Lots of new artists and custom t-shirt designers

Lots of new artists and custom t-shirt designers at Art Life Collective this week. Welcome one and all. There is some great new designs at ALC. Props to everyone who has brought such diversity to the collective.

There have been a couple of questions about how to market your designs. Well ... that depends on what your artwork is and who your target market is. Generally, pop culture stuff tends to sell the best, see My Way page and Jules under the artists. They are good examples of the kinds of designs that sell in larger numbers. When you have that kind of subject matter, a broad marketing strategy is best -- hit everything from Craigslist to forums and Myspace. Blogs are also a good way to get the word out.

For people focused on fine art or narrow markets, broad marketing will work, to an extent, but carefully targeting your specific audience is probably the best bet. There are alot of fine arts forums and sites, blogs, etc. that you should try. Also, if you have a blog or myspace page where people who know your work visit often, that's also a good place to get the word out.

Also check the Art Life Collective Artist Forums for other suggestions, especially from people who have had success.

And, remember, we are always promoting ALC in a general way to draw people to the forums and the site, not so much to sell shirts, but the broaden the artistic tallent pool for everyone to draw from.

If anyone has any additional suggestions, feel free to post them to the forum.

Made some new custom shirts to make fun of the Boston Aqua Teen bomb scare

It's time to make fun of Boston. I saw the photos, lots of them, of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ads that caused all the bomb scare rucus. What a bunch of crap. The things looked like Lite Brites. By the description the district attorney and other law enforcement and government gerbils are using, I would be afraid to throw out an old VCR for fear of bringing the city to a standstill. Everyone says this is a post 9-11 era and things have changed.

Well, that's just a huge pile of crap. Sept. 11, 2001 did not turn Americans into pussies. Sorry. It just did not happen. Though apparently, a lot of people in Boston seem to be way to tightly wrapped. There was no local angle to the story, so, as much as I wanted to, I could not justify writing that editorial.

Still, I'm a constitutionalist (tend to piss of liberals and conservatives on an equal basis, sometimes just for fun). So I came home and created a couple of custom shirt designs for our Art Life Collective project that should piss of exactly the right kind of people. The first shirt points out that people in Boston who raised such a fuss are a bunch of mouth-breathers. The other, an ATHF Bomb Squad shirt, should take care of anyone else I missed.



Just an aside, I'm sorry Anna Nicole died. I also don't think it is news and am not going to let it run on our front page unless told otherwise by my superiors. Some news outlets still have integrity.