest inputs (a single internal interview) is a really solid approach.

I'd actually push back against the idea of developing this into something more robust and nuanced at this stage. Too many other things in motion and too much to commit to for an untested hypothesis.

[lottiecoxon]

so what does that mean for the design side (for now)?

[joethreepwood]

Final decision is up to @shehuphd, but my thoughts:

1. Whole Hog and Hogcast both seem popular options, but Open Sauce is good too. I wouldn't let Sonic block us from anything (that podcast is niche and only 13 episodes old, it won't hurt us). Ultimately, we should just make a decision and move forward though as none of the names are going to dramatically effect the result and any decision moves us forward vs standing still. The name will accrue meaning over time.
2. I still like the Whole Hog logo as above, personally, and think the others will be a little busy.

[shehuphd]

@corywatilo Re democracy: 'The HogCast' is a great name, but it already exists as a podcast (several, in fact) and so wouldn't be unique to us.

'Open Sauce' is another clever name, but again, there's already a podcast with that name on Spotify, which nullifies it as well - as much as I'm partial to it.

I couldn't find any podcast channel named 'The Whole Hog' (just a random episode with that title, but no channel) so that ticks the 'uniqueness' box. The name further makes sense within the context of the company name (PostHog), what we're doing through content (telling our story), and our values around transparency (showing you the whole truth).

Re channels and 'why' - the answer is simply 'options.' Some people like to watch, others like to read, and others like to listen. If we're creating content, we need to meet our audience where they are in the formats they prefer. Otherwise, we wouldn't bother writing blog posts for each vlog - we'd just cut up the interviews, publish to YouTube, and call it a day.

Re perfect production: This is PostHog. 😏 Nothing is perfect, everything is iterable, and pivoting is in our blood. It's trivial to upload audio files to the platform after each interview, and also trivial to archive all of them should we choose to pivot to a more structured podcast format.

I'd view this as an experiment in content distribution, rather than an attempt to rival Joe Rogan.

[tiina303]

I like the whole hog image & that gave me an idea for an alternative name to consider "The hog's journey" or "A hog's journey" (since we haven't been debating over the name long enough yet 😄) . Also based on existing podcasts I'm a bit less excited about the Hogcast name now (that I voted for in the poll).

[lottiecoxon]

I did this as a first draft - a) what am I missing and ) what is the verdict?

[shehuphd]

Nice - would love if you can reduce the size of 'The Whole Hog' title so we can see more of the forest and the hog's journey.

[joethreepwood]

@lottiecoxon That looks amazing.

One small tweak I'd suggest is changing the colour of the hedgehog/patch or adding stronger lines to him. Currently when this is viewed at thumbnail size (as it would on a phone or in a Spotify album art) he gets lost against the colour of the trees and path.

[lottiecoxon]

After some reflection I am aware that the podcast artwork doesn't reflect any of the colours or drawing styles as the rest of the site so I am tempted to give this another go.

[shehuphd]

Cool, looking forward to see the new version

[lottiecoxon]

Right here are 3 new versions - the first two are variations of one design (I was going for a Hedgehog astronaut) , then the other two are more abstract colourful designs if we wanted to go down a more artsy route.

[shehuphd]

I'd pick the third one (concentric circles) for now.

[corywatilo]

Latter two are super cool, but only problem is they don't really match any of our current style. We can definitely evolve (and likely will), but leaning toward brand/theme consistency would probably make sense. (Plus the first two are fun, quirky and have some character!)

[lottiecoxon]

Sorry for yesterday - had a stubborn design moment - for the moment I vote we go with this as it contains elements we have on the website and social media - I will iterate later on but for the moment this is a solid version we can run with

[shehuphd]

Concentric circles work for now. Is this file ready to use?

[lottiecoxon]

yes ! I can link you the figma if that helps

[shehuphd]

No need, this works perfectly. The podcast is now live on Anchor podcast and Spotify. The rest (Apple Music, etc.) should be live over the next few days. Thanks for all your help!

[corywatilo]

@lottiecoxon It looks like there is a white line at the top of the exported art. Would you mind resolving and re-exporting so @shehuphd can update it when he gets the chance?