Artists Who Twist your Mind

Evan Roth is one of them. Here are some things from his website:

How to build a fake google street car:


Intellectual Property Donor.
In event of death, donate all intellectual property to the public domain.


Public Domain Countdown until the death of an artist.



About Evan:

Evan Roth is an artist and researcher whose work focuses on technology, open source and popular culture.

Roth has exhibited widely in the Americas, Europe and Asia, including the Sundance Film Festival, the MoMA, the Tate, the Fondation Cartier and te front page of YouTube.

Roth's work explores the overlap between free culture and popular culture.

Naming Image File: Do's and Don'ts

Why does it matter what you name your image jpg? A good image file name can: 1) Be processed by a variety of different computer operating systems and 2) Help art directors will know who the art belongs to, even if it gets mixed with other artists.



What I've found from doing web design coding, is that in general, it's always a good practice to:

• Put the file name in lower case letters.

• It's a good habit to limit characters to letters, numbers, and underscores.
  

• Don't use blank spaces when you name a file. Instead use underscores to_separate_words.

• Try to include your own name on the file, so art directors remember who the image belongs to, such as: kateharper_catcard.jpg or kharper_cat_card.jpg

• Some art directors want the date or special words included in the image filename. For excample, a greeting cards publisher might want a separate image file for front and inside text. You might consider using front_harper_cat_1.jpg and inside_harper_cat_1.jpg

• Keep it under 56 characters, the shorter the better. I've found 10-20 characters is usually enough room to squeeze in my name and a description.

Reference Article

Here's more detailed information I found in this great article from Controlled Vocabulary Website on How to name image files. Read complete article and see all 8 tips...

1. Be careful with using special characters.

When creating file and folder names, limit your filenames to the characters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, underscore ( _ ), period ( . ), and hyphen ( - ). (But avoid using hyphens and periods since some older systems can't handle it.)

2. Do not use more than one period in a file name.

Save it for your extensions (.jpg .gif .png) Why? Because doing so will ensure full backwards compatibility for some operating systems. Also, some mail filtering programs will consider a file with two periods to be a "virus" or "worm."

3. Do not assume names are case sensitive - or - not case sensitive

Do not expect a directory to be able to hold separate elements named "Lifestyle" and "lifestyle", and , do not expect a file created with the name of "AN18256R.JPG" to be opened or found successfully using "an18256r.jpg". Read complete article and see all 8 tips...

Ten Questions to ask Before Licensing You Art

Here's a helpful article by Maria Brophy :
Ten Questions to ask Before Hooking Up Your Art With a License"

Excerpt:

1.) What are your distribution channels? (Translated: where are your products sold?)

Distribution Channels can be broken down in this way:

Specialty: Includes boutiques and specific shops that cater to a particular lifestyle such as surf, skate, snow, fishing, dive, etc.

Upper Tier: High end department stores (i.e. Saks)

Mid tier: Middle end department stores (i.e. Penney’s)

Lower Tier: Target

Mass Market: Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Costco

Other: Catalogs, direct mail, online, televised shopping

You want to know where they sell their stuff because if it’s to Wal-Mart and you don’t want your art sold there, then cancel the engagement!

2.) Who are your top 5 retail accounts?

Read entire article...

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Also See:

ART LICENSING

Booklet on 20 Steps to Art Licensing that is a list of suggested steps to to take for getting into art licensing. How to license your art to companies that publish greeting cards, and manufacture coffee mugs, magnets, wall hangings, kitchen items, and dozens of other gift items. This booklet covers 20 basic steps from how to prepare your art, to what companies to contact. It includes topics on: How to find agents, classes and what trade shows to attend. There are extensive resources on social media, licensing community groups, and lists of interviews with professional designers (5,200 words).

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Art Licensing Class this Friday, San Clemente

I've always liked all the priceless art licensing information that Maria Brophy has offered on her blog , so I wanted to let people know about a class she is teaching this Friday. What a deal for only $10!

Maria Brophy is teaching a class called: ART LICENSING 101, and is being held Friday from 6-7:30 at San Clemente Arts in San Clemente, CA. Their website for details and registration is http://www.scartsupply.com. Cost is $10.00!

ART LICENSING 101: Artists can earn money over and over again from the same images through art licensing. It’s what I call “working smarter, not harder.” In this lecture, I cover the basics of art licensing, how it works, how to get ready for it, resources, and realistically what you can expect to gain, earn and get from licensing your art. I’m bringing the last 3 years of our profit loss reports to show exactly how much money we’ve made from licensing Drew Brophy’s art!

Maria Brophy, is CEO of Son of the Sea, Inc., Marketing & Licensing Drew Brophy Properties
www.sonofthesea.com and also has a blog that helps creative people design the career.

8 Tips to avoid freelance burn out

Ran across this article on Inspire Monkey blog on freelance burnout. Excerpt:


1. Set Your Reasonable Working Hours The most common factor that contributes to a freelancer burnout is overwork. Most freelancers struggle with setting appropriate working hours and sticking to them. It’s always unexpected circumstances that force the freelancer to expand their working hours. There are times when upcoming deadlines or last min changes that may force the freelancer to work for longer hours, but that should not be a daily routine. The best way to tackle this issue is to set a schedule that involves only working a number of hours a day. Plan your timetable well ahead and stick to it. You may want to consider turning off your cellphone or email after working hours. You won’t worry about what you are unaware of. Let your clients know that you do not entertain frequent last minute changes and any late night calls. If you have some fantastic stroke of inspiration or idea during your free time, just make sure you have pen and paper handy and jot the idea down – it will wait until you are back at work!

2. Segregate Your Working Space from Your Living Space One of the problems that freelancers have is that the workspace and living space are often the same. This is especially the case when they usually work from home. You should have a separate room or space in your home that is used solely for work. Ideally, you should rent an office but if you can’t afford it yet, you should avoid having other distractions like the bed, TV or any gaming consoles in your workspace and vice versa. You should be able to walk away from your workspace in your free time and be able to relax and not think about work.
Read entire article...

Getting Started in Photoshop: 15 Guides

Ran across this slodive blog article on 15 resources for learning about photoshop.

Card Stock Comparison

Here's a good article on cardstock comparison from Craft Critique Blog:
(photos from Craft Critique)