Archive for December, 2008
December 29, 2008
8 Comments
[Update: Video of me signing the first artist’s proof.]
[“Bluetrain”- the new gapingvoid print. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Update: Bluetrain is already sold out. Thanks, Everybody!]
The print is an edition of eighty-five. So far seventy-five are accounted for, including the few I’m keeping for myself. Sales were pretty brisk right up until everything closed down for Christmas. I’m still a bit stunned about how well this wee adventure has gone, frankly.
So now I have ten left for sale. Full details are here.
For the last ten, the price is $250 each, which far less than I think we’ll be selling the next edition for. Hope that’s OK with y’all.
Again, THANK YOU ALL for supporting this random act of insanity on my part. Rock on.
[UPDATE:] By the time I had finished writing this very short post, the number left was down to eight prints. 15 minutes later, that number was down to seven. Wow. [UPDATE:] One hour later– only five left. w00t. [UPDATE:] Fifteen minutes later– only four left. Eek! [UPDATE:] Five minutes later– only three left. Ummm… [UPDATE:] Next Morning– SOLD OUT!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!
December 25, 2008
32 Comments
[“Worship Ye”. Drawn in 2006 etc.]
Merry Christmas!
A lot has happened in the last year. Here are some random notes:
1. The two biggest events that happened for me in the last year were [A] moving from London, England to Alpine, Texas and [B] starting my art business. The Alpine thing has been far more successful than I could ever have predicted. The art thing is still in its early days, so watch this space. And, of course, Thanks for the support!
2. I’m not claiming that Texas is Paradise, but it’s always been good to me here. Really good. I liked the Texans since the first day I moved here with my parents, aged ten.
3. My business is really based in New York City, my second-favorite place in the USA, after Texas. I go there once a month to take care of stuff; the rest of the time I’m here in the high West Texas desert, drawing and working [cartooning really isn’t work for me, he said, somewhat embarrassed].
4. My overheads in Alpine are about one fifth of what I was paying in London. I get a LOT more bang for the buck here.
5. Freedom is expensive. I found that out the hard way. Though it’s not as expensive as Slavery. I learned that the hard way, too.
6. The creative life is uneven. You have a few short bursts of genius now and then, the rest of the time you’re trying SOMEHOW to get the magic back again, mostly without success. It’s exhausting. I am exhausted, often.
7. My cartoons are what they are. I’m never going to get better, I’m never going to get worse. If you don’t like them, fuck off.
8. I never competed with other cartoonists. Musicians have always been my real competition. Make of that what you will.
9. I’m going to be dead in x number of years. So are you. What do we do in the meantime? Me? I try to love. I try to draw. I try to find the people and the work that inspires me. I try to stay grateful. I try to take care of business. You?
10. Dear God, I just want to say “Thanks” for this brief life you have given me. I tried to do something meaningful with it. I really did. Thank You. Merry Christmas! Seriously.
December 23, 2008
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6 Comments
[Update: Video of me signing the first artist’s proof.]
[“Bluetrain”- the new gapingvoid print. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[UPDATE: 30th December. “Bluetrain” is now sold out. Thanks, Everybody!]
On December 4th, I announced I was going into the fine art print business, pretty much full-time, if all goes well.
Like I said earlier, the first edition will be coming out in mid-January.
I also said that the first twenty people who sent me an e-mail could buy the print at $175– once the print is made, the price will be around the $250-$300 mark.
To be honest, at the time I thought twenty wasn’t a very conservative number– I was thinking if ten or twelve took me up on the offer by Christmas, that would be pretty amazing.
As soon as I posted the offer up on the blog, I went out for dinner. By the time I came back two hours later, 24 people had already taken me up on it. Within 24 hours, the number was closer to 40.
Not bad for a limited edition of only 85, don’t you think? We’re talking about people buying something “Sight Unseen”- something that RARELY happens in the art business.
As for the kind people who e-mailed early, but not early enough to make it on the “First Twenty” list, I thought it would be unfair on the “First Twenty” to give them the same discount. But at the same time, it would be a shame not to do something to reward them for being early adaptors. Hmmmm… You can see my dilemma. So in the end, I told them they could have one for $200– it’s still a pretty good discount. They seemed happy enough with that, so all well and good.
The second thing I did was to let the First Twenty vote on which image they wanted to see printed up. I gave them a choice of three designs, the image above, “Bluetrain”, won the majority vote, so that’s the one we’re going with.
About the piece in question: It’s called “Bluetrain”, because yes, it’s largely colored blue, and also because it’s a re-working of the head cartoon in my business manifesto, The Hughtrain, which of course, was in turn named after one of my favorite books, The Cluetrain. “Blue Trane” is also the name of one of my favorite jazz albums. So it all fits together, somehow.
It’ll be a fairly standard poster size, approx 18x24”. They’ll all be personally signed and numbered in pencil, by myself. We’re also using a specialist fine art printmaker in New York City for the job, not a general commercial printer.
I decided to use color simply because I didn’t want to just blow up the original, black & white, bizcard-sized cartoon to poster-sized. I wanted to make it look totally new and different, yet totally the same and familiar. As for the “Pop” sensibilty, well, I am a cartoonist, so go figure…
Since that first big splash of interest from the First Twenty, we’ve had a steady stream of people signing up. There’s only about 20 left unsold in this edition, so if you’re still interested in having one of them, please send me an email as soon as you can [Thanks!]: gapingvoid@gmail.com
I hope y’all are as excited by this new venture of mine as I am. As always, thanks for your support, none of this would be possible without you. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
[UPDATE:] ONLY THREE PRINTS LEFT! Price IS $250 for the last ten.
December 22, 2008
15 Comments
For the greater part of the last decade, I have been using the internet to build what I’m fond of calling, “The Global Microbrand”.
A small, tiny brand, that “sells” all over the world.
The Global Microbrand is nothing new; they’ve existed for a while, long before the internet was invented. Imagine a well-known author or painter, selling his work all over the world. Or a small whisky distillery in Scotland. Or a small cheese maker in rural France, whose produce is exported to Paris, London, Tokyo etc. Ditto with a violin maker in Italy. A classical guitar maker in Spain. Or a small English firm making $50,000 shotguns.
Here are some more thoughts, in no particular order of importance:
1. I think in many ways, the artist is the ultimate global microbrand. She just does her thing from wherever; if she’s any good and fortune favors her work, her stuff is suddenly being seen, read or heard all around the world, without her having to leave her studio too much. Nice work if you can get it.
2. The good news is, so far it’s gone extremely well for me. The bad news is, it has taken me forever to this point. Better late than never, I suppose.
3. I’ve had the most success helping to build Global Microbrands for other people, most notably, English Cut and Stormhoek. The idea that I should start applying what I know about this world to my own, commercial products, didn’t really kick in till earlier this year. Though business has been busy enough so far [and getting busier by the day], it’s still a strange feeling for me. Seems like it’s easier to promote other people’s stuff than one’s own stuff. You don’t take it so personally, somehow.
4. Being an artist has three main components– 1. Making the actual work 2. Running the business and 3. Promoting the business. It’s REALLY hard to do all three at the same time. It’s EQUALLY hard to find people who can take over some of the duties and responsibilities of 2 and 3. Good people who actually know what they’re doing are rare and expensive.
5. I made my best work when I was relatively cold, hungry and desperate. This kind of experience tends to make one very unapologetic, years later, when the “success” eventually arrives.
6. Having a global microbrand is not about being “famous”. It’s about having a serious, almost tribe-like connection with a number of people who want to buy into what you’re doing. If you’re selling $5000, hand-made suits like Thomas Mahon, that number only needs to be a hundred or so. If you’re selling $20 books or music CDs, that number needs to be much larger. I’m somewhere in the middle, because my work has a lot of price points– from the $16.29 price tag of my upcoming book, to the x-hundred-dollar prints I’m working on, to the five-figures I plan to sell my large paintings for [Yes, I’ve already been offered that for “DesertManhattan”, even though it’s still far from completion]. Somewhere early on I decided 10,000 people for me was the magic number. I may be wrong on that, though…
7. I don’t believe in overnight success [mainly because it has yet to happen to me, or anyone I know]. I believe on building my “tribe”, one person at a time. I also think that having a definite number in mind re. how large you want your tribe to be, is extremely helpful.
8. Results may vary depending on who you are and what you’re selling, but I have always found it easier to find one tribe member willing you give you $1000, than it is to find 1000 tribe members willing to give you one dollar. The downside to that is, the more expensive and exclusive your product, the harder it is to scale further. Somewhere in there lies the sweet spot. If you find it, let me know.
9. You see this a lot, in the blogosphere particularly: People with great products but no tribe to speak of [Daniel Edlen of VinylArt fame springs immediately to mind], and people with large tribes, but no real compelling product to speak of. Again, it’s all about finding the sweet spot.
10. I didn’t really start building my tribe till I was well into my thirties, when blogs and Web 2.0 came along. It was a medium “I just got” right away. Man, how I wish the internet came along twenty years sooner; it would’ve made my life a lot easier in those early days.
11. Though I didn’t have the term for it back then, back in college I always knew a “Global Microbrand” was what I wanted eventually. I always knew I was never cut out to be the corporate, office-worker kinda guy. I gave the latter an honest try, and it was a complete disaster. Like I said, better late than never.
12. If your Global Microbrand succeeds, it’s not because of the brand’s functionality per se, it’s because what you’re doing gives the end user something to believe in. To me, that’s always been pretty obvious, some folk still find it a difficult idea to process.
[UPDATE: Just added this blog post to “Evil Plans”.
December 19, 2008
4 Comments
Messing around with my Tablet PC again; a wee purple number based on a sketch I did a few weeks ago in Amsterdam. Rock on.
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[Click on image to enlarge etc.…]
This is a close-up section of one of the new litho’s I’ve designed. This section covers maybe 20 – 25% of the entire area of the piece. Just giving y’all a teaser etc.
Been spending a lot of time learning about printing, and the printing business over the last couple of weeks…
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[Yeah, well, I was messing around with my Tablet PC today.…]
December 18, 2008
13 Comments
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
A few weeks ago my buddy over at Edelman Europe, David Brain commissioned me to draw a PR-related cartoon for an ad they were running. Though like all commercial illustration gigs, there were a few changes made in the end, I liked my first offering so much I decided to just go ahead and blog it here.
There are some new ideas in there, and some old ones I borrowed from my attic, most notably our friend, the ever-cheerful and optimistic Social Media Specialist. A lot of the ideas were inspired by the interview I did with David back in early November.
Considering how tight the deadline was at the time, the project turned out rather well. I was happy, so was David. Hopefully Richard Edelman was, too. Rock on.
December 16, 2008
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December 14, 2008
33 Comments
[I’m thinking this would make a good t-shirt. Or maybe a framed litho? Let me know…]
December 10, 2008
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Drawn live at Le Web Paris.
It’s been an intense but fun couple of days. Looking forward to flying back to Texas tomorrow.
December 6, 2008
37 Comments
[This cartoon I drew this morning pretty much sums it up…]
For the last six months or so, I’ve been trying to get my head around Dell. Trying to see what they’re good at, what they’re not so good at, and seeing if there’s a way that maybe, just maybe, I could help them in some small way become a better company.
But it’s been a somewhat arduous process. Progress has been slow. Not because anyone’s done anything wrong– on their side or mine– it’s just a big nut I’m trying to crack here. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Today I had a bit of an EUREKA! moment.
I like Dell. They are good friends of mine. They’ve been good clients to me. Big Kudos all round. They have a lot of good qualities. For example:
They’re very good at being efficient.
They are very nice people, for the most part.
They have a very tenacious streak to them.
They seem to frown on what they consider to be needless extravagance. They’re frugal.
They’re very practically minded. They like numbers, they don’t like getting too excited about all this airy-fairy, new-age marketing pixie dust.
They are driven to constantly create great products.
They are driven to constantly create a better company and culture. They figure that if they don’t keep raising the bar, somebody else will do it for them.
Nothing I have seen there with my own two eyes would lead me to believe otherwise. All well and good.
But one word I’m going to keep of the list: “Creative”.
Of course Dell has tons of creative people working for them. Of course they’re always “creating” great stuff. Of course there’s huge reservoirs of creative capital, teeming away in those large glass building of theirs.
But if I randomly asked you to make a list of the world’s top ten most “Creative” companies, would Dell make it on to the list? I’m guessing, for most people reading this, they simply wouldn’t.
Yes. I happen think this is a SERIOUSLY huge problem.
What needs to happen for Dell to be a more “Creative” company? What would need to change in order to get Dell onto that Top Ten List? What EXACTLY is involved?
The good news is, this is a huge opportunity. For both Dell, myself, and anybody else who actually cares about this kind of stuff.
Man, I’m excited now. Rock on.
December 4, 2008
10 Comments
1. Sometime in the next few weeks I shall be releasing my first big, proper edition of signed, fine-art lithographs.
2. These will not be sponsored “social objects” from Stormhoek, Microsoft or whatever. These will be for sale. Cash. Moolah. Via this blog. No galleries.
3. They will be high quality. Very high quality.
4. I plan on using color for the first one, maybe black and white in the future– though I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet.
5. It’ll be an edition of 85 prints. I’m not planning on selling them all. I want to hold on to some of them, for posterity’s sake.
6. They’ll all be signed and numbered by hand, by me.
7. I plan to be blogging a lot about the whole process in the next few weeks. As with any new adventure, a lot of stuff still needs to be figured out long-term– I hope by talking about it with everybody, it’ll help me make better artistic decisions.
8. Though my work covers a lot of different themes and emotional states, for this first one I’ll be focusing more on the business-culture, Hughtrain sensibility. I want the print to be the kind of thing you’d want to hang up in your office.
9. This is not some groovy little side project for me. This enterprise is going to be a major part of my life over the next few years. Just letting you know.
10. We’ll be printing them up in mid-January. If you want to get in early, I’m going to make 20 prints available; you can pre-order one before the printing date for $175. Just ping me an e-mail. After they are printed the price goes up, to around the $250 – 300 range.
11. Thanks Again.
[Update:] Just got back from dinner. Tired. So far I have 24 requests for the 20 pre-orders. Looks like I may have to disappoint 4 people. Long day. Going to bed. Will talk in the morning. Thanks, Everybody!
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[Loren interviewing me earlier this afternoon etc.]
Loren Feldman just broke the news over on his site. Looks like we’re working together. Oh, Dear…
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[This cartoon now belongs to Amrita Chandra, a gallery owner up in Toronto.]
December 2, 2008
9 Comments
[The Techcrunch Party print from 2007.]
I’ve been spending a lot of time this week, researching and talking to fine art print shops. Like I said a few weeks ago, I’m planning to spend more time in the print business.
This development has been a long time coming. In the last twenty years, I’ve drawn thousands of cartoons and shared them with tens of thousands of people, which has slowly built up what I believe to be a reasonably-sized commercial market for my work.
Besides that, I’ve been living in the West Texas desert for over nine months, and I’m finding drawing cartoons is far more aligned to that way of life, than being an “internet marketing guy” or whatever. Like a painter friend of mine told me the other week, “There’s not much to do out here, except make art and drink beer.“
Being a full-time cartoonist is still not something I ever plan on doing, but life has been pulling me more and more in that direction for a while, almost against my will. Maybe one day I’ll get tired of resisting it, who knows?
Wish me luck, anyway…
December 1, 2008
6 Comments
[Close-up of DesertManahattan. India Ink on Canvas… gorgeous. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Let me say it one more time: “Purpose-Ideas are articulated via Social Objects, not Messages.“
Click on the links in the above sentence to see what I’m talking about [especially Link Number Three].
Mark Earls says the future of advertising is not in messages. Which means if you’re currently in advertising, you’ll be asking yourself, what IS the post-message future? At the moment, you get paid to craft messages. So what will you craft in their place?
Short answer: Social Gestures.
As I’m fond of repeating, Social Gestures beget Social Objects.
Exactly.
