Just The Kid are all about “fun.” They titled their debut EP Keep It Fun!. Their songs are exclusively about girls – a little sniping here and there, but  mostly these guys just want to have fun with them. The sound is highly polished and proudly synthetic; think a slightly glossier Metro Station. To a lot of people, that’s considered a damning rather than a benediction. But as I listened to Keep It Fun! over the course of a few weeks, throwing it on when I needed a quick blast of extremely refined sucrose, it more than served its purpose. This is a certain kind of thing that’s not exactly my certain thing, but it’s an extremely accomplished and smart version of that thing. So kudos to these guys for keeping it fun for all of us instead of just their target demographic of socially awkward teenage girls.

The EP begins with a fairly generic synth intro; it kind of sounds like these guys are bringing the fun from outer space. And then “Shawty,” the first proper track, launches into riffs that seem to draw inspiration primarily from JTK’s parents’ collection of Asia and Def Leppard records. It’s a jarring transition – I didn’t expect to taste the familiar arena tang of dry ice on a record about going to the mall and picking out some goofy sneakers. But there’s a few of these little touches scattered about that make Keep It Fun! feel at least nominally like real rock music. “Hot Damn” hangs on a “let’s dance, dance, baby, baby, let’s dance” lyric that’s probably as self-aware as it is inane. I mean, can you honestly argue with this stuff? It’s cotton candy.

I’d say thirteen minutes is the perfect amount of Just The Kid – they’d have to switch it up a little to sustain my interest for an entire full-length. But I’ll throw Keep It Fun! in from time to time, I’m sure, whenever I want to sashay around my apartment with a fruity mixed drink and pretend I’m in a one man off-Broadway show of Sex And The City. If you’re into this kind of stuff (and I’m sure most of you secretly are), then it’s a great example of its genre. Put it on a cocaine playlist with Cobra Starship, Metro Station, and some Infinity On High-era Fall Out Boy and you’ll be having more fun than the entire cast of Gossip Girl on your average Saturday night at 3am. I like it, in my own private way.

Just The Kid:

• MySpace
• PureVolume
• YouTube

Between his time as a possible contender for single man of the year, and posing for various Chicago magazines, Shawn Hilgart is doing what a lot of our visitors to Assault.it are doing–listening to music, designing websites for bands and clothing lines, and laying down code for Chicago idea house, We Cant Stop Thinking.

In the past, he’s done work for Friends Or Enemies, Fall Out Boy, Clandestine Industries, Empires, The Academy Is…, Q101, Plain White T’s, Boys Like Girls, Warner Brothers, and Patagonia. We Cant Stop Thinking recently launched The Music Trust, a collective of high profile DJs and artists.

Assault.it: How’d you get started in actionscript and php?

Shawn Hilgart: I got started with actionscript after being a designer at a small shop in the suburbs of Chicago, and being required to use it for projects. I got into php when I got thrown into a fire learning it when I started developing the friendsorenemies.com online community.

What are your major responsibilities at We Cant Stop Thinking?

There are so many – where do I even start? I guess day to day I am programming about 5-6 hours of the day, and the rest of the day is managing clients, making sure everyone gets paid on time, trying to improve our process, project managing. You name the job, I’m probably doing it.

Is WCST ahead of the times a bit when it comes to interactive design? (My last job used to basically just plop PSDs of designs in front of us and say build it with absolutely no specs or functionality documents of any kind – have you ever had that happen?)

I would like to think we have a pretty good process here. I think the scope of the projects you do really affects the process. When we first started it was trial by fire – my partner Nick would design something, I would slice and code it up. Now we have different phases. We research the competition, do information architecture, wireframes, and then design. Once you get a psd, you also get nice IA docs to back up that design. Having IA really helps. It allows you to see all the paths a user can take spelled out in a clear form. Another benefit of this process is the whole team gets all this time to think about how to make the project better for the user through each phase. Of course we’re not perfect, and some projects just need to get done. Then I get a PSD just put into my drop box and the real fun begins.

When it comes to breaking down something you’ve seen to try and recreate it yourself in actionscript, what’s the process?  (I know this is old, but this site is one I always use as a benchmark for design and you replicated it: http://www.iamalwayshungry.com/VERS7/)

First off, that site is amazing, I remember first seeing it and being taken back by how smooth it ran. Over the last 2 years I’ve developed a collection of home grown classes that I have been using to put together my flash sites. So when it comes to breaking down a site I first think about what chunks of code I have laying around that are similar. So in this case I think of different navigations I have done, and if I have any drag-and-drop or image tiling libraries. If I don’t have something around,I will start to craft a specific library for that task. I try and code everything in reusable classes if possible. Once I have all the parts I just start to combine them into a way that works. I think replicating a site is much easier than creating a new one – you can have the perfect block of code, but when clients start to make changes it can get really scrambled. All of a sudden your vision for that code is destroyed. On another note I have never been much one for swf decompilers, just copy and pasting code. That won’t really teach you the lessons of going through the process in your head.

I saw you’ve done some work with Empires, one of my favorite local bands. Can you describe what other kind of work you’ve done as it relates to the music business?

I really started out developing when E-cards were huge – every band wanted an E-card, and every label wanted to pay for one. So that’s kinda where I started getting some flash skills animating and pulling all these external content feeds. My partner Nick played in bands when he was younger,and we both have friends in bands so it just came naturally to be in that industry. We don’t do so much music stuff anymore. Just here and there, normally to help out a friend.

What’s been the most challenging piece of actionscript/php you’ve put together in terms of complexity?

I built this touchscreen wall out of a projector, IR leds, and some cameras, so this was electrical wiring nad coding. It was fun. I haven’t taken it out in a while but it was complex in terms of logic and execution. The code was all in as3 and it could turn any surface into a touch surface which was pretty rad.

What piece of your work are you most proud of that people may not even know you worked on?

I worked on this piece for Patagonia called “the footprint.” It was this complicated flash piece that mapped out all the places your clothing travelled before it got to your door. It got tons of press and won a couple awards. It was a great team to work with and I ended up laying down close to 95% of the code for the original.

There was a time when I thought flash was the glue between the web and television becoming a completely interactive experience when it came to UI and architecture of websites and mobile devices in general. It seems, though, that since JQuery became so popular, this may never happen. Do you see interactive and motion graphics ultimately overtaking the static html/js/jquery-based world anytime in the future?

I will be careful with my words here as to not start a flash vs. html5 fanboy riot. I don’t think html5 will inch out the demand for flash. I think html5 is coming to do the same tasks that flash pioneered 4 years ago when video on the web really started exploding. We could always play video without flash in html – you may recall the object tag that let you play quicktimes, right? So while the html 5 spec is getting ironed out, the problem I see is, it’s not a browser plugin, but rather part of the browser. So if html 5 can do what flash can do currently, what will flash be up to in 5-10 years before we see html 6? I think Adobe’s ability to push a new plugin version to users lets them move quickly on new tech, and html will once again be stuck catching up.

I’ve heard Steve Jobs called Adobe lazy–is it Adobe or Apple that’s the real culprit behind why we can’t get really any sort of flash on our iPhones? Do you think Flash will ever make it’s way onto the iPhone?

I don’t think flash will make it on to the iPhone or iPad. I think that Adobe and Apple each have their own agendas right now, and I believe that will hurt designer/developer loyalties to Apple. Adobe certainly has its work cut out for them but with cs5 being able to compile to iPhone apps, I think the concern over flash being on the actual device doesn’t concern me as much.

I’ve always said that Macromedia Flash was like Skynet–as soon as someone finds a way to exploit it, we’re all fucked because it seems to be installed on everything. Is there any validity to that?

I am sure there is some validity to those claims, but slightly exaggerated. There are so many variables that go into making a piece of software and one that runs in multiple browsers across multiple operating systems with very little system requirements. Also your plugin can only be as secure as the OS it runs on.

Vampires or zombies?

Zombies. Giving blood doesn’t sound as bad as having my brains eaten.

What’s one place you go for inspiration besides the internet?

I listen to music all the time and walk everywhere. It gives me tons of time to think and come up with ideas.

Are there any websites you visit on a regular basis within the design/development community?

I keep up with my flash news on theflashblog.com. I also read this blog called yewknee.com, it’s great for Friday videos and design/html/ajax stuff. Also a whole mess of gadget and tech blogs.

Are you working on anything major right now that you’d like to share?

I can tell you I have been working on the same project for months now, so it’s big one. It will be one of the most complex builds I have got the chance to lead and is using just about every scripting language out there. But that’s all I can really say!

Fall Out Boy’s recently released singles collection Believers Never Die is a great example of the greatest hits paradox – by including all of a group’s best known songs, you inevitably leave off deep cuts that better exmplify the given band’s greatness. So, while Believers Never Die includes official singles like “Dance, Dance” and “This Ain’t A Scene (It’s An Arms Race),” it inadvertently supports the notion that FOB is a shallow band for teenagers. As hardcore, unapolegtic Fall Out Boy fans, we at the Assault offices have compiled a list of supplemental tracks to help complete the picture. To wit:

“Chicago Is So Two Years Ago”

“The Patron Saint Of Liars And Fakes”

“7 Minutes In Heaven (Atavan Halen)”

“Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued”

“The Carpal Tunnel Of Love”

“Hum Hallelujah”

“I’ve Got All This Ringing In My Ears And None On My Fingers”

“Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet”

“w.a.m.s.”

“Pavlove”

Just when you thought Fall Out Boy was done making records (as indicated on their Wikipedia page, but has since been removed.) they’ve released a new single, and this video. Check it out.

Fall Out Boy | MySpace Video