Podcast Publishing and Design Process
Producing a podcast requires the same level of care as any other stellar user experience
Podcasts have been around for a while, but they have only recently become a part of my life. Last year I discovered Lore, the legendary podcast by Aaron Mahnke. In Lore, Aaron shares ghost stories from American history and how they can apply in our lives. Not only has this podcast been a jam, but I have discovered some other ones that have tickled my fancy too. With my recent podcast assignment in my Adaptive Digital Media class, I wanted to dive into subjects that I enjoyed.
Getting Started
I knew I wanted to attach my project to my youtube channel. On my channel, I write video essays regarding video games. It is similar to that of Dunkey and NakeyJakey. With that in mind, I wanted to expand on my channel through my podcast. This applied to both the content of my podcast and the art design.
I went with the title “Diving In” because I enjoy delving into topics I enjoy, and that is what my podcast is all about; diving into topics regarding video games, anime, movies, etc. I didn’t want the title to be attached to “Dan-San” (my youtube channel) because, considering my channel is not super big, I thought it would sound cheesy if I did something along the lines of “Diving In with Dan-San.”
For the cover art, I wanted to continue the art style I had established with my channel. In my banner art for my channel, I took beloved characters from Zelda and the movie Akira, traced them in Illustrator, and applied colors from a color palette or two that I had created. I added the bar over the eyes to create an edgy look.
I followed this same method for my podcast cover. I took a character from an anime I enjoyed, traced it, and applied the colors, type, and added a bar over the eyes. I picked a miner to go along with the theme of digging/diving in. After I did the branding for my podcast, the time for writing, recording, and editing was next.
Recording and Editing the Audio
When it came time for audio, I felt more prepared than I thought I would. With my youtube channel, I record my voice into a Blue microphone; so for my podcast, I did the same thing. However, the only herring was that I usually record only my voice, I never recorded with an ensemble before.
Luckily, I was only recording my podcast episodes with one of my friends. With this, however, there is a dip in quality from my youtube voice-overs; I did not know how to address the echo from my friend and I sitting farther away from the mic. At first, we had the gained more turned up; but this caused some issues. My wife was watching tv outside the room; and despite having a closed door, the mic picked up the sound of her show. If you listen really closely to the first episode of my podcast, you can here some Gossip Girl in the background. For the next two episodes, we turned down the gain and it worked out. However, the quality is still less than satisfactory compared to my youtube voice overs. I was able to somewhat address this issue in my editing, though.
I recorded the audio using Garage Band. But, I put the recordings together in Final Cut. Sure, this may not be ideal, but as a video editor, this was my natural choice; there are several effects and options. I was able to address the echoey sound a bit by applying a “less bass” effect. Although it did not totally take away the echo, it made it sound better. I applied this effect to all of the episodes of my podcast. However, I did not only have to edit my audio, but I also added in supplementary music and sound effects too.
Despite taking classes regarding legal issues and digital media, I was not totally sure how to address licensed music in a podcast. I reached out to an artist known as Bknapp to see if I could use his music. He remixes video game soundtracks with lo-fi, hip hop beats. I thought his sound would be a good accompaniment to our voices and the topics we discussed. I reached out to him via email and he responded back with his approval. To be honest, I was surprised to even hear back from him. Along with the music, I added some video game sound effects to spice up the flow of our conversation; I used sound effects to break up/open new sections of our episodes.
One issue I ran into, though, was the intro. For the life of me, I could not figure out a cool way to open my podcast. At first, I just had a track slowly build up and then at the breakdown, I would throw in the first few lines of my podcast. However, it sounded way too awkward to have a song build up for 15 seconds and then just have me hop in. This was noted not only by me but by some of my classmates. Alternatively, I added a standard line by me at the beginning of each episode introducing the podcast with a song; this shortened the intro time by about 8 seconds and made it flow much more smoothly. Despite the echoey sound and poor first intro, my audio editing went pretty well.
Publishing the Podcast
Prior to this, I have never published any media to an audio platform. However, students in my class had done their research and found a very easy route. Through Anchor, you can publish your podcast. It is a pretty painless process, the site allows you to create a podcast and then add episodes to it.
It is as simple as clicking and dragging your episode onto the site. The site allows you to manipulate the metadata, but also publish your podcast on a myriad of different outlets. The metadata within Anchor is not super expanisive, but it gets the job done. It will automatically set it up on Spotify, but you can manually set your podcast up through other outlets and then attach them to your profile on Anchor.
Anchor does not only let you upload your podcast, but it also provides an RSS feed of your podcast. It is a super useful site; it is also an outlet to create a podcast from scratch with recording tools on the site. Without this site, I honestly don’t know what I would have done to upload and publish my podcast. It made it incredibly easy.
Conclusion
A podcast requires the same amount of prep and care that any UX deliverable would. From the conception and recording to the publishing, it requires some thought. However, this assignment has helped me learn some useful tips and tools to be able to publish more podcasts in the future; especially with Anchor. Anchor is an incredible site.
Hopefully, for the future, I can figure out how to get more clean audio. That was the main detractor for me during this assignment. I wish I could say I was more proud of the audio quality. But, I think this podcast would be awesome to keep up if my youtube channel ever takes off.
You can actually check out Diving In right here! Below I have pasted my episodes from Anchor. Note how the audio quality of my voiceover changes from the first episode to the third one.
