The “A Story [Blue]” print is now available as a pre-publication offer: $245.00
This print is different than the ones I’ve done to date. It has a sort of Abstract-Expressionist feel to it, as I felt that was more in keeping with the sentiment. It’s a beautiful thought, one of my favorites. “A story without Love is not worth telling.” Like Saint Paul wrote to The Corinthians, “Without Love, I am nothing.” The best stories are about things we care about, told to the people we care about. This is true whether we’re talking fiction, fact, people, ideas or yes, the story about the business you’re trying to get off the ground. Love matters. People matter. Everything else is secondary. Amen to that.
With many people saying that small is beautiful, we will be editioning this in a slightly smaller format. Still a hand-pulled serigraph, by Master Printmaker, Jamie, printed on heavy French Rives Arche Paper. Hand-signed and numbered by me. We won’t know the actual size until we proof the image, but I’d estimate it will be 18“x24” or so.
The print will be posted on the gallery page soon enough, selling at $450.00, but for now, it’s only available here exclusively on my blog for the special pre-order price of $275.00.
Just click on the $50 PayPal Deposit button above to secure your order. We’ll invoice you for the rest once they’re printed and ready to ship, which should be late October.
We’re now also offering a lovely framing deal, where we frame it properly for you for an extra $125, so you can hang it right out of the box. We’ll post the details on the gallery once the print is up on there, and also e-mail you the details along with the invoice etc.
Anyway, I hope you like it. As always, I love receiving the pictures of the hanging art in people’s homes and offices, so please keep them coming, Thanks!
I was quite amused by this, in a weird kinda way.
A few days ago, some groovy cat in Japan spotted my book in a bookshop in some town I’d never heard of before.
And he went and took this picture of Page Sixty Four. Why Page Sixty Four? I have no idea. I guess that’s what intrigued me.
[I saved the photo right then, I went back to try to find the link a few days later but couldn’t find it, sorry…]
Some random dude in a Japanese bookstore. Some random cartoonist in West Texas, with an equally random book serving as asocial object in a now hyper-connected world.
I told a fellow author the other day, “If your book isn’t a social object, your book isn’t selling. End of story.”
He scratched his head for a minute, so then I filled him in all about “Baked-In Sociality.” He got it, then.
And the Internet makes all this far more apparent than it ever was before, of course.
I got this story from Derek Sivers, about a musician who bought a quarter-page ad in a big magazine. The magazine had a circulation of a million readers:
The musician had pressed up 10,000 copies of his CD in anticipation of 10,000 orders that were sure to come through that week.
He kept saying, “If only one percent of the people reading this magazine buy my CD… that’ll be 10,000 copies! And that’s only one percent!”
He bought 10,000 padded mailers and mailing labels. He converted his garage into a big mailing center.
He kept saying, “Maybe we can get like 10 percent! That’s 100,000! But worst case scenario, if only 1 percent… that’s still awesome!”
The magazine issue came out, and… Nothing. He bought an issue. There was his ad. But the orders were not coming in! Was something wrong? No. He tested it. Everything was working.
Over the next few weeks he received four orders. Total CDs sold: FOUR.
My friend telling the story ends it with the best line:
“He forgot there was a number lower than one percent.”
[Untitled. Ink on cardboard, business-card size etc.]
Alpine, Texas.
I’m always on the lookout for new things that inspire me; it’s part of my job. Here’s one to add to the list:
It was last March or so, just after I had gotten back home from SXSW Interactive ’09 in Austin.
I was drinking a beer at The Railroad Blues, like I often do. Instead of the usual Blues, Country and “American Roots” bands they were used to having, the band playing that night was a young Indie/Powerpop/Alternative group from Limerick, Ireland, called “We Should Be Dead”. Female lead singer, female lead guitar, male drummer and bass. Average age, I’d say, was around 24.
Now, Celtic Indie/Powerpop/Alternative is not exactly the kind of music I’m into (Imagine “The Cranberries meet The Go-Go’s” etc). But man, I was so impressed with these kids. They sang and played their hearts out. Not to mention, there were a lot of cowboys and shitkickers in the crowd that evening– not a crowd you want to piss off. Everyone– including the cowboys and shitkickers– were impressed by how gutsy and fearless these kids were.
The lead singer, a tiny, skinny girl around five-foot-two, would get off the stage in the middle of a number and walk around the crowd, singing into her mike, with these broad-shouldered cowboys, wearing handlebar mustaches, ten gallon hats and boots, TOWERING above her. Like I said, fearless. So even if the music was a bit alien to what people were normally used to, they still got a lot of people whoopin’ and a’hollerin’ that night. It was a great show. Months later and people are still talking about it.
I got talking to their manager– a stocky, Irish dude in his forties. It turns out, though they were now on tour, they hadn’t planned it that way. They had only come over for SXSW originally, and were planning to return to Ireland right after.
Then somehow while in Austin, the manager made some connections, and the next thing you know, the band were headed West to California, ready and willing to play in every dive bar and dance hall along the way that would let them. Hiring a van, throwing their instruments and amplifiers in the back, living on a few bucks a day plus gas money, sleeping rough if they had to.
And they were going to keep on doing it, till they had spent their last nickel, till they had burned their last drop of gas. Only then, and not before, would they fly back home.
Sure, they could have gone back to Ireland instead, and continue being a fixture around the local pub n’ club circuit. No, they wanted to bust out of that routine– and here was their chance. Not a huge chance, but a chance nonetheless. And they were going for it, no questions asked. Like the equally tiny-skinny lead guitarist told me in her cute little Limerick accent, “We don’t want to go home. We want to keep doing this forever.”
Would you be willing to put in that kind of effort and commitment, to make your business a success? How willing to “sleep rough” are you? Are you that brave? Am I?
God Bless ‘em…
[UPDATE: You can follow the kids over on Twitter at @weshouldbedead. Looks like they’re now based in L.A. Looks like their EVIL PLAN worked! Rock on…]
Dave would always be telling me stories about this lovely person– this rather eccentric, crazy-ass artist, living out in the boondocks, who’d he go visit once or twice a year.
“This rather eccentric, crazy-ass artist, living out in the boondocks,” I remember telling myself, “I want that guy’s job one day.”
I admit it was a weird thing for a twenty-something advertising guy to be aspiring to, but I genuinely felt that this was where I wanted to be headed in the long run. I never really told anybody about it (until now, even). I just kept it to myself: a strange dream which back then, I firmly believed would never happen.
Fast forward over 15 years later, and I’m starting to feel that I was wrong, that the dream is finally starting to come true. I’ve been in Alpine, Texas for just under two years, and I think I’m here to stay. My big-city days are well and truly over. Every day, I can feel myself becoming more and more like Howard.
I believe the next phase of my life has begun. I believe after many decades of being distracted by social convention, I’m finally becoming the person I was born to be.
[Me holding up one of the Purple Cows, right after they were printed. An exciting day for all concerned, indeed…]
[UPDATE: The 6-9pm signing party is now fully booked. Sorry about that. However, if you want to RSVP via email at gapingvoidvip@gmail.com, we can put you on the waiting list, or just RSVP for the 9pm-12pm after-party: it’ll still be fun, and we still have plenty of room left for that. Thanks!][UPDATE: Space is running pretty tight on the 9pm after-party as well, so please RSVP ASAP, Thanks!]
When we were looking around for venues to host The Purple Cow print-signing party, the obvious thing to do was to talk to some New York art galleries about hiring their venue for the evening. And so we did.
These conversations, however, soon got old. It wasn’t that we didn’t have the budget– we did– and it wasn’t that they weren’t nice enough people– they were– it was just this nagging feeling I was getting.
The fact is, I’ve been to maybe hundreds of art openings over the years. And my main take out from that? People don’t like them. People are never at their best at them. Everybody’s invariably hanging around, looking awkward, looking down at their feet, trying hard not to say anything stupid.
I never liked that socially oppressive aspect of art gallery openings, and I never assumed I was so special, that this exact same phenomenon wouldn’t be happening here again.
So I said, to hell with it. I don’t want people looking down at their feet. Not at my show. I had such a good time at my last New York tweetup, so let’s just use that venue instead. The ilili Bar, just north of Union Square. Easy.
This morning I awoke to find my inbox FLOODED with other, new commission requests. Wow. I guess people liked what they saw.
Looks like things are going to be busy around here… No, wait, things are ALREADY busy around here. Whatever.
I like the commissioned work. It means I don’t have to drive 200 miles to El Paso airport and hop on a flight to Chicago. It means I don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on a silkscreen job. It means I don’t have to mess around with a PowerPoint deck, or proofread a book manuscript.
Just me, a few pens, some paper, a Tablet PC, an internet connection, a pot of strong coffee, and I’m in business.
Of course, if commissions were all I was doing, day in, day out, I’d be bored shitless within a month. The fact is, I like the flights to Chicago; I like the silkscreen jobs, the proofreading and the PowerPoint decks. I like the conferences and the speaking gigs. I like to keep mixing it up, even if yeah, it does exhaust me sometimes.
The problem with being an artist isn’t the art. It’s the crazy, unrelenting, over-extended existence that comes with it.
The groovy cats over at Shit Creek Consulting commissioned me to design them their own “Cube Grenade”. After looking at the half-dozen or so ideas I presented to them, they chose the one above. I believe they’re looking to use it for their business cards, for example.
Shit Creek are a Microsoft Gold Partner. It seems a big part of their business is coming in and cleaning up the mess left behind by the large tech consultancies [I’m not naming any names]. So that’s the idea I ran with.
The name of their company implies they have a lot of attitude. They wanted a cartoon that conveyed this. Easy. It was a fantastic commission and I’m very happy with the cartoon they chose.
I’m looking to take on more of these kinds of commission. Feel free to e-mail me if you think you could use my work, Thanks.
The rumors are true. I’ve landed a second book deal.You can go see the details here. Same publisher and editorial team as my first book, IGNORE EVERYBODY. The title of the second book will be called, you guessed it, “EVIL PLANS”.
EVIL PLANS had an interesting genesis. I was just tooling around with some ideas on the blog, which all ended up being collectively piled onto the EVIL PLANS page, just like what happened with the original web version of IGNORE EVERYBODY. Somebody at my publisher’s saw the blog page, got really excited by it, printed it out, and went to show everybody else on the Editorial team. Next thing you know, my agent gets a phone call from them.
Up until that point, I hadn’t submitted any book ideas to anyone– not even my agent– mainly because I didn’t really think I had any to submit. This was only a month or so after IGNORE EVERYBODY had come out in June 2009, and I was planning on giving myself at least another six to twelve months before giving another book idea much thought. Events proved otherwise.
I remember when IGNORE EVERYBODY was just taking shape as a book idea, and me thinking, “Wow, I think I can do this.” It was an exciting feeling. I’m glad it still feels that way.
Thanks to Adrian, Jillian, Will and Maureen over at Penguin/Portfolio for giving me a crack at it. Thanks to my agent, Lisa, for negotiating the deal on my behalf. Rock on.
I will do more large pieces in the future, I believe. Just not too many of them. Maybe one or two a year. Unless people start commissioning them, of course…
It has never been easier to make a great living, doing what you love.
But to make it happen, first you need an “EVIL PLAN”.
But how does one go about finding and executing their own EVIL PLAN? And besides, why should any one want to?
I’ll tell you why:
Like the old Scottish proverb says, “Be happy while you’re living, for you’re a long time dead.”
Life is too short not to have an EVIL PLAN. Life is too short not to do something that matters. Life is too short to sleepwalk through it, hoping, dreaming, but never quite waking up. Life is too short not to become the person you were born to be.
[UPDATE: The 6-9pm signing party is now fully booked. Sorry about that. However, if you want to RSVP via email at gapingvoidvip@gmail.com, we can put you on the waiting list, or just RSVP for the 9pm-12pm after-party: it’ll still be fun, and we still have plenty of room left for that. Thanks!]
Here’s the invitation for the Purple Cow Party on October 8th. Full details here.
Space is limited, so the first 100 people who e-mail an RSVP to gapingvoidvip@gmail.com will be allowed in 6-9pm [PLEASE NOTE: IT’S A DIFFERENT E-MAIL TO MINE etc.]. There will be more room for people after 9pm, so if you miss being one of the first 100, come after that.
If you wish to bring a guest please remember to include their name in your RSVP. Also, if you could specify whether you’re hoping to come before or after 9pm, that would be great, thanks.
The party goes on to midnight or so. Seth Godin, sadly, won’t be there the whole time. He likes to turn in early.
[CONFIRMED:] The print party will be held at Ilili, 6pm-Late, on 8th October, 2009.
The restaurant will be supplying food, Stormhoek will be supplying wine. Plus there will be a cash bar, if you’d rather have beer or liquor.
[The Purple Cow Print. Click on image to enlarge etc.] Seth Godin and I will be there, signing more Purple Cow prints. Plus I’ll have some more of my art on display & for sale.
It’ll be a fun evening. A good opportunity for Seth and gapingvoid readers to meet & greet, and concoct EVIL PLANS for world domination. I can’t wait! Rock on.
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.]
Just thinking outloud…
AFTERTHOUGHT: I don’t think I’d want to be in the shirt business per se. That being said, a fun t-shirt now and again for my hardcore blog readers wouldn’t be a bad thing. Again, just thinking outloud…
Some people like choosing their own frames, some people like hanging the print right out of the box. Which is why we’re now offering both options over on the gapingvoid Gallery. It’s all good. Rock on.
[Update:] Dan asked me in the comments if the framed prints are insured when they ship. Short Answer: Yes. And the unframed ones, as well.
[One of my favorite early ones. Laminated. February 1998, NYNY. Funny, it was drawn on the back of this business card a certain girl gave me. She and I never saw each other again after that evening, in spite of what transpired in the back of the taxi.]
In the comments of my recent blog post, “Thoughts On Being An Artist”, John T. Unger said something that really struck me:
The thing about working as an artist is that you never realize how much of the work is on top of making the actual art. I was remembering how when I started out, I would visit the studios of more established artists and couldn’t begin to grasp how they ran the show. It’s taken years to slowly put each piece in place. Every day there’s new problems to solve, but if you can solve them in a way that sticks— so that from now on that issue is covered, eventually you come up with an efficient system for supporting the most important work you do, which is the art.
I guess this is pretty much true with all businesses, no? It’s not the thing you make and sell that is the problem, it’s the thousands of other things that spring up around it…
I’m starting to think that writing about a lot of issues that artists have to deal with, would be interesting to a lot of other people, besides just other artists.
Artists– successful ones, anyway– have to create stuff out of thin air, then somehow find a way to sell it at a profit.
The Art Purists will be horrified to hear this, but yeah, you really do need the mind of entrepreneur and a marketer to be able to do that.
“Artists cannot market” is complete crap. Warhol was GREAT at marketing. As was Picasso and countless other “Blue Chips”. Of course, they’d often take the “anti-marketing” stance as a form of marketing themselves. And their patrons lapped it up.
The way artists market themselves is by having a great story, by having a “Myth”. Telling anecdotal stories about Warhol, Pollack, Basquiat, Van Gogh is both (A) fun and (B) has a mythical dimension… if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have had movies made about them. The art feeds the myth. The myth feeds the art.
Sometime during the last year, I suddenly found myself somehow able to make a living from my drawings. Here are some notes:
1. I love it. Why the hell wouldn’t I?
2. “90% of success is showing up.” Like the famous British artist, Tracy Emin once said, “You don’t get to be Tracy Emin by being a slacker.” One thing you learn from befriending successful artists like Hazel Dooney or John T. Unger is JUST HOW HARD they keep at it, just to keep the show on the road. Insane. You can never turn the switch off. Doesn’t happen. Nor would you want it to.
3. I still don’t much like the word “Artist” to describe myself, but I’m getting more OK with it. I still like the word, “Cartoonist”, but I feel myself outgrowing that, somehow. The good news is, I’m not sure if any of this matters in the grand scheme of things.
4. “Good ideas have lonely childhoods”. There are a few art folk out there, trying to conquer this new Web 2.0 world of ours– Hazel, John T., Mary Anne Davis, Amrita on the gallery side, and a couple of others– but the number of people who REALLY GET IT still seems surprisingly tiny. Still, you could say the same thing about bloggers, ten years ago. It’s still early days.
5. Slavery is expensive. Riddle: Hang out in any gallery scene in any big city for long enough– New York, London, Chicago, Sydney, Los Angeles– and what do you see? Answer: The same frickin’ people. Most gallery scenes exist to supply free wine for the hangers-on, NOT to connect artists with collectors. The occasional (and increasingly rare) art star is the exception to prove the rule. Why artists still enslave themselves to an outmoded gallery model that proves itself ineffective IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF CASES still baffles me. It’s not as if the wine is ever that good, to begin with.
6. I’m spending less time asking, “Who are my readers?” and more time asking, “Who are my users?” Funny how having a proper business to run changes everything…
7. I haven’t forgotten about the books.I’m still writing away, having fun. Don’t see myself stopping, anytime soon.
8. It’s getting increasingly harder to wear so many hats. As the market demands more and more drawings from me, other sides to my business– consulting etc.- get harder to make time for. That being said, I am wondering what I’ve learned as an artist that could be helpful to other types of businesses. It’s something I think about a lot, these days.
[UPDATE:] John T. Unger left a great comment below:
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately too. Yesterday in the studio I was just kind of blown away by how much my life as an artist has changed with success. The day was punctuated by trucks arriving to bring pallets, trucks coming to haul away tons of scrap for recycling, trucks picking up art to ship, orders for more materials to complete a 22 piece sale of firebowls that will go to Norway, an interview, a conference call for a major hotel project, etc. if you’d told me I’d be operating like this five years ago I might not have believed it despite the fact that I always had faith that my art was worth pursuing.
The thing about working as an artist is that you never realize how much of the work is on top of making the actual art. I was remembering how when I started out, I would visit the studios of more established artists and couldn’t begin to grasp how they ran the show. It’s taken years to slowly put each piece in place. Every day there’s new problems to solve, but if you can solve them in a way that sticks— so that from now on that issue is covered, eventually you come up with an efficient system for supporting the most important work you do, which is the art.
I’ve got some support staff now, but still, most of the work and most of the problem solving comes down to me. I like to keep it close to hand… but the only way to do that is to work long hours, get organized as hell, and meet every deadline early. The weird thing maybe is learning that the better I get at getting things done, the more I do. I seem to just keep taking on more and more projects and finding time to do all of them by increasing the efficiency of how I do them.
It’s a crazy circus, but I’ve never loved life more.
The groovy cats over at Shit Creek Consulting commissioned me to design them their own “Cube Grenade”. After looking at the half-dozen or so ideas I presented to them, they chose the one above. I believe they’re looking to use it for their business cards, for example.
Shit Creek are a Microsoft Gold Partner. It seems a big part of their business is coming in and cleaning up the mess left behind by the large tech consultancies [I’m not naming any names]. So that’s the idea I ran with.
The name of their company implies they have a lot of attitude. They wanted a cartoon that conveyed this. Easy. it was a fantastic commission and I’m very happy with the cartoon they chose.
I’m looking to take on more of these kinds of commission. Feel free to e-mail me if you think you could use my work, Thanks.
I sent the above cartoon in high-rez format to everybody who subscribes to my CDF Newsletter. So they can put it on their desktop, print it out as a “Cube Grenade” etc. etc.
I had this idea of making certain high-rez cartoons “CDF-only”. A way of me saying “Thanks” for their support etc.
I’m not really publishing new high-rez cartoons on the blog these day. For now, you’ll need to sign up to the newsletter for that. Though, who knows, I may change my mind back again. It’s all a work in progress…
[UPDATE: Laura tells me that a total of £300,000 GBP was raised that evening. Hurrah! She also told me that my print was finally auctioned for £1,300 GBP (approx $2100 USD), and was the most heavily bid-on piece of the event! Very cool.]
Laura, who handles PR, Marketing & Sales for Gapingvoid Gallery, is currently in London, visiting family.
Through her efforts, we donated one of my prints, “We Need To Talk” to a lovely cause: “Liver Good Life”. As Laura explained in an email to me:
The“We Need To Talk Talk” print will be auctioned at Christie’s tonight. This is part of an effort to raise money to build a new research centre at King’s College Hospital in London. Professor Giorgina Vergani is the head of the unit and renowned expert in the field of paediatric liver disease, treatment and research. She is an exceptional woman, she has known me since I was 3 years old.
Jazzy de Lisser is seventeen years old and was born with Hepatitis C, she is a patient of Professor Vergani’s, she is the founder of Liver Good Life, she is hoping to raise money for a new research centre at King’s College Hospital. They need £1.8m investment to create this new research centre that will enable King’s Scientists to realise their vision of discovering what triggers certain liver diseases and organ rejection, and pioneer new targeted treatments.
The committee list for this charity is notable — Sir Elton John, Thandie Newton, Rachel Weisz, Giorgio Locatelli, Mario Testino, Trudi Styler, Robbie Coltrane just to name a few…
The charity auction will take place today at Christie’s of London, the famous auction house. It’s a wonderful cause, and I’m delighted that gapingvoid can be a part of it. Kudos to Laura for setting it up. Thanks, Laura, you’re a rock star!
That smoker’s been there over 3o years, they tell me. And the guy who smokes the meat has been there even longer.
One more reason to love living out here.
People were quite surprised when I moved out to Alpine, nearly two years ago. They had gotten used to me being from New York or London.
But I had always imagined ending up somewhere like here eventually. It was just a case of waiting for both the Internet and the ol’ art career to reach a certain critical mass. When that day finally arrived, the move happened rather quickly.
And it could not have happened at a better time. In the last few months business has gotten a lot more hectic. For reasons still unclear to me, the private commissions just started coming in faster and faster. Why now, I wonder? I don’t think I cold have coped with it nearly as well, living in a big city.
As I’m fond of saying, Success is more complex than Failure. This quiet, pared-down, unglamorous, low-maintenance West Texas life in the high desert seems to be my way of dealing with it.
EnglisCut.com was a blog I started with a Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon, back in January 2005. The enterprise proved tremendously successful– enough that the story has been retold many times in magazines, blogs, bestselling books and national media. Three years ago in London I gave a talk all about it– I thought it was now worth re-publishing the accompanying blog post I wrote at the time. Enjoy:
[Originally published here, September 21, 2006.]
MacLeod says he “started filling Mahon’s head with Cluetrain and blogging stuff,” and slowly Mahon got interested. “We started thinking that if Mahon could talk about tailoring on a blog about the same way that Seth Godin talks about marketing, then the people who care will see it. Mahon wouldn’t try to sell suits on the blog. Instead, he would show his knowledge and love of the craft. He would explain the labor, and materials involved and why the cost of each suit was justified.” The idea was that the people who cared either about suits or how a master craftsmen creates them would find their way to the site.
My father remarked to me the other day, “I bet you had no idea in the beginning that the blog would work as well as it did, eh?“
True, I had no idea. But looking back, we had a few things going for us.
1. A great product. Thomas is one of the best tailors in the world. His suits REALLY ARE that good. If we were just selling commodified drek, I doubt if anyone would’ve paid much attention. 2. A unique story. When he started, Thomas was the only Savile Row tailor writing a blog, and this gave him a unique voice in the blogosphere. This fuelled the interest. Had masses of tailors already been blogging, it would’ve been much harder for his own unique “idea-virus” to spread. The first-mover advantage rule still applies. 3. Passion & Authority. Thomas has both in spades. That’s what kept people coming back. That’s what built up trust. That’s what turned his readers into customers. Which is why “Share what you love” is the best advice there is. 4. Continuity. He kept at it. He didn’t expect the blog to transform his fortunes overnight. As I’m fond of saying, “Blogs don’t write themselves”. Based on our experience, if you want blogs to transform your business, I’d say give yourself at least a year. 5. Focus.It was always about the suits. It was never about what he had for breakfast, Technorati rank or frothy gossip about other bloggers. 6. Thomas spoke in his own voice. Thomas is a straightforward, affable fellow, and the voice on the blog is the same as the voice you meet in real life. He never tried to misrepresent himself on his blog, nor try to create some over-glamorized image of his profession. He just told it like it is. And people responded well to that. As he once put it, “We’re so lucky we don’t have to create the brand out of thin air. We just tell the truth and the brand builds itself.“ 7. Sovereignty. The only people we had to please were the two of us. No bosses or outside investors to keep happy. Bosses and investors like guarantees, but there aren’t any. 8. We were both broke when we started. Had we had masses of money at the beginning, we would have had a lot more options on how to get the word out. In all likelihood, these options would have been a lot more expensive and not nearly as effective. Sometimes lack of capital is a definite advantage.
A blog is a great way to build one’s own personal “global microbrand”. As the Job-For-Life no longer exists, as the value of the social “position” erodes and the value of the “project” takes its place, personal brand development becomes far more important to one’s career. Blogs are a good place to start. Hey, if a Savile Row tailor can do it, what’s your excuse?
Marfa One was 48“x48”. These new ones will be half those dimensions i.e. 24“x24”.
India Ink & acrylic on canvas. Maybe some pencil as well.
I’m calling these “The George Series”. George is a nice name. A friend of mine used to have a lovely dog named George etc.
[The beginnings of a “George”, with DesertManhattan (48“x96”) standing behind it etc.]
Keeping them simple, basic and raw. Not unlike my business-card cartoons or my Moleskines. Cartoons dancing with abstract etc. Social. Existential. Lyrical. The same philosophy behind them etc.
Like I said back in April, it’s what the art DOES that’s interesting to me, more than what it IS per se.
We’ve always seen the Kinetic Quality working in marketing, working with brands. “By buying Brand X, I feel hipper, cooler, sexier, more secure, more in control” etc etc. But what I’m finding out is, this also works with art. To me, the interesting thing about art is not the usual “Heroic, absinthe-soaked, vision quest lone individual archetypal artist crap”, but how the art is USED by the person who has it hanging on the wall. What’s it actually there for? Decoration? Showing off? A conversation starter? An ice breaker? A way of telling a story? Something to brighten up the room? A symbol of social status? An expression of individual worldview? An expression of emotion? A totem to remind oneself of something inspirational and/or important? Perhaps a bit of all these?
So I’m seeing two worlds collide here: The internal, solitary part of making the art, and the external social part of how the piece of art is actually used. Art? Used? Is art actually allowed to be “used”? Would the Art Police allow that? Instead of calling them “Patrons”, can we call art buyers “Users” instead? Would you be offended if I called you that? There’s no wrong answer…
Anyway, as always, I love it when y’all send in photos. Keep ‘em coming, Thanks! Rock on.
The “Nobody Cares” print, part of the Portfolio # 2 series, is now for sale individually over on the gapingvoid gallery site. Price: $100.00, signed and numbered. Rock on.
Probably the hardest thing for a young adult to learn is JUST HOW LITTLE the rest of the world cares about you. We’ve all been there, right? Took us forever to learn the hard way, right?
Hell, it’s still hard, even after you get older.
It’s REALLY hard for marketers, for some reason. So many of them waffle on endlessly on, like we’re actually paying attention. Or something.
But of course, once you’re able to Internalize “Nobody Cares”, it’s very liberating.
“There are roughly 20 people in your space who matter. They’re either reading your blog, or they’re not.”
I don’t know what industry you work in, but I do know that the number of people who “own the conversation” in your space is very, very small.
When I worked with English Cut, a Savile Row tailor [$5000 hand-made suits], the number was about twelve. When I worked with Stormhoek in the UK wine business, the number was probably even smaller [80% of the wine sold in the UK is from the same four or five large supermarket chains].
And by the time we were done, all the people who mattered to us in both these businesses were reading our blogs. We saw to it. We made sure it happened. We made sure “the conversation” was interesting enough that they really had no choice.
I would suggest that right this minute, you make a list of the twenty or so people in your space who matter. Then ask yourself, who on this list is actually reading your stuff, actually follows what you’re up to, actually knows that you exist?
If most of the people on the list are reading you, the others will follow. If they’re not, then you’ve got a wee bit of a marketing problem.
But at least now you know what that problem is…
[UPDATE:] I like what Gary Walter said in the comments below:
This […] goes right along with my philosophy of life. I needed the reminder though. As my blog has gotten more popular, I’ve found myself writing to the extended audience. However, if I’m not writing to/for my core, then nothing I write is worth the electrons that carry it.
Best Made make customized axes. Like it says on their webpage:
NOTHING WITHOUT AN AXE:
Every high-rise condo, luxury office, executive suite, ranch house, and farmstead must have an axe in it. We know that axes shouldn’t only be in the hands of lumberjacks: anyone and everyone should have an axe in their name. Put it in your cubicle, give it to your niece as a graduation present, or your dad for father’s day (or better yet mom for mother’s day), bring it to the company picnic, carry it to the door next time Jehovah’s Witness come knocking, or just lean it up against your living room wall and admire. An axe is indispensable and sublime, the epitome of self-reliance and independence, a perfect design object, a timeless instrument.
I swapped emails with one of the company’s founders, Graeme. Turns out he and his business partner, Peter, like myself, spent their teenage summers canoe-tripping up in Northern Ontario, where believe me, a good axe is both an indispensable and highly revered piece of kit. So that’s where the love comes from.
I’ve held one of their axes in my own two hands– beautifully made, lovely to hold and to look at.
Good luck to these folk, I say…
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.
[…]
Frankly, it beats the hell out of commuting every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city, something I did for many years. Just so I could make enough money to help me forget that I have to commute every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city.
There are thousands of reasons why people write blogs. But it seems to me the biggest reason that drives the bloggers I read the most is, we’re all looking for our own personal global microbrand. That is the prize. That is the ticket off the treadmill. And I don’t think it’s a bad one to aim for.
As I’ve been working on my next book, EVIL PLANS, it suddenly occurred to me, THIS is what I’ve been doing all along with gapingvoid these last eight years– trying to build my own global microbrand, and trying to help others do the same.
Like my old French buddy, Laurent Haug told me while we were sipping beers in Geneva, not long after I’d written the Global Microbrand Rant:
“You nailed, it, Man. You’re set for life.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Global Microbrand. You coined the term, now you own that conversation.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
“Everybody wants one, Hugh. That’s what we’re all chasing after.”
Laurent had a point. Looking back, it seems so glaringly obvious now…
Eureka. EVIL PLANS just got slightly more evil. Rock on.
CONFIRMED: The print party will be held at Ilili, where I had my last #NYCtweetup, 6pm-Late, on 8th October. [Click here for more details.]
Between 27th & 28th
236 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA
(212) 683‑2929 ililinyc.com
The restaurant will be supplying food, Stormhoek will be supplying wine. Plus there will be a cash bar, if you’d rather have beer or liquor. It’ll be a fun evening. Rock on.
“Spring ’98. I was at a bar, it was late, I was kinda tipsy.
Suddenly I realized that my life hadn’t changed much in the last decade since leaving college. Work, bars, cartoons, random conversations of a big-city nature, second-hand bookshops and art films, the occasional bout of random or regular sex to tide things over etc etc.
It wasn’t as interesting as it used to be. But I hadn’t moved on, really. And I had no idea where to go next.
Welcome to New York.
The best cartoons are the ones that give you these amazing moments of clarity as you draw them. That’s the best thing about cartooning, really. Everything else seems rather secondary in comparison.”
This is one of all-time favorite cartoons. Though I wouldn’t call it “The story of my life” much these days, back in New York… Oh, yeah. Ouch.
Good! Homes are less likely to *need* brightening the way offices do. I can brighten my home just by making toast.
Whether we’re talking wee cube grenade laser copies or something much larger, like The Purple Cow Print, when I launched the gapingvoid gallery earlier this year, that was my intention– to make art for the workspace.
This desire goes back to my early years working as an advertising creative. There was always cool stuff– fine art, posters, graphic design, cartoons– hanging up everywhere. Stuff to amuse and inspire us, stuff to tweak our brains in the right direction. And though its effect on the agency’s bottom line would’ve been hard to measure, somehow it worked– or at least, helped.
Why can’t all offices be more like this? Is there some law that requires certain types of businesses to maintain a dull, gray, machine-like, life-sucking visual environment? You could ague that maybe for some companies, sure, but that’s not a world I’ve ever aspired to belong to. “Office Art” tends to come in two main categories: 1. REALLY expensive. 2. REALLY cheesy. I wanted to make office art that was neither…
[Afterthought:] Of course, a lot of my collectors work from home, therefore their offices are in the house, not in an office building. But the prints were made with the workspace in mind, not the “living” space, regardless.
The “Nobody Cares” print, part of the 
“Vanished”. This is one of the prints from 
![[Click here to download invite etc.]](http://gapingvoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/cow2.jpg){kind=link}