Erik Moe Art & Design

An overhaul of the Chicago Public Radio website went up today. For those of us who can’t be bothered to turn on a radio anymore but are always looking for new ways to get that old public radio fix, they’ve added no less than eight RSS feeds for different categories of local news: arts, education, business, etc. The new design is a vast improvement as well – clean, semantic, and easy to find what you want. I’d like to see a little more design around all those text blocks than just thin gray lines, but plain vanilla done well is sometimes better than Chubby Hubby. Actually, I take that back – nothing beats Chubby Hubby.

Ice cream analogies aside, this web re-launch is nicely timed timed for Chicago Public Radio to shine in the spotlight of its debut in television production. I’ve just laid hands on the first six episodes of Showtime’s This American Life series to review for About Documentaries. As a longtime TAL junkie, adjusting my critical eye for this new incarnation is tricky. First impressions are mostly very good, though. It is a little odd to see Ira Glass posing as a hipster newsman all over the press kit. Then again, he actually is the hipster newsman – so I guess there isn’t a problem. More thoughts soon over on the documentaries site…