Message from t-shirt art guru and Art Life Collective pres

Greetings and Salutations from the Art Life Collective!

An open letter to the artists of Art Life Collective from company president, Blair Hadley

Props and Laurels
Trying to figure out where to begin with this first newsletter is difficult at best. First of all, I would like to thank each and every artist who has taken the time to register on the site. I know for some of you it has been a trying experience, but if you are reading this, it means you are a founding member of the Collective. We at ALC all have our hats off to you. You have formed the foundation of an adventure into a new type of business model where everyone truly has a voice, enjoys the same freedoms of expression and shares in the rewards of the open market in a way that is truly equitable.

Secondly, I would like to personally thank our primary web designers, Manhattan-based Nathan Conrad (all aspects of graphic design and architecture) and Jon Kowalski (all aspects of site functionality). They worked closely with me over a period of months to make this dream possible. It has been a pleasure to work with them. In addition, many thanks to Julie Askins, a talented photographer and friend who lent her time and talent to do the model shoots you see on the homepage and the about page. In addition, I would like to give a very special thanks to Melissa Loy who greatly assisted in the development of the concept itself. Finally, thanks to my brother, Graham Hadley, whose assistance in working directly with the artists and promoting the site has helped so much in getting us to where we are today.

What the #$% is going on? I can’t upload my images! Argh!
Okay. This is the place where I’m going to address the avalanche of e-mails and complaints about problems folks are having uploading images. Many of you I have worked with directly in troubleshooting this process. This has been the source of greatest consternation, probably, for all of you. First of all, it being the first month of operations for the site beyond private beta testing, it comes as no surprise that we have faced some great challenges in this arena. Our staff has done its best to fix these issues on the fly, and many issues have already been hammered out, but let’s face it – for many it has been an exercise in patience and frustration. Some of you, unfortunately, have even given up altogether.

As always, there is not an ounce of balderdash in the way you are dealt with, so on behalf of my company I apologize to all of you for which this has been a frustrating experience. I also thank those of you who have persevered.

Dealing with the problem of uploading PNG files has been a particular source of consternation. Lots of you have complained about files not formatting properly on the Dynamic Alignment Tool (the T-shirt template). We are working to have this problem fixed in the near future. For now, I recommend saving and uploading any files you need to support transparency in TIFF format. So far TIFF has been the fool-proof workhorse of the site in terms of image uploads where transparency is required. I will let you all know when PNG is reliable enough to be used on a regular basis. We will also edit the Image Upload Guide to reflect these changes. If you are not uploading an image that needs to support transparency, use JPG format. Also, it seems that older versions of Photoshop have particular difficulty with this format, particularly PS 6 and 7. CS and CS 2 seem ok for PNG’s.

But I am using .jpg, and I still can’t get my images on the site!!! There are a number of reasons for why this may be the case. Most of the issues seem to be related to images being to large or they are not between 150 and 300 dots per inch. However, from personal experience, I know there are some of you out there with correctly formatted images that are still not correctly uploading. To deal with this issue, we have created a dummy account we are now using to test images that otherwise should upload. So far I haven’t met an image that I couldn’t make friends with, so if you are really struggling, send the image to us and we will troubleshoot it for you. Do this as only a last resort. If we are too overwhelmed with solving upload issues in this way, nothing will get done around here! Also, I have honestly found that a lot of folks are not really reading the upload guide (you know who you are!). Please, READ THE WHOLE IMAGE UPLOAD GUIDE! There are big reasons why we have set the image upload specifications the way they are. ALC only wants to provide the highest-quality textile imaging on the market. That means we need extremely high resolution images.

Another issue may be image size. If you try to upload an image that is too low resolution, the server will not accept it. Also, please make sure the images are no larger than 11.5 inches wide by 17.5 inches tall. Oversized images also will not be accepted by the server. Finally for all you folks who are still struggling, please make sure to TURN OFF POP-UP BLOCKERS WHEN USING THE SITE! The image upload status bar is a pop-up. If it is blocked, there is no way to upload your work. Finally we know there are kinks to work out on our end, and we are laboring to do so as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience.

When do I start to make some money?
This is another question I have a feeling is on all of your minds. Well gang, here’s the deal. To those of you who’ve already reaped the financial rewards of using the Collective, congratulations. For the rest of us, let me tell you what has been taking place for the last month: We have been building the image database. Squandering our finite advertising budget before the site had a solid, varied base of images and artists would be foolish. In the next month ALC will be launching an aggressive promotional campaign to draw customers to the site and your images. There is a phenomenal variety of first-class on the site to choose from at this point, and it is time do go ahead with this phase of building the Collective. As always, you will be notified via e-mail as soon as an image of yours sells, as well as an update of your current balance due you from ALC.

Art Life Collective Version 2.0 – Make your voice heard!
As expected, this first month online has been a wild one. Although I cannot tell you how pleased we are with what has transpired, the site is going to get some serious love in the coming months to address your concerns as well as ours. Some of the things you can expect in the future are a more browsable main gallery and artist database, including adding a search engine for keywords as well as hammering out issues concerning the artist admin page. We will also be adding a feature that permits artists to use an alias or pseudonym rather than their real name and possibly, and I do mean possibly, use this feature to create multiple profiles. Also we will be adding a forum for artists to communicate with one another, ALC staff, as well as the general public. This feature will not be directly on the site, but will be linked directly to the site in a few obvious locations. Everything we are overhauling in the coming months will be geared to streamlining the ease of use for customers and artists as well. But we don’t want to guess at what we think you want. If ALC is import to you, and you have an idea you want to share, please send comments to peanutgallery@artlifecollective.com. We will listen to all serious feedback, but this account will be for suggestions to the site revision only, so do not expect a response from that address. If you have other issues or difficulties, continue to address them to myself or info@artlifecollective.com.

In closing…
I cannot tell you all - artists, staff, programmers, family and friends how much I appreciate your efforts to help create what I hope will become a revolution in the way artists share and market their work on the World Wide Web. We are really trying to do something different here, and it is your continued support, feedback and effort making the Collective real. You are all forming the backbone of this organization. The success of the Art Life Collective is a direct function of the efforts of many, not a few. Again, thanks so much for joining us.

Respect,
Blair Hadley
President, Art Life Collective, LLC
Art As Life…Life as Art!