Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
1. This is my first Microsoft gig for a while [Bizspark is part of their massive startup outreach program], so it felt good to be back in the ol’ saddle again.
2. This piece is a riff on a familiar theme of mine, that a nation is only as good as its startup culture etc. As we see all the economic crap happening in places like Spain and Greece (Unemployment between 25%-60%, depending on the age group!), it’s somethng we urgently need to teach our leaders, by any means necessary. And yes, gapingvoid likes having clients who agree with us.
3. Though I love doing my more highbrow, introspective fine art schtick, I also love the more extrovert stuff for the office wall. Especially offices that belong to interesting folk doing interesting stuff, like the Bizspark gang. This “tense duality” between the inner and outer parts of existence is where the action is. Too much of either one would be BEYOND tedious IMHO…
Thanks to Mark Gagne and the rest of the Bizspark Canada team for making it happen. Rock on.
[Awwww… We were sent this photo, a commission for Dan Sullivan and Babs Smith, the husband & wife strategic coach team, that was done as a Holiday present to them, from our old buddy, Joe Polish.]
The last few weeks have been wonderfully busy ones for us in the private commission department, with Christmas, Hannuka and now Valentine’s Day… It’s by far our businest part of the year, at least for personal gifts.
Apologies to those who couldn’t get one in time for Valentine’s Day this time round. I was just too flooded with work already, eventually we had to cut it off. Boo.
Anyway, with the Valentines’ comms now in the bag and being sent out, my desk is somewhat cleared again, a blissful feeling that never lasts that long. Feel free to contact me or Jason if you still would like to commission something, thanks:
Awwww… We were sent this photo, a commission for Dan Sullivan and Babs Smith, the husband & wife strategic coach team, that was done as a Holiday present to them, from our old buddy, Joe Polish.
“Entrepreneurship completes us.” Exactly.
Thanks Dan and Babs for taking the lovely photo, and Thanks to Joe for the great commission. Awesome.
[N.B. Sure, we do personal commissions all the time; feel free to email me at hugh AT gapingvoid.com for more info, Thanks!]
The most enjoyable part of what we to do is getting to work with great companies. They range from multinationals, to newly minted billion dollar businesses and many startups.
When we were approached by a young startup, Tilt 365, last year we were intrigued by their service. Founder, Pam Boney, has the following Carl Jung quote on the bottom of her emails, “The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.”, and in a simplistic way, this also sums up their service: The idea that we can cultivate our talents through constant feedback from our colleagues and the people around us.
We all know that once a year annual reviews & 360’s that become dated within a month, kinda suck. What is their true purpose? Can a person really be expected to make behavioral changes just from a meeting every year, or quarter, for that matter?
The folks at Tilt have created this nifty little web app that allows colleagues to assess personality patterns that are affecting others. The truth is that HR usually does a good job at hiring competent people, but what makes them effective, is all about personality and people skills - a person’s negative or positive influence on the climate around them. Pam’s tool shows us how we Tilt in and out of certain behaviors and how it impacts the people around us.
It’s all done real time and in what looks like a pretty darn perfect feedback loop. It reminded me of this piece in Wired a couple of years ago.
We’ve done quite a bit of creative for Tilt, helping them to visually communicate the behavioral changes and movement through the process– and we’ll be talking more about how this service can help affect change in businesses, especially enterprise.
This year, Hugh’s set aside some time this month to draw for you. We are offering friends a special deal for personal (non-commercial) commissions to give to friends and family. Instead of the usual $3 – 5,000 for an image, he’ll draw you your own, custom image starting at just $500.
This should be a fun little project, my way of saying thanks to the gapingvoid community etc. Hmmmm… maybe this should be an annual gapingvoid tradition? you tell me
It’s time for another episode of Gape Into The Void! Join us as Hugh, Jason and Jeff talk about gapingvoid’s evil plan to disrupt the “office art” industry. We also are reminded about some big events in Hugh’s world and we give you a peek behind the scenes of some of our current client projects.
Thanks again for listening. If you are enjoying Gape Into The Void, please tell your friends and leave us a review on iTunes. If you have any questions or topics you want us to cover on the show email us at podcast at gapingvoid.com.
This made me so happy: My friend, Robert Scoble sent me a photo of the big gapingvoid print they have up on the wall in the Rackspace customer briefing room. This is just one of twelve giant 6 foot canvases that adorn the walls.
Aside from being thrilled that they used our work, what is interesting to me is that they had the choice of using lots of different kinds of art. They could have used photos of happy Rackers, customers, data centers, etc. But they chose to broadcast their beliefs by using messages that speak to their beliefs.
This particular cartoon about one of the fundamental aspects of the business: “Fanatical support In all we do”. I tried to present it in a way that I hope is both memorable and refreshingly disarming. Hopefully it touches a nerve.
As time goes by, one of the things that I realize is that having well chosen messages on offices walls is really powerful. They speak to people every day of the year, and brodacast what you stand for.
That’s what we think about more and more around our office, anyway.
Recorded just before we left for San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt, in this episode of Gape Into The Void we tackle the topic of “culture” and the importance of a business articulating its purpose.
Here are links to some of the things we mention during the show:
In the next Gape Into The Void we’ll talk more about our experiences at TechCrunch and Hugh’s passion for “Live Tooning.” Stay tuned! Tooned?
If you have been enjoying the Gape Into The Void podcast, please tell your friends and leave us a comment or review on iTunes. You can also email us with your comments and feedback at podcast@gapingvoid.com.
This made me so happy: Instead of YET ANOTHER infographic thingy (Is it just me or are they all starting to look the same?), Cisco commissioned us to produce a cloud-related “gapingvoid All-Over” for their upcoming #vBrownBag event that they’re sponsoring at VMworld, the big cloud computing conference.
@ciscoDC is a proud sponsor of #vBrownBag this year. Known for their work in the virtualization space, a guide to all things training, we’ve included some great information on their USB key of awesome. The #vBrownBag crew will be out in force, and they’re easily identified. Remember, it’s all about the visuals. Visit the ProfessionalVMware.com blog for complete details on the happenings with their crew. Great information, check it out.
[…]
Whether you’re there IRL or enjoying the show from the comforts of wifi, follow @ciscoDC and #ciscovmw for livetweeting from key sessions, updates from roving reporters Josh Atwell andScott Hanson, and whiteboard showdowns from industry leaders as part of Engineers Unplugged (like MTV Unplugged, but with whiteboards and tech rock stars). Like theCiscoDC Facebook page for insider pictures, caption challenges, and more.
Your turn. How do you approach VMworld? Share a link to your blog, whiteboard pic, or video. Tweet @ciscoDC with #ciscovmwas the tag.
As I’ve said more than once before, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about The Cloud and “Big Data”. I think it’s going to be huge; it’s going to change the world; far more so than most people imagine.
I know, I know, when you say “The Cloud” to people, they mostly scratch their head. But the head-scratching it generates reminds me A LOT of the head scratching that happend when you mentioned “The Internet” to people, back in the 1990s. Or “Personal Computers”, back in the 1970s.
Unlike the Internet, the language that describes The Cloud is still very much in embryo stage. The art, ditto.
Yes, the whole thing is nebulous– that’s why it’s called The Cloud. If it weren’t, they’d call it something else.
So that’s what’s driving me in this direction, intellectually. If it interests you as well, maybe it’s best to go check out Amy’s link and go poke around a little. Rock on.
[If you’re in the market for an “all-over” like this, feel free to contact gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman anytime: jason at gapingvoid dot com. Thanks Again…]
I drew this quick cartoon earlier today; I was thinking about how many of the companies we’ve worked with over the last year or two have serious interest in The Cloud, and its future: Rackspace, HP, Cisco, SAP etc etc.
Though we do a lot of work around startup culture (e.g. Techcrunch and Movenback) we also do a TON of work in the Enterprise space. Maybe that’s because some of our biggest fans are aslo in that space– Sigurd Rind, Dennis Howlett, James Governor etc.
Enterprise work can be fairly dry, we take pride in making it A LOT more fun than most. Rock on.
The SAY piece was a current snapshot of “The State of Web 2.0” in the post-Facebook IPO era. No doubt, as Facebook and Twitter brought about the end of the blogosphere’s half-decade golden age, so the half-decade era dominated by Twitter and Facebooks now starts to recede.
Seriously, if I was a few years younger and cared more about this kinda stuff, I’d do a start-up clone of Facebook, and keep it real simple and keep it private and UNCORRUPTED, the way Craig Newmark did with Craigslist.
Doc Searls correctly predicted it years ago.… the Internet boom would return, and it always will. And things will get silly really fast, just like they’re doing now. Exactly like Doc said.
I think things are about to get really interesting, and a lot of people in the industry are about to take a hammering. But that’s OK, it’ll clear a lot of the undergrowth in the process. Welcome to Silicon Valley.
[Feel free to contact me at gapingvoid@gmail.com if you want to commission a “Fred” for your own organization etc.]
Hot off the press, my old friends Loic and GeraldineLe Meur asked me to do the theming for the Le Web this year. I’m especially honored as it will include their first London LEWEB which they announced yesterday.
“FASTER THAN REAL TIME”. Le Web London, June 19th-20, the # 1 European tech conference. Join me, Loic and all the gang at http://leweb.net
Having attended the first LEWEB, then called Leblog in 2004, it’s been amazing to see the event grow into Europe’s most important tech conference. It’s one of my favorite conferences (the other one being SXSW), and I’m really excited to be going again. The lineup of speakers is incredible; every year it just gets bigger and bigger.
I’ll be doing a talk this year, and sketching on stage. It’ll be nice to be in London again.…
LEWEB has kindly offered a GBP 100 discount to our friends. If you’d like to buy a ticket, just enter GAPINGVOID at checkout to receive the discount.
Using cartoons to communicate about serious subjects is always an interesting challenge– and one that we deal with every day.
Where is the line that can’t be crossed? How do we communicate about something serious in a way that is memorable, whimsical, makes a point but isn’t frivolous?
We’ve proven 1000 times that cartoons are some of the most effective pieces of communication in existence — and we’ve been playing with animating my cartoons for some time, so when the folks at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Security contacted us, we thought, “Hey, why not do a little animation about ‘enterprise security…?”
Let’s face it, enterprise security is pretty dry stuff. Their customers are governments and giant corporations… perfect for a whimsical little animation about finding risk — kinda Pac Man-ish, it makes the point: You need help identifying all the risks to your data centers. With the nemonic binoculars (representing HP’s Enterprise Security Platform), one is able to see the big picture threats, and the threat levels they represent.
I love the little HP geek with the pocket protector. I dunno, it just works, somehow. Also check out the logo for our new venture at the very end.
Very cool– I’m headed to Blogworld LA tomorrow (Wednesday). It’s the West Coast’s ginormous social media & podcsting shindig, and it’s always a blast to be there.
I was really excited when Dave Cynkin, co-founder of Blogworld asked me to draw a design for their first ever t-shirt. They’ve only printed a small number, and it will be for sale at the event, which starts on Thursday.
Me and Jason (my business partner, and CEO of gapingvoid) will both be at Blogworld through Saturday. We’ll be meeting old friends, and talking to companies who want to hire gapingvoid to help start “smarter conversations”, have kick ass content for social media and want their ideas spread like lightning.
Though I haven’t talked about it too much on the blog, yes, I do private commissions. Feel free to contact me at gapingvoid@gmail.com if you want to discuss further, Thanks.
She’s got all the geek-hacker, inventive DIY mindset of say, Mark Frauenfelder or Phil Torrone, but with a chic, playful style that doesn’t undermine her own femininity. Great to see…
The cartoon came from this idea I had that, in order to operate at Alison’s level, I’m sorry, you don’t get to hate your job. You don’t get to feel ambivalent. You don’t get to daydream about one day doing something less schleppy. No, you’ve got to totally be into it from Day One. No slackers allowed. And in order to do that, decisions have to be made.
[Alison, we’ll be in touch soon via gapingvoidbizcard@gmail.com to collect your details for the back of the card, so we can print & ship a free box of 100 to you etc. Thanks!]
Though I haven’t talked about it too much on the blog, yes, I do private commissions. Feel free to contact me at gapingvoid@gmail.com if you want to discuss further, Thanks.
“We are not in the advertising business, we are in the decommodification business” is a line of mine that Vinny has been borrowing for a while now. So it seemed appropriate to design something around that.
A “Sacred Zombie Cow” is David’s term for an idea that, although it has far outlived its usefulness within an organization, is still treated like Gospel Truth. David advocates the killing of these sacred zombie cows as the best way to grow.
So long after you leave college, you keep asking yourself the question, “What do I want to do when I grow up?”
And to help you answer the question, you try out a whole string of different things. Working in an office. Working outdoors. Going to law school. Starting your own coffee shop. Freelance. Consulting. Writing books…
And hopefully, after a few years (or decades) of trial and error, hopefully you end up with your answer.
I think I’m finally ready to answer my own question, “What do I want to do when I grow up?”
Sure, they’re great social objects, but to me they have another purpose: They’re good tools for a company trying to engage in what’s called “Cultural Transformation”.
[The one that started it all: “The Blue Monster”. Backstory here etc.]
You change markets in your favor by changing the culture– either you own or the culture of the industry you’re in. In my world, that’s where the REAL opportunity lies.
That’s the change I want to help affect. That’s where I think my cartoons can be the most useful and valuable.
Always happy to talk further about it with people maybe wanting to do business. Feel free to ping me whenever. Thanks…
A few days ago, I wrote about how PSFK, the New York-based marketing and trend-spotting company, commissioned me to design a “Cube Grenade” for their upcoming conference on April 9th, 2010. Piers Fawkes, PSFK’s head evil genius just wrote a lovely blog post about the commission:
MacLeod told PSFK that he wants people to commission him to create original Cube Grenades to give to their clients and partners. Responding to a brief to subtly present an single idea he hopes these illustrations will sit on the walls of offices and other workplaces and as people pass by it over time the message might sink in with a few people. He argues that Cube Grenades aren’t really designed to ’sell’ like, say, traditional advertising. Instead, MacLeod hopes that they hit a nerve and start conversations that will help lead to sales down the road, but the primary purpose “takes a more indirect, perhaps more disruptive path.”
It’s a nice background story on the whole “Cube Grenade” concept. I hope you’ll go check it out. Rock on.
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.
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.
Paul Fabretti, an old social-media PR buddy from my UK days, asked me to draw him a “cube grenade” for his Manchester-based PR 2.0 company, Gabba. Rock on.
“A bit like being a shrink,” he told me, “but more business-focused.”
A big part of his modus operandi is not telling people what to do with their businesses, but trying to get them over their fears of achieving that which they MUST do, if they want to become the people they one day hope to be.
“The issues my clients fear the most tend not to be the actual stuff out there– competition, cashflow, marketing,” he says, “but the worst-case imaginary scenarios. ‘The Monster Inside Their Heads’, as it were. So a central tenet to what I do is helping them to get over The Monster.”
So he commissioned me to draw a Monster-themed “Cube Grenade”, as a signed, fine-art print to give away as presents to his best customers and allies. Something to keep on the office wall as a constant reminder.
I was glad to do it. I’ve always got my fair share of Monsters, myself. Rock on.
As the idea behind their company was partially inspired by my writings on Kula and Social Objects, they commissioned me to design a special Cube Grenade for them, which I gladly did.
I’m very happy with how the piece turned out. It illustrates nicely a point I’ve been harping on for a while now– “People Matter, Objects Don’t”- i.e. what makes a product or brand interesting is not thing itself, but the human conversations that happen around it.
Congrats to Kula Partners on their launch, and Big Thanks for being such great clients! Rock on.
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 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.
[“Open Brands”. Commissioned by Agencia Click, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Click on image to enlarge etc.] I’m delighted to announce my first privately commissioned gapingvoid print.
A couple of weeks ago I was invited down to Brazil by Agencia Click to do a bit of public speaking and some consultancy work for them. While I was at it, they also commissioned me to design a print for them, something that articulated their “Open Branding” idea. So I designed the drawing above, which goes into production next week.
The black lines represent “The World”, as it were. The red lines represent “The Brand”. In “Open Branding”, the brand is “Everywhere”, not “Controlled” or “Isolated” somewhere specific.
I took their idea, filtered it through my own visual language to create a third thing, an image that captures the “Purpose-Idea”.
I did pretty much the same thing with Microsoft and The Blue Monster…
I love this kind of work. It allows me to do my drawing thing, while still getting my brain out of the studio and out into the real world. Not to mention, I get to visit Brazil! Heh.
Thanks to Abel and Jeff for making it happen. Rock on. [NB: If you’re in the market to commission a limited edition print, feel free to email me at gapingvoid@gmail.com. Thanks.]
[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.
[Me working on “DesertManhattan”. Photo courtesy of Deborah Smail.] After a couple of years of thinking about it, I’m finally moving forward in the lithograph department. Here are some initial thoughts:
1. Yes, I’ve done lithographs before e.g for Techcrunch, Stormhoek and Microsoft. Those were produced digitally, for high-numbered editions [one thousand or so]. This new effort will be much more high-end and exclusive. We’re talking very small editions [say, 25 or so], done not via digital, but by old-fashioned etchings on metal plates.
2. We’ll be using the highest-quality paper and inks we can find, bar none. We won’t be sparing any expense.
3. The pieces will all be framed by hand, using highest-quality woods and mats. No industrial factory-framing for these babies etc.
4. As of today, I have no idea how much I’ll charge for them. My plan is to put the first few ones onto Ebay, let people bid for them openly, and see what happens. I reckon this will establish a solid, relatively transparent market price, a lot better than mere guesswork ever could.
5. The size will be roughly the same as my recent large works on paper i.e. approx. 23x29 inches etc.
6. I haven’t decided what image, or what style of image I want to use for the first run. Do I go with my familiar cartoon format say, something like this, or do I go with something a bit more “arty” say, something like “Fred 44″? This is a conversation I hope to be having with y’all over the next few weeks, so please feel free to leave a comment below, Thanks.
7. Yes. I am SERIOUSLY excited about this project. Rock on.
[Click on images to enlarge. Click to watch the video here.]
I started adding the acrylic last week. If you click on the top picture, you’ll see I’ve just start applying the India Ink, towards the top. That was yesterday. If you click on the link above, I made a little 2-minute phonecam video explaining everything in greater detail.
This thing is going to take forever to finish. I’m not worried, there’s no rush etc.
[Applying the pencil to DesertManhattan. Photos courtesy of Debora Smail, who was in town last week. Click on images to enlarge etc.]
Last week the photographer, Debora Smail was in town, working on a travel assignment for a magazine. We hung out a bit; first we cracked open a few beers at Harry’s Tinaja, then I took her her over to my studio and showed her DesertManhattan. Besides it being a lovely afternoon, full of interesting conversation, she took a lot of pictures. Here are some of them. Hope you like etc. Thanks, Debora!
[Click on image to enlarge etc.]
For the last couple of months, I’ve been talking about a return to large-format paintings.
Originally I was planning 6-by-6-foot canvases; I decided instead to opt for 4’x8’.
I finally have my studio set up, as pictured above. It’s an outdoor studio, with cement floor, tin roof, and as shown here, canvas walls to keep the rain and dust out.
That’s a 4x8’ wooden board you see there, with two-by-fours framing it on the backside. I’m going to cover it with canvas and get painting on it, hopefully in the next couple of days, before I take off out of town on business at the end of the week.
In the foreground you see my acrylic painting materials– plus a ten-foot roll of canvas in the orange plastic bag. [A rough idea of how I’m hoping it’ll turn out, cannibalized from a photo of “Fred 44″. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
It’s going to be called “Desertmanhattan”. “Fred 44″ was a ink-on-paper study for it, so go here if you want to get an idea of what the final work will end up looking like.
It’s called “Desertmanhattan”, simply because I’m trying to create a piece that captures the vibe I get from both living out in the middle of nowhere, here in the West Texas desert, and the big-city vibe I get when I’m on my business travels. The desert is an extreme place; so is Manhattan; they both inform the work I’m doing now. My drawing style was formalized whilst I was living in Manhattan, so the title makes compete sense to me.
Yes, I intend to sell it when it’s done. Yes, it’ll be really expensive [I’m putting out feelers to potential buyers. If you’re possibly thinking about becoming one of them, please feel free to drop me an email at desertmanhattan@gmail.com, and we’ll start a conversation, Thanks.] .
If it goes well, I’m not going to suddenly quit everything else and start cranking out Desertmanhattan’s like an assembly line. I don’t foresee ever doing more than 4 – 6 of these pieces a year. I don’t foresee spending more than one week per month on them, either. I’ve got plenty other projects keeping me busy; plus it looks like the amount of traveling I’ll be doing in the next year is going to increase quite a bit.
As for the marketing, well, of course I’ll be using this blog and my Twitter feed to do the heavy lifting. Though my target market is not set in stone, I have a feeling the buyers for the large pieces will come out the prosperous end of the tech/VC/Silicon Valley/Web 2.0 community. They know me, they know my work, they know my value. Besides, the New York financial guys [a favorite target of the traditional art galleries] all seem to be losing their jobs at the moment.
And of course, “The Tao of Undersupply” will be seriously informing the marketing:
The biggest problem in the Western world is oversupply.
For every mid-level managing job opening up, there’s scores of people willing and able. For every company needing to hire an ad agency or design firm, there’s dozens out there, willing and able. For every person wanting to buy a new car, there’s tons of car makers and dealers out there. I could go on and on.
I could also go on about how many good people I know are caught in oversupplied markets, and how every day they wake up, feeling chilled to the bone with dread and unease. Advertising and media folk are classic examples.
So maybe the thing is to is get into “The Tao of Undersupply”.
If only 100 people want to buy your widgets, then just make 90 widgets. If only 1000, make 900. If only 10 million, make 9 million. It isn’t rocket science, but it takes discipline.
It also requires you to stop making the same stuff as other people. Doing that requires originality and invention.
Like it said in “How To Be Creative”, don’t try to stand out from the crowd, avoid crowds altogether. Again, it isn’t rocket science.
In other words, it’s better to under-supply the market, than to over-supply it.
“Desert” represents one side of me. “Manhattan” represents the other. We’ll see where this goes. Rock on.
[UPDATE] 24 hours later:
[Me applying to undercoat onto the stretched canvas. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[UPDATE] 36 hours later:
[Four undercoats of gesso and acrylic applied, then I get busy with the pencil on the canvas. Easy. Click on image to enlarge etc.] [Close-up. Note how the pencil shows up the texture of the canvas. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[The lithograph I did for last month’s Techcrunch party in Menlo Park, sponsored by Stormhoek. Click on image to enlarge etc.] I’m going to be hanging out my shingle more in the cartooning department. I think it’s time.
I’m looking at lots of ideas, but here are the four that currently interest me the most: 1. Lithograph Commissions. Like the lithograph I did for Techcrunch above, or the Blue Monster one I did for Microsoft, I’ll be taking on corporate commissions. If you have a company that you think could use a high-end “social object”, please feel free to send me an e-mail, thanks. [This is a cartoon I designed for Jerry Colonna’s business card, about 2 years ago, which he still uses.] 2. Business Card Commissions. Sure, getting one of my cartoons onto your business card is easy enough via my Streetcards site, but if you fancy something a bit more personal, a it more unique, again, feel free to email me.
3. Cartoon Commissions. People want cartoons for all sorts of reasons. One of my favorite gigs this year was a series of cartoons I did for Sun Microsystems. I’m open to discussing all sorts of ideas here. Let me know. 4. Events. Every now and then people will sponsor me to come to their events, draw cartoons live and hand them out to attendees. Here’s a link to one I did a few months ago. I’m in the market to do more of these. Again, feel free to send me an e-mail.
My one caveat is: I’m not as inexpensive as I used to be. Basically, I charge corporate rates. Just letting you know…
Looking forward to seeing where this goes. I’ll keep you posted. Rock on.
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