Stealing coudal.com

Stealing coudal.com

by Garrison Frost

I might need to steal coudal.com. The reason why is complicated, but I’ll try to explain.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to revamping The Aesthetic lately. The design of the site is getting pretty old and I don’t have access to a lot of the functionality that I want. Moreover, I’m not completely thrilled with the site’s direction. What are we trying to say? What type of content do we specialize in? Is everything here going to come from one person, or are we going to integrate new and exciting voices?

I’ve gone back and forth trying for the right look for The Aesthetic. At first, it was pretty much all text, with a simple banner. Then I tried to add more graphics but still capture the quality of a print publication. Lately, I’ve been going with something a little counterintuitive, something off-beat but clean. But I’m not sure this is where we are going. If only I could arrive at something that featured interesting graphics, but also presented a wide variety of compelling content at the same time. I want to be able to have constant ongoing content blend well with more long-running things – features, links and stories.

But beyond the design, I want to be able to do new things. If I want to highlight audio or video, I want to be able to do that easily. If I have a cool business idea, then that will fit in seamlessly as well.

As for content, I’ve always wanted to focus on the esoteric and the eclectic. It’s an ambiguous subject area that is best described by the site’s title, but how that manifests itself from day to day has always been a crap shoot. The site should feature interesting things, poignant things, things that are unusual, but very much appreciated. This would imply a heavy mix of the arts, but also of the seen world, the aesthetic world.

And clearly, not all of this can come from me, Garrison Frost. I’ve got a lot of ideas, but to keep the space jumping, it’s important to bring in other people. That implies a few things. First, I’ve got to know lots of interesting people who would be willing to contribute for next to no payment. Then, I’ve got to have the technological ability to give these people easy access to the site for the purposes of posting. Beyond that, I’ve got to have a creative environment at my home base that allows cool ideas, perhaps even ridiculous ideas, to flourish.

So, really, it’s more than just the site. It’s the whole environment in which the site operates. Creativity, technology, people. That’s a lot for me.

Sure, I could do all this myself. I’m moderately intelligent and have some creativity. But it would be a lot easier to simply appropriate it from someone else, someone like coudal.com. And I’m not talking about some simple copycat coding or something like that, because this is about people. No, I think I need to take the whole thing. I’m not sure how that would be possible, but that might be the only way.

It could be hard. I don’t know the people behind coudal.com. They don’t know me. So I doubt they would cooperate. I get the impression that they’ve got a successful business going over there in Chicago or wherever, so it’s likely that they’d put up a fight to hang on to their site. It could get ugly.

I don’t know, maybe if I’m nice enough, they’ll just give it to me. Hell, I don’t even know how long they’ll want it. I could just wait around for a sale or something.

(Jan. 10, 2007)