February 8, 2010
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[The "Linchpin" Series- available over on the gapingvoid Gallery etc.]
Last month my friend and mentor, Seth Godin released his longest and probably most important book, “Linchpin”. I interviewed him about it here.
To celebrate the book, Seth let me design a portfolio of four fine art prints, inspired by the book, entitled “The Linchpin Series”. You can go check out over on the gapingvoid Gallery here.
What else is there to say? Seth wrote a great book. Like I said in my review on Amazon,
“And Seth then challenges us, the readers, to become linchpins ourselves. To make the leap. To become artists. To do emotional work, whatever the sacrifice may be. It’s our choice, and it’s our burden. Seth won’t be there to catch us if we fall, but to become the people we need to be eventually, well, we probably wouldn’t want him to, anyway.
Congratulations, Seth. You have penned a real gem of a book here. Rock on.”
I basically wanted to create a set of prints- “Cube Grenades” – to go on the office wall, as Linchpin “Idea-Souvenirs” to kick the viewer in the pants. “Remember Who You Are” and all that.
I hope you’ll pay the gallery a visit. Meanwhile, you can check them out below as well.
Thanks, Seth! I had a lot of fun drawing these. Rock on.
LIFE IS TOO SHORT (Linchpin 1)
Life is too short not to do something that matters, not to become a “Linchpin”. I know it, you know it, we all know it, so let’s stop futzin’ around at get on with it. Like Seth says, “Decide”.
INSANE ASYLUM (Linchpin 2)
Why do people become what Seth Godin calls “Linchpins”? Becasue to not do so would drive us crazy. Eventually we have no choice. And we’ve all been in worse places- when you know you’re capable of doing great things, being in “The Zone”, but every external marker out there indicates otherwise- that you’ll never get to do the “life’s best work” that you’re capable of. That your career will be nothing but drudgery and abuse, in exchange for what seems an increasingly meager paycheck.
And after being there long enough, the decision to become a Linchpin eventually becomes an easy one. But it can take time.
ALL ARTISTS ARE ENTREPRENEURS (Linchpin 3)
By Seth’s definition, an artist is not just some person who messes around with paint and brushes, an artist is somebody who does (and I LOVE this term) “emotional work.”
Work that you put your heart and soul into. Work that matters. Work that you gladly sacrifice all other alternatives for. As a working artist and cartoonist myself, I know exactly what he means. It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it.
THIS IS IT (Linchpin 4)
It’s easy to tell somebody to get into The “Linchpin” Zone. Much harder to live it. But fight like hell to get there, regardless, every friggin’ day, or else you’ll never make it.
You know you’re capable of doing great things, being in “The Zone”, but every external marker out there indicates otherwise- that you’ll never get to do the “life’s best work” that you’re capable of. That your career will be nothing but drudgery and abuse, in exchange for what seems an increasingly meager paycheck.
Yeah, it’s a painful place to be. But it doesn’t last forever, not if you don’t give up. Not if you don’t succumb to all the overpriced, “treadmill-enabling”, external markers of success- fancy houses, cars, schools, vacations and “stuff” that you can’t really afford, that you don’t really need nearly as much as the guy in the next cubicle says that you do.
THE LINCHPIN PORTFOLIO: ALL FOUR FOR $200.
What a deal, what a steal etc. All four, 11″x14″ each, proper archival paper, inks and printing tech, all hand-signed by me, for the price of a moderately-OK-but-not-great meal for two in Manhattan. And of course, for hardcore Seth fanboys, there’s the “Purple Cow” print from early 2009.
Posted in Uncategorized, cube grenades, prints | No Comments »February 8th, 2010
February 8, 2010
14 Comments
I remember reading one of Tom Peter’s books about five years ago, when this sentence popped right out at me:
“Make appealing to women your Marketing No. 1 priority.”
It seemed like a very bold statement to me at the time, though Tom’s rationale was rock-solid. Not only do women account for over half of the nation’s GDP, their power over what is spent in the household is vastly greater than their menfolk’s.
Sure, it’s a no-brainer. Did I pay any attention at the time? Of course not. I’m a Man. And men are stupid.
Fast-forward half a decade and slowly I’m wising up, for three main reasons:
1. My women print customers skew just under 50%.
2. Though the remaining small majority of my print customers are male, before they buy from me, it seems 90% have to get their wives’ or girlfriends’ permission first. Especially for the large, more expensive prints to be hung in the home.
3. The online conversation I’m having- in the blog comments, Twitter, Facebook etc, is skewing increasingly female, especially on Facebook. I’d say 60% overall, maybe more.
In short, women are now calling the shots on gapingvoid. All in all, I think it’s a VERY positive development. What about your gig?
[UPDATE:] Elizabeth made a great comment below:
Not surprised – there’s a bunch of us women who love smart, moving, funny, irreverent stuff about changing the world while making money, that’s romantic-yet-realistic.
And the thing is, we women talk. We connect. We nurture relationships. We are awesome at social media b/c it is extension of what we natural do IRL.
Yes, Elizabeth, and those are EXACTLY the kinds of customers I want and need. Like I said, it’s a no-brainer. Rock on.
Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »February 8th, 2010
February 8, 2010
1 Comment
[Another early one: showing the front & back of the same drawing. Laminated. New York, 14 January, ‘98]
This was drawn in a very crowded bar, very late at night. I think it shows.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »February 8th, 2010
February 7, 2010
16 Comments
This image to the left you should be seeing a lot of from now on, scattered around the gapingvoid empire. It’s now our official logo.
OK, so why “Remember Who You Are”?
Because it ties up everything I’ve been working on these last few years. First with the cartoons, the prints and the “Cube Grenade” private commissions. Like I said earlier:
I’m interested in how art affects “The Real World”- the workplace, the world of work, the world of business. That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about.
My advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Ireland. He was telling me that his parents would always have a few religious icons hanging on the wall somewhere. Pictures of Saints, Mary & Baby Jesus, that kind of thing.
Why? Says Vinny, “To remind us who we were.”
My work has never been about getting the approval of the New York art gallery mafia. My work has always been about “What Really Matters” to people, especially to my peers.
Art that reminds you who you are. Exactly. What applies in Catholic households also applies in places of business. Shared Meaning. Shared Purpose. Exactly. Social Objects. Exactly.
Secondly, I think there’s an insatiable hunger for it. Not to lose ourselves in the hopeless muddle we call Life, but instead, doing something that matters, making a difference, creating good in the world, creating value. Remembering what’s really important, remembering who we are.
This is not just about Art and cartoons, this is about EVERYTHING we do.
I’ve been saying this to my clients for years- to have a successful brand, personal or otherwise, it can’t just be about you, or even your customers, it has to be about something HIGHER than all of us. A “Purpose-Idea” .
gapingvoid is no exception; neither is your work.
“Remember who you are.” I’ll try to live up to it; I hope TO GOD that you will, too. Amen.
Posted in Uncategorized, remember who you are | 16 Comments »February 7th, 2010
February 7, 2010
1 Comment
Within 1 week of meeting this person you realize that not only have you found your soulmate, but you’ve found your soulmate who likes to have sex 4 times a day in the bed, on the dining table, on the kitchen floor, in the changing rooms at Bloomingdale’s etc.
Within 2 weeks you’re already talking about moving in together.
Within 3 weeks you’re talking about having babies together.
Within 4 weeks you realize this person is a complete psychopath.
Within 5 weeks this person also thinks you’re a complete psychopath.
Within 6 weeks you’re sitting at a restaurant with an old friend who is giving you the “How come you only call me when you’re single” speech.
[Originally published in 2001. You can go see it and more of my early personal faves on my "About" page here...]
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »February 7th, 2010
February 4, 2010
24 Comments
["Poor Imitation". The cartoon I sent out to the "Hugh's Daily Cartoon" list a day or two ago...]
It’s been a while since I last wrote about blogging to any great length, but here are some random thoughts, in no particular order:
1. Blogs work SUPERBLY if you have great content. It’s when they don’t that people bitch & moan about the medium. That was true ten years ago, when I started blogging, and it’s still true today.
2. Great content is really, really hard to make. That’s why so few blogs have it, but that’s not the medium’s fault. The same is true for any other media.
3. It’s OK to sell something on your blog. We’ve all got a living to make. Besides that, your blog is your own personal property. If people don’t like your content- whether it’s selling something or not- there’s no law saying they have to read it. They can go somewhere else. When people complain about my own blog’s long-running commercial agenda, I just think, “Dude, you’re about a decade too late. That ship sailed A LONG time ago.” Besides, I LIKE selling stuff via the blog. Sure beats making cold-calls.
4. No, I’m not keeping up with your blog. Like a good friend said to me a couple of years ago, “Man, I don’t even have time to read the blogs of my good friends anymore.” Ditto with me. Heck, it’s hard enough keeping up with my good friends’ Twitter streams.
5. Time to quote Shirky again: “So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.” -CLAY SHIRKY in 2004.
6. Facebook? Twitter? Who cares? The latter two are easy. Like I implied earlier, blogging is hard. Writing is hard. Getting other people to read it is the hardest bit of all. “It’s the content, Stupid.”
7. My faith in the power of blogging is still as strong as ever. That doesn’t mean I find it any easier.
8. Focus and Continuity are key. I had so many projects going on these last years, I always found it hard to focus. What was gapingvoid really about? Cartoons? Marketing? Self-promotion? Self-expression? It seemed to change on a daily basis. Now that, besides writing books, my business is pretty much focused on two things i.e. making art and selling it, I feel more calm about it all. And gapingvoid’s new unofficial tagline, “Remember Who You Are”, helps keep me focused on the kind of work I want to be making long-term, and why.
9. No, it’s not too late to start blogging. “But the Blogosphere is so crowded now, it’s too late to get first-mover advantage”, I hear you say. Perhaps. But it’s only crowded in the middle and the bottom. There’s always plenty of room at the top. People’s need to be informed and inspired by the good stuff is insatiable. But, as I implied, it has to be good, it has to be more than good in order to get there. Nobody has time for mediocre drek. The world is just too interesting and competitive now.
10. I don’t intend to quit blogging any time soon. It’s become a central part to what I do, that’s just reality. I’ve pretty much always done my own thing on gapingvoid, making it up as I go along. Some stuff gets traction, some gets ignored, that’s just the nature of the beast. The only big change I’ve made to my shtick recently is that I no longer post new cartoons on the blog, just old ones. You can find out why here.
There are 100 million blogs out there already, so a big Thank-You for reading this one. Seriously. Rock on.
[About Hugh. Cartoon Archive. Commission Hugh. Sign up for Hugh’s “Daily Cartoon” Newsletter.]
Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments »February 4th, 2010
February 4, 2010
5 Comments
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Note To Team:] I’m thinking this picture REALLY needs to a print one day. Preferably soon. Yes? It fits in VERY nicely with “Remember Who You Are”….
[About Hugh. Cartoon Archive. Commission Hugh. Sign up for Hugh’s “Daily Frickin' Cartoon” Newsletter.]
Posted in prints | 5 Comments »February 4th, 2010
February 3, 2010
1 Comment
From Techcrunch, earlier today:
Today, Bantam Live, is launching the commercial version of its social CRM workspace and is rolling out premium features of its product. Bantam Live provides an online workspace for business teams that has “social CRM” features, which include a real-time dashboard stream of messaging and workflow activity along with a native CRM application. Members can share information, track activity, and manage contact and company relationships both inside and outside the organization via a real-time activity stream.
For today’s lauch, they commissioned me to do this “Cube Grenade” for the front of their homepage. As they said on their blog:
The background of our relationship with Hugh goes like this… Bantam Live launched its public-beta last summer onstage at TechCrunch’s Real-time Stream Crunchup at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, Michael Arrington auctioned off copy #1 of “dream big. techcrunch 2009″ serigraph by artist Hugh MacLeod. I won the auction. I figured it was a good cause (to the Electronic Frontier Foundation), would give us a promotional bump, and would commemorate for the team an achievement of sorts to have launched in beta as a selected startup from the stage on that day. As Hugh explains, the serigraph was a “social object.” It hangs in our loft today.
Thanks to John Rourke (Founder and CEO) for being such an awesome client. Rock on.
[Commission Hugh: The Cube Grenade homepage is here. The Cube Grenade archive is here.]
Posted in Uncategorized, cube grenades | 1 Comment »February 3rd, 2010
February 2, 2010
8 Comments
["Small Places". The cartoon I sent out to the "Hugh's Daily Cartoon" list a day or two ago...]
The unofficial tag-line for the gaping Gallery is “Remember Who You Are”. We’ve been using it internally for a while now. It goes back to what I said on the Cube Grenade page:
I’m interested in how art affects what some people call “The Real World”- the workplace, the world of work, the world of business. That’s what the Cube Grenade idea is all about.
My advertising buddy, Vinny Warren, grew up in a Roman Catholic household in Ireland. He was telling me that his parents would always have a few religious icons hanging on the wall somewhere. Pictures of Saints, Mary & Baby Jesus, that kind of thing.
Why? Says Vinny, “To remind us who we are.”
Art that reminds you who you are. Exactly. What applies in Catholic households also applies in places of business. Shared Meaning. Exactly. Social Objects. Exactly.
My work has never been about getting the approval of the New York art gallery mafia. My work has always been about “What Really Matters” to people, especially to my peers.
Which is is why I’ve not minded sending out schamaltzy, cutey-pie “Love” themed cartoons on my email list this last week.
Valentine’s Day might be corny, it might be crassly commercial, it might be vastly overdone…
But Romantic Love is important. It matters. And by taking the trouble to send your loved one a Valentine’s card or whatever, you’re reminding both yourself and the other person that yes, you haven’t forgotten that it matters.
Hence why it fits in nicely with “Remember who you are”.
Once Valentine’s Day is over I’ll return to my usual heartless, cynical shtick, of course. Just in case y’all were worried…
[Bonus Link:] “When life gets really tough, just remember the white pebble. Just remember who you really are. Just remember the person that only God can see.”
[P.S. Big Props to Vinny for helping to move my thinking forward. Dinner is on me next time, Buddy!]
Posted in prints | 8 Comments »February 2nd, 2010
January 29, 2010
37 Comments
Seth Godin does it.
Brian Clark does it.
Gary Vee does it.
Esther Dyson does it.
James Governor does it.
Kathy Sierra does it.
Dennis Howlettt does it.
John T. Unger does it.
Robert Scoble does it.
Fred Wilson does it.
These eight smart, kind, great people, some more well-known than others, are masters at what I call “Selling by Giving”.
They put stuff out there, as gifts. Great content, great ideas, great insights, great personal connection. By giving so much of themselves, for free, every day, they build up huge surpluses of goodwill, so when you’re finally in the market for something they’re selling (and they’re ALL selling something, trust me), they’re first on your list.
I do it, too, just not as well as these guys. I’ve published thousands of cartoons on this blog over the years, and that’s gotten me a lot of business. And not just fine art prints, either. It’s gotten me consulting gigs, full-time salary jobs, book deals, paid speaking gigs, marketing jobs, I could go on…
Selling by giving. Anybody who’s been watching any of these guys for a long time will know exactly what I’m talking about.
But here’s what’s interesting to me: I can remember not that long ago, say 5 years, when this type of marketing seemed pretty freaky to most people. Now it’s considered normal, at least to smart marketers. FIVE years. That’s all.
I could see that in another five years, ANYONE who wants to market ANYTHING successfully- be they small mom n’ pop shops to large companies, will have to be fluent in Gift Economics, to a level that seemed COMPLETELY alien only a few years ago.
This includes you. Are you ready for it?
[About Hugh. Cartoon Archive. Commission Hugh. Sign up for Hugh’s “Daily Cartoon” Newsletter.]
Posted in Uncategorized | 37 Comments »January 29th, 2010
