Archive for February, 2010
February 28, 2010
87 Comments
[The “I’m Not Delusional” print, for sale on the gallery…]
Random thoughts on being an entrepreneur. [Originally posted January, 2007]
I wouldn’t say I was an authority on entrepreneurship, certainly not in the same league as people like Fred Wilson or Jason Calacanis. That being said, the last couple of years haven’t been too shabby, either. With that in mind, here are a few thoughts I have on the subject, in no particular order. The list, by the way, is far from complete– I’ll probably be adding to it sooner than later etc.
1. Everything takes three times longer than it should. Especially the money part.
2. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
3. People want what they can’t have. In fact, that’s pretty much all they do want.
4. Once you become an entrepreneur, you find the company of non-entrepreneurs a lot harder to be around. You’ve seen things they haven’t; the wavelengths alter, it’s that simple.
5. In a world of over-supply and commodification, you are no longer paid to supply. You’re being paid to deliver something else. What that is exactly, is not always obvious.
6. Word of mouth is the best advertising medium of all. The best word of mouth comes from disrupting markets.
7. People buy your product because it helps fill in the narrative gaps in their lives.
8. You can either be cheapest or the best. I know which one I prefer.
9. Some people think that once they secure venture funding, their problems will be over. Wrong. That’s when your problems REALLY begin.
10. It’s better to be underfunded than overfunded.
11. If an average guy in a bar can understand what you do for a living, chances are you’re halfway to becoming a commodity.
12. It’s easier to turn an ally into a customer than vice versa.
13. If you’re happy in your career before the age of thirty, you’re probably doing something wrong. Heck, if you’re happy in your career before the age of seventy, you’re probably doing something wrong.
14. Smart, young, artistic people are always asking me which is a better career path, “Creativity” or “Money”. I always answer that it doesn’t matter. What matters is “Effective” and/or “Ineffective”.
15. Write the following on a piece of paper, have it framed, and stick it on your office wall: “Have you hugged your customer today?”
16. People will always, always be in the market for a story that resonates with them. Your product will either have this quality or it won’t. If your product fails this test, quit your job and go find something else. Just making the product incrementally cheaper or better won’t help you.
17. Products are idea amplifiers. The molecules and/or bytes are secondary.
18. People remember the quality long after they’ve forgotten the price. Unless you try to rip them off.
19. Markets serve entrepreneurs better if the latter can keep the former undersupplied. Oversupply is the kiss of death.
20. I personally know a former CEO who, once he attained control of the company, ran an EXTREMELY profitable business into the ground in less than two years. From a market cap of $100 million to ZERO, just like that. Why? Short answer: He loved being “The” CEO, but he didn’t much care for being “a” CEO.
21. In terms of becoming an entrepreneur, probably the most useful thing I learned in the last twenty years was how to enjoy my own company for long stretches of time.
22. One successful entrepreneur I know well has a wonderful quality, namely that he never, ever compares himself to other people. He just does his own thing, which actually serves him rather well. Just because his competitor has bought himself a bigger motor boat, doesn’t mean he feels the need have a bigger motor boat. This quality helps him to build his business the way he sees fit, not the way the motor boat people see fit.
23. Running a startup is full of extreme ups and downs. Which is why so many successful and happy entrepreneurs I know lead such normal, stable, unglamorous, “boring”, family-centered lives. Somehow they need the latter in order to balance out the former. Extra-curricular drama looks great in the tabloids, but that’s all it’s ultimately good for.
24. MBAs are conditioned to use their brains in much the same way as sex workers are conditioned to use their genitals. Nice work if you can get it.
25. Bill Gates may have a million times more money than me, but he isn’t going to live a million times longer than me, watch a million times more sunsets than me, make love to a million times more women than me, drink a million times more fine wines than me, listen to a million times more Beethoven String Quartets than me, nor sire a million times more children than me. Human beings don’t scale.
26. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “There are no second acts in American lives.” F. Scott was a drunkard and a fool.
16 Comments
[The “CFA” print. One of my favorite all-time cartoons. For sale here etc.]
“Blogging about Blogging” was an early phenomenon in the early Blogosphere.
It was such a new medium for us early-adopters, it was very exciting to us. The possibilities it offered us seemed almost endless, and we wanted to explore those possibilities, and share what we learned with our fellow bloggers. So a huge percentage of our blog posts ended up being just about blogging– at the expense of other stuff– art, politics, literature, science etc.
But we all know what happened– after a while we got sick of hearing about it. We’d been doing it for a while, a lot of these “blogging about blogging” posts started sounding like old news, started sounding the same.
So a lot of us early bloggers pretty much stopped talking about it a couple of years ago. We had moved on to new adventures, as one does.
But recently the subject has gotten interesting to me again.
Why?
I’m beginning to notice a lot more new blogs online– a next generation, as it were. More specifically, I’m noticing a lot of artists and entrepreneurs suddenly getting the blogging bug. Highly-driven, smart people trying to sell their work online, as opposed to more traditional avenues. Paintings, software, freelance gigs or bathroom tiles, who cares? It’s the worldview that matters.
Like I said in my previous post, blogs are old news in Social Media circles, but that doesn’t mean that they’re still not an extremely interesting, powerful medium, that millions of artists and entrepreneurs could do very well by figuring out how to use them properly, even if they weren’t “early-adoptors”.
I’ve been blogging a long time, I know a lot about it– what works, and what doesn’t. Google my ass if you don’t believe me.
i.e. I’m in a perfect position to help these artists and entrepreneurs with their blogs– “Share what I love” etc. Why not? It would be an interesting conversation, at least.
Thoughts?
12 Comments
[“George”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can get the signed print here etc.]
I was thinking back to “The Golden Age of Blogging”, whenever that was. Say, six or seven years ago… when it hit that sweet spot between still feeling like virgin territory, yet just on the verge of reaching critical mass.
Back then the Blogosphere was TINY. We blog nerds were a minority. We were cultural weirdos. But we knew we were on to something, even if the rest of the world didn’t see it yet.
And we were looking VERY HARD for business models to support our new, beloved medium…
I remember when a guy landing a well-paying job just on the merits of his blog, was considered big news.
I remember when a girl landing a book deal just from her blog, was considered big news.
I remember when Robert Scoble blogging on behalf of Microsoft was considered big news.
I remember when Gawker or Techcrunch making $10K a month on advertising, was considered big news.
A blogger making good money selling art– Well, that’s what I do now for a living- back then that would have been considered HUGE. Now we take that kind of thing for granted. Book deals, $10K monthly advertising revenues, dream jobs, celebrity Microsoft bloggers, nowadays that’s no big deal, either.
I remember when blogs first became “News”, when that Businessweek story hit in early 2005. It was a very exciting, validating, heady time for us early-adoptors.
Eventually the buzz and the hype died down, of course. Along came Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and whatever; the story moved on. “Blogging” got boring.…
But to paraphrase Clay Shirky, a technology doesn’t become truly useful until it becomes boring, until it’s no longer “News”.
We may miss those early days, when blogging was new, exciting and “Hot”.
But for me and a lot of my early-adoptor friends, our blogs are making us A LOT more money now, than they ever did then.
“Boring” is underrated…
February 26, 2010
7 Comments
[The “Glob” cartoon that went out on the newsletter recently. You can buy the print here.]
People’s morning coffee is damn important to them. And your newsletter is competing with that. Never forget it. Ever.
Earlier today, Nikki Gore kindly remarked that my daily newsletter to her was “as important as my morning coffee”.
Heh. Thanks, Nikki, that’s a lovely compliment.
Her remark got me thinking…
It seems to me, most people read the newsletters they subscribe to first thing in the office. Sure, a lot of it is for the “Useful Content” itself, but a big part of the equation is, it’s part of their “Daily Sacred Begin-Work Ritual”.
That thing we do every morning, that gets our head in the right frame of mind, so we can begin getting down to the stuff we actually get paid for. It can include things like checking your emails, drinking your coffee, exchanging gossip with the guy in the next cube, checking your diary, checking your phone messages… and reading your favorite blogs and newsletters.
The thing is, it’s a very important part of the day for most people. It’s “Sacred Time”. And if your newsletter is part of somebody else’s Sacred Time, you should damn well treat it as sacred, too.
I never had this attitude when I was just blogging; it never quite felt so time-sensitive. It didn’t feel like my work was cutting into such an important part of the day as much, even if it was. But since I started the newsletter, I’ve become more aware of it. Live and learn…
February 23, 2010
7 Comments
Today I’m flying to St. Louis, to give a talk at Purina, the giant pet food company that’s owned by Nestle. It’s their big, annual digital summit. All their top digital marketing folk (and their top ad agency digital folk) will be there.
I’ll be talking about “Social Objects”, and how I believe they are the future of marketing.
Above is the “Cube Grenade” they commissioned me to draw for them. I like how it turned out. “All products are information” refers back to something I wrote a few years ago, “The Kinetic Quality”.
How often do large, well-known companies call you up and ask you to draw a cartoon for them? Exactly. I’ve worked in the tech world for big clients before– Sun, Dell, Microsoft etc– but this is my first “Cube Grenade” with a large, FMCG brand (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods). Not to mention, I’ve always held Nestle and Purina in very high regard. So naturally, I’m pretty excited. Rock on.
[Commission your own Cube Grenade. The Cube Grenade archive is here.]
February 22, 2010
3 Comments
Very cool. “Tried Life”, one of my favorites from the “Moleskine” series, is now for sale over on the gallery. You can see the enlarged image here.
2 Comments
We launched the “Linchpin” Series on February 8th. I wrote about it here.
Just to have a little fun, we launched it with a $65 intro price– roughly half of what we normally charge for an 11“x“14 “Cube Grenade”.
That deal ends this Friday, the 26th, at 5pm, New York time. After that the price goes up to the regular $125.00.
Subscribers to the newsletter will have a little bit extra time, though. One of the perks etc.
Thanks to everybody who bought one so far. Your support has been fantastic! Rock on.
February 17, 2010
6 Comments
Mike Walsh commissioned me to draw a “Cube Grenade” for his consultancy, Rockstar Group.
Mike’s company is basically in the business of helping small startups either make or find more money, by whatever means necessary. His website explains all…
Why do people do startups? Because they want to be “rock stars”, or something like that. They have that certain drive– or if they don’t have it, they’re in big trouble. So I tried to create something that empathized with that.
Because the world is theirs’. At least, it’s certainly more “theirs’” than for the people who just turn up every day at the office, with no other reason than the steady paycheck.
Mike was a great client, and fun to work for. He tells me his cube grenade (which he put on the back of his business cards) was a big hit at the recent TED conference. That made my day.
No, it really did…
[Commission your own Cube Grenade. The Cube Grenade archive is here.]
February 15, 2010
22 Comments
[The “Wolf vs Sheep” print. One of my favorites…]
I’m working on a new series of cartoons; earlier today I made a list of the desired adjectives to describe it:
Smart. Bright. Explosive. Witty. Acerbic. Colorful. Aspirational. Inspirational. Spiritual. Entrepreneurial. Fun.
i.e. Not too unlike the “Wolf vs Sheep” print. Or “We Need To Talk”.
I think spending all this time in the sunny West Texas desert has had an effect on me. I’m not sure all this dark, Northern doom & gloom I spent articulating rather well in my early London and New York days, is as interesting to me as it once was. Things change.
Expect to see a new direction happening over the next few months. I can already feel it growing inside me.
No going back…
[N.B. As of January, 2010, I am no longer publishing new cartoons on gapingvoid. From now on, “Hugh’s Daily Frickin’ Cartoon” is the place to see them, Thanks!]
5 Comments
[The “Die Trying” print. Sent out on the newsletter Jan. 20, 2010…]
Of course, once people saw this cartoon, I got a lot of people saying, “Hugh, you should make that into a t-shirt. I’d wear one!”
Eh. I don’t do t-shirts. Too much hassle. Learned that a long time ago…
Still, it’s a nice idea. One thing I know about me and my audience, is that we’re not interested in doing stuff just for the paycheck. We’re trying to do stuff that matters, even if it kills us…
“Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing” -Cormac McCarthy
February 14, 2010
59 Comments
[The “Life Is Too Short” print. The image was the first one I sent out on “Hugh’s Daily Frickin’ Cartoon”. UPDATE: As of January, 2010, I am no longer publishing new cartoons on gapingvoid. From now on, “Hugh’s Daily Frickin’ Cartoon” is the place to see them, Thanks!]
1. Figure out what your gift is, and give it to them on a regular basis. 2. Make sure it’s received as a real gift, not as an advertising message 3. Then figure out exactly what it is that your trail of breadcrumbs leads back to.
Every weekday morning I send out out a new cartoon to my e-mail list.
My daily “gift” to the world, as it were…
One gift per day, that’s my quota. Anything more and I get too swamped. I also work hard to make sure that it feels like a gift on the receiving end. I try to put some heart and soul into the exercise, otherwise people would unsubscribe in droves.
If enough people like the gift, it’ll build up goodwill, they’ll tell their friends, and the list will grow. The more the list grows, the more people discover the trail of breadcrumbs that leads back to the work I actually get paid for.
And even if people don’t follow the breadcrumbs the vast majority of the time, that’s OK, too. I’m happy if people just dig my work, just value the gift. Not everybody’s in the market for what I do for money– I’m not in the market for everything my friends do, either. That doesn’t mean I don’t value them or their gifts highly. It cuts both ways.
It can’t be selfish. It can’t expect something back in return. It can’t huckster. People can tell, you see…
Everything I do now professionally begins with the act of gift-giving. You?
1. Figure out what your gift is, and give it to them on a regular basis. 2. Make sure it’s received as a real gift, not as an advertising message. 3. Then figure out exactly what it is that your trail of breadcrumbs leads back to.
Just do these three things, and all your social media marketing dreams will come true, I promise.
February 13, 2010
7 Comments
[“Love Begets Love”.]
Erin sent me this photo, the day after the piece arrived at her home. It’s now hanging in her bedroom, so I’m told. Thanks, Erin!
I don’t know why exactly, but I really like this photo. Maybe because of the gentle way the person is holding it– cradling it like a baby, almost.
As an artist, you often think about your work being out there in all these people’s homes, all over the world, interacting with them. It’s a lovely feeling.
There’s a ton of art out there. For a piece of art to make it into someone else’s home and onto their walls, is actually pretty impossible unless you’ve already made a pretty significant connection with them, somehow. Again, it’s a lovely feeling when it happens.
The work people do is all driven by different things– money, ambition, intellect, sex, whatever. The work I do, and the work for a lot of people who read my blog and buy my cartoons, seems to be largely driven by the need to “connect”.
We like doing stuff that connects with people. We’re “Connectors”.
We’re wired that way. We can’t help it. We’re like those little hearts in the cartoon above…
February 12, 2010
2 Comments
[“Almost As Good As Chocolate”. Buy the print here etc.]
With Valentine’s Day being on Sunday, and my next “Hugh’s Daily Frickin’ Cartoon” not being sent out till Monday morning, I’m happy to report that the run of Valentine-inspired schmaltz that I’ve been bombarding my e-mail list with these last two weeks, is now over. Monday morning I’m going back to “Edgy”. You have been warned.
February 10, 2010
8 Comments
[“If In Doubt”. Buy the print here etc.]
This is the cartoon that was sent out with today’s “Daily Frickin’ Cartoon” Newsletter. Here’s the blurb that went with it.
Love is the easiest thing in the world to do, until it isn’t. Until we get overwhelmed by “Stuff”. The black lines in the cartoon represent overwhelming “Stuff”. The red lines represent “Love”, fighting like hell to keep alive, in spite of overwhelming odds. We’ve all been there.…
I don’t know why, but I really like this one. Maybe because I identify ALL TOO WELL with the wee red bit, trapped there in the corner.
February 9, 2010
5 Comments
People liked the new “Remember Who You Are” idea so much, what the hell, I decided to go ahead and make it into high-rez printout. You can download it directly from here, or from the main “Remember” manifesto page. Feel free to print it out and stick it on your wall i.e. use it as a “Cube Grenade”.
Even better, once it’s hung, feel free to send me a photo. I’d love to see them. Thanks! Rock on.
February 8, 2010
12 Comments
[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.
25 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.
2 Comments
[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.
February 7, 2010
53 Comments
[UPDATE: Download the high-res poster version here.]
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.
[UPDATE:] Yes, feel free to download it, print it out and stick it on your wall i.e. use it as a “Cube Grenade”. Even better, once it’s hanging somewhere, feel free to send me a photo. I’d love to see them. Thanks! Rock on.
2 Comments
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…]
February 4, 2010
30 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.]
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[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.]
February 3, 2010
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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.]
February 2, 2010
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[“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!]
