September 20, 2007
how ill sin
Hugh MacLeod
Hi, I'm Hugh.
My life is committed to drawing little illustrations that spread messages, inspire people, help businesses kick butt & support causes.
Gapingvoid is based upon the science of how these cartoons work.
If we can help you or your business, please email us here.
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Archive for September, 2007
September 18, 2007
“pants” as social object
[N.B. in the UK, “pants” means “underpants”, as opposed to “trousers”.]
This is the best piece of marketing I’ve seen for a while. Thanks to Eaon Pritchard for sharing.
What makes it so utterly disarming is its simplicity, whimsy and humanity. Nothing more. It’s not particularly “clever”, which is exactly what makes it so brilliant.
And in case you were wondering, yes, it is indeed a Social Object.
jyri on the blue monster
Jyri Engestrom, the anthropologist behind the “Social Object” theory, writes about the Blue Monster. Rock on.
Since its inception by cartoonist Hugh MacLeod, the cartoon has been adopted by microsofties as a symbol of the company’s and its people’s aspiration to innovate. I’ve heard Microsoft employees refer to it as the company’s unofficial mascot.
[Bonus Link: Adriana has a really good post on Stormhoek Blue Monster. Very thoughtful, as usual, coming from her.]
My understanding is, some pockets at Microsoft COMPLETELY get the Blue Monster, and others don’t. I suppose that’s to be expected with a company of that size.
That being said, from what I can glean from my limited, outsider perspective, there seems to be a large constituency within the company which strongly believes that Microsoft’s entire future rests on how well it talks to people outside the company. I happen to concur. “Porous Membrane”, Baby!
September 17, 2007
stormhoek blue monster reserve
[Yon standard pack shot. Indeed.]
I mentioned previously that I would be announcing my “Next Big Project” sometime today, the 17th of September.The Financial Times beat me to it.. “Social Object”, Baby:
Microsoft launches a tipple for techies
Tonight, a select group will gather in a bar in London’s Soho to quaff a crisp, South African white wine bottled in their honour.
The hand-picked guests toasting the new vintage are not, however, wine connoisseurs but techies. The gathering marks the launch of the Blue Monster Reserve label, created by winery Stormhoek for Microsoft and its employees.
Own-label wine and personalised bottles have become increasingly popular in the corporate world, particularly among investment banks, as gifts to clients and offered to guests of corporate events. The companies hope the corporate vintages will add an air of class and sophistication to their image.
But unlike customised wine bottles given by banks and law firms to clients, this label did not originate in Microsoft’s corporate communications headquarters.
Hugh MacLeod, a cartoonist, blogger and marketing strategist for Stormhoek, created the Blue Monster image after getting to know Microsoft employees.
Mr MacLeod met these “Microsofties” through his day job. “We sponsored a series of ‘geek dinners’ for bloggers and techies in the US and the UK,” he said. “I met a lot of people from Microsoft through these dinners, and they all said the same thing: we want to change the world.”
[Print Version: Page 14 of the main section. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
That notion of a kinder, gentler Microsoft is at odds with its cut-throat corporate image. Critics have accused the software giant of abusing its dominant position and of stifling innovation in the industry. In 2003, the European Commission found Microsoft guilty of uncompetitive practices and levied a record €497m ($689m, £342m) fine. The result of its appeal against that decision is due on Monday.
The cartoon of a sharp-toothed blue creature and its tagline, “Microsoft – change the world or go home”, has now been adopted by some Microsoft employees and fans as a symbol of the company’s innovation.
“People see Microsoft as a big, bad corporate monster,” Mr MacLeod said. “Yet all the Microsofties I’ve spoken to say they just want to make great products and do good works. It was obvious that Microsoft had to get better at telling their story.”
“Wine is a social object, and so is the Blue Monster: they both inspire conversation,” he said. “And we thought the cartoon would look really cool on a bottle.”
Steve Clayton, chief technology officer at one of Microsoft’s UK affiliates and a nine-year veteran of the company, said Blue Monster reminded people that Microsoft “has a sense of fun and humour”.
Mr Clayton has been at the forefront of the Blue Monster movement: he uses the image on his business card and is the administrator of a “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group.
“[Microsoft’s HQ] has been very supportive of us using the Microsoft name alongside the Blue Monster image,” Mr MacLeod said. It makes sense; they’ve been around for about 30 years and are trying to reinvent themselves to embrace a new generation.”
Blue Monster-branded bottles will be available only to Microsoft and its affiliates. “We have no intention of selling the product outside Microsoft,” said Jason Korman, Stormhoek’s chief executive. “The wine itself only went live last week, and already we’ve had massive interest from different parts of the company.”
[A bottle of Blue Monster Reserve sitting on my desk. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Mr Clayton readily admits the Blue Monster movement, despite his involvement, is outside any influence from Microsoft: “[The cartoon] has encouraged a whole new series of conversations by people who are passionate about Microsoft, both internally and externally. Blue Monster is a community which has developed its own distinct identity.”
For Mr MacLeod, the Blue Monster represents a revolution of sorts. “We started an underground movement within Microsoft, and we knew one day the guys in suits would finally take notice. That moment has finally arrived.”
If so, it will be marked in true internet-era style: not with an act of anarchy but a clink of glasses.
[Blue Monster backstory here.] [Blue Monster blog archive here.]
The wine is not a commercially available product, just a wee “social object” for geek dinners and people inside the Microsoft ecosystem. Microsoft’s Steve Clayton and I are still working on the final details of how we’re going to get the wine to people who want it, but for now, we’re just limiting its availability to [1] people who belong to the “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group, and [2] geek dinners we’re attending and/or sponsoring.
Personally, I like this idea because it directly connects to a lot of different things I’m interested in. “Social Objects”, Microsoft, cartoons, Stormhoek, Marketing 2.0, corporate-reinvention, geek dinners etc etc.
Hopefully, other people will like it, too. Watch this space etc.
A special thanks to all the groovy cats inside Microsoft who lent their support to this project. Rock on.
[P.S. If anyone has any further questions, I can be reached by e-mail.]
September 15, 2007
facebook update
The gapingvoid Facebook cartoon app now has over 1100 users. And for people who don’t use Facebook, there’s the gapingvoid widget, which fits snugly inside your blog sidebar. Both publish the same cartoon simultaneously etc. Different cartoons uploaded pretty much daily etc etc.
[Bonus Link:] “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group is now up to 688 members.
gapingvoid licensing terms
I’ve been getting a lot of licensing queries recently. I thought maybe I should publish my general terms one more time. From April, 2006:
[Add the gapingvoid widget to your blog]
Like I’ve said many times before, I much prefer giving away my cartoons for free, rather than trying to sell them. It saves everybody a lot of hassle, myself included.
Which is why I’m now letting people download my stuff in high-resolution, print it out and stick it on their wall etc. Which is why I have a Creative Commons license.
Hey, if you want to put the work up on your website, blog, or stick it on paper, t-shirts, business cards, stickers, homemade greeting cards, Powerpoint slides, or whatever, as far as I’m concerned, as long as it’s just for your own personal use, as long as you’re not trying to make money off it directly, and you’re giving me due attribution, I’m totally cool with the idea.
[NB: If you see a gapingvoid cartoon that you like, and you fancy it as a piece of schwag, all you have to do is download the high-resolution image off this site, then upload it here onto Cafepress. I make no money at this, everything on Cafepress I sell at cost. Easy.]
So, if people aren’t paying me for my work, then how do I make a living? Good question.
Well, years of messing around in various enterprises have led me to the following conclusion: People don’t buy art. Not really. But they do buy wine.
Which is why I have a commercial interest in the Stormhoek winery. Basically, the more cases that sell, the bigger a car I get to drive. It’s that simple.
So to the kind folks who download and use my stuff, I say thank you very much, but if you want to support what I’m doing, please keep your money.
Instead, if you’re ever in wine-drinking mode, walking down a supermarket aisle, and you see a bottle of Stormhoek on the shelf, I hope you might consider giving it a try. No worries if you’d rather not, but I’d appreciate it if you did.
The other thing you can do to help the cause is add the gapingvoid widget to your blog, but again, no worries if you’d rather not etc.
I guess this all ties in with my “indirect marketing” schtick, of which I am a huge advocate.
Sounds like a plan?
[NB:] Stormhoek is now available in San Francisco and Silicon Valley at K&L Wine.
[BACKGROUND READING:] The “about gapingvoid” page. Also carries some of my favorite cartoons, and what inspired them etc.
September 12, 2007
blip.tv
[photo credit: Steve Woolf.]
I’ve made a lot of t-shirts in my life. The one for blip.tv is without question one of my all-time favorites.
The shirt had an interesting genesis. I met up with blip.tv’s Charles Hope for lunch the last time I was in New York. While we were waiting for the coffee to arrive, I drew him the cartoon, right there at the table. Within a few weeks Charles had taken the design and turned it into a t-shirt. The rest is history etc.
Hmmmm… Maybe I should be doing more of these.….
[Charles blogged both the lunch and the cartoon here.]
September 11, 2007
hi to frances
[Last night at a random geek dinner I had the pleasure of meeting Frances Berriman, who recently started working for the BBC. What the hell, on the spot I made her a drawing.…]
on cartooning
[December, 2007 marks the 10-year anniversary of my “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” format. Here’s some random notes on the subject, in no particular order:]
1. I came up with the format in early December, 1997 in Chicago. I moved to New York about a week and a half later. But the format didn’t really gel till I got to the East Coast, a couple of months later.
2. At last count I had done over 5,000 of them. That was over two years ago.
3. I never really experienced the “One Big Moment”, the Tipping Point etc. The schtick just built up slowly, day by day.
4. When people ask me what I do, I never say, “I’m a cartoonist”. But the other day a friend of mine made a compelling case for me to start doing so. Not sure what to think yet…
5. I never expected the cartoons to get successful.
6. The way most cartoonists make a living utterly horrifies me.
7. Constantly setting new goals, artistic or otherwise, is harder than it looks.
8. Not caring what other people think is harder than it looks. Especially AFTER you get successful.
9. As I get older the temptation to “tone it down” grows stronger every day. I’m glad I still can resist it, most of the time.
10. My favorite cartoonist for the last while has been David Shrigley, long since before he was hired by Hallam Foe to animate the title sequence. I first met him in Glasgow in the early 1990s. He’s a really lovely guy in person.
11. Musicians have always inspired me far more than other cartoonists, with perhaps the exception of Charles Schultz, Saul Steinberg, Ralph Steadman, Ronald Searle and Edward Gorey.
12. Instead of carrying a portfolio around, I just keep a couple of hundred images on my iPod. Seems to work well enough. Luckily my format is well suited to the device.
[All you need to start building an empire– drawing pen, blank business cards, iPod, smokes, lighter, and a local pub that serves a good pint. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
13. Everything I own would easily fit in the back of a small pickup truck. I’ve never been into possessions. The same was true for my late paternal grandfather, probably the most resonant influence in my life.
14. I find it very liberating to have a format that allows you to store a few years worth of work in a single shoebox.
15. If you offered me $10,000 for this cartoon, I’d probably turn you down.
16. One of the smartest moves I ever made was to figure out that making money indirectly off the cartoons was far easier than trying to make the money directly. If I could teach gapingvoid readers just one thing, that would be it.
17. I can’t imagine how I would have made the cartoons successful without the internet. I just can’t imagine a likely alternative scenario.
18. There are tons of cartoonists who write and/or draw better than me. If my work has one thing going for it, it’s the quite unique and unconventional life that I’ve always seemed to lead.
19. I’ve never envied people with “normal” lives. Nor have I ever envied the people without them.
20. My work generally isn’t for sale. You have to ask me to give you a drawing. And I have to be in the right mood at the time.
21. I have found the standard “struggling artist” myths and stereotypes mostly full of crap. Powerful magnets for Bullshitters, to say the least.
22. I don’t envy, admire or like pretty much 90% of the artists I meet. That’s not me just being old and jaded, that was just as true when I was a teenager.
23. I want to draw cartoons that rip the face off the reader. But in a good way.
24. I have no artistic ambition outside the cartoons. No desire to write a novel or anything like that.
25. I would never recommend to a young person to pursue a career in fine art. Even if she had a talent that was off the scale, I would be slightly hesitant.
26. The most important word in cartooning is “continuity”. Drawing a good cartoon isn’t difficult. Doing it repeatedly, day-in, day-out is far, far harder.
27. Cartoonists who don’t like to think much about the actual business they’re in, who are fond of saying, “I just want to draw” deserve everything they get.
28. Drugs and alcohol are lousy substitutes for inspiration.
29. The older I get, the more solitude the work seems to require.
30. The longer it takes you to become successful, the harder it will be for somebody else to take it away from you.
31. I increasingly find that, as I get older, the only subjects worth writing about are Love, Loss, Religion and Ambition.
32. Ten years ago, when my current cartoon format was “new”, there was a certain magic to it that now I SIMPLY CAN’T RECAPTURE. It took me many years to just let it go.
33. The format works for me because it forces me to keep things simple.
34. If the early days, most of my drawing was done sitting at a bar. Nowadays most of the work is done sitting at the kitchen table. They both have their pros and cons.
35. There’s something about being a celebrity, even a micro-celebrity that poisons the soul.
36. I can totally see why so many artists eventually become recluses, living in the boonies. I find myself increasingly heading in that direction, and I doubt I’ll lift a finger to stop it.
37. In the early days of the cartoons I was living in Manhattan. It would really tickle me when people would describe my cartoons as “SO NEW YORK”. Though now a wee voice tells me that if I still lived there, I’d probably be dead by now. I think a lot of ex-New Yorkers feel that.
38. One of the great things about the format is, hey, they’re just doodles on the back of business cards. It doesn’t matter if they’re good or not.
39. If you told me ten years ago that I would still be using this format pretty much exclusively in 2007, I don’t think I would’ve believed you.
40. I have never really given any serious thought to changing my format in all these ten years. Sometimes I find that odd.
41. Art is simply using the tools at hand to ask the question, “What is possible?” Painting, music, literature, it doesn’t matter what media one uses. What matters is the question.
42. No artist wants their best work behind them. But that day always comes.
43. I was fortunate. Somehow I managed to get the B-Plan baked into the A-Plan. And vice versa.
44. The good news is, my drawings will probably be worth a lot of money one day. The other good news is, I probably won’t be alive to see it.
45. I feel extraordinarily fortunate and grateful.
[Related Link: “How To Be Creative”. 10,000 words from 2004 etc.]
September 9, 2007
valentines and geek dinners etc.
[One of the Stormhoek designs we’re thinking of doing for next Valentine’s Day. What do you think? Click on image to enlarge etc. Click here to see the old 2007 version on YouTube etc etc.]
After a very hectic year, I am pleased to say things seem to be calming down again [Yes, that would explain the recent rash of new cartoons. Mentally regrouping etc].
Three years ago, if you said my main gig would be selling wine to British supermarket chains, I would have said you were nuts. Funny how life takes you in all sorts of wonderfully unexpected directions.
My main focus for the next few months will be on drawing more cartoons and organizing more Stormhoek geek dinners. Everything else will take a definite back seat, at least on this blog. So like I said last week, if you have a UK-based geek dinner or event planned, and you think some of our wine would enhance the proceedings, please drop me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do. Thanks Again.
