Designer T-Shirt Artists Collective

Patience please

2007-08-08T22:40:00.000-04:00

Just in case everyone is still wondering, we are still working on some coding issues with Art Life Collective.

The big moves here will be aimed at making Art Life Collective more accessible both for our artists and people looking to buy custom designer t-shirts.

We are still putting the final tweaks to the code, but are just about ready to change the site.

And, once again, one thing we need all of our artists to do, if you have not done so already, is to make sure all of your works are titled and you have filled in the description sections for your shirts. This is necessary for the search engines to be able to point customers you way.

Also, we have had a bunch of luck lately with commercial designs. One of the things, though, that we have run into (I'm one of the ones who made this mistake with one of my designs) is to make images the appropriate size and dpi. Simple designs can get away with lower dpi and such, but the more complicated your design is, the more resolution we need on the site. And don't go below 170. The images, even simple ones, start to fall apart.

We have a couple of graphic artists, including myself, who are part of the ALC team and will be happy to help anyone with solutions to design questions or problems.
So, just let us know.

Featured artist for the Week: Bazzah

2007-05-29T23:11:00.000-04:00

Bazzah is another one of Art Life Collective's custom t-shirt designers who has been with the site for the majority of its inception. Their designs lean towards the artistic side and are a strong standout among our contributors.

Artist Bio: My art stems from both extremes of human emotion: peace and harmony to the horrors of darkness and desolation. I use these themes creatively to invoke something both shocking and pleasing to the eye. My designs are reproduced in a large-scale format, meshing a wide variety of mediums including but not limited to: oil-pastels, charcoals, pencils, paints and photography. All elements are then combined into a portrait digitally.

Featured artist for the Week: olive47

2007-05-10T00:43:00.000-04:00

olive47 has done everything from giving life to a fake online cult (which needed a disclaimer since the mouth-breathing section of the public thought it was real) that uses sodium pentathol in all of its cooking to creating artwork and has been featured in Peel Magazine.

Her artist bio says it better that I could (even after eating some multiprism pancakes): "olive47 hails from the west coast, u.s.a. she likes small non-threatening mammals, magenta, mr. ramen, painting walls, cute portuguese boys, dub music, pancake parties, and white middle-class kids who pretend to be gangstas. she was once rumoured to be the bastard daughter of tammy faye bakker, and her friends tell her she's a good dancer. she might be in love with you."

Check out her Web site here
Join the cult here

Arrrrgh, Spammers beware

2007-05-10T00:38:00.000-04:00

We have updated the Art Life Collective t-shirt designer and artist forum. Everything should be about the same for our users, but we have put a few extra barriers in place for spammers. I don't expect it to stop them completely, but it has stemmed the tide for now.

The only thing that may change for the artists at Art Life Collective on the forum is you may have to re-enter you name and password, since most of the cookies, certificates and such will have changed.

Also, ALC may be a bit on the buggy side for a little while. We are in the process of doing a major makeover for the site and some coding issues may crop up. The Art Life Collective team will be on hand to help with any problems that do crop up. Please report any problems (sooner better than later) to graham@artlifecollective.com or chris@artlifecollective.com.

Featured artist for the Week: Jamey Weare

2007-05-01T01:12:00.000-04:00

This week, hats are off to Jamey Weare, if for no other reason than his War is Sexy? shirt design. The artwork is outstanding, and the message he is sending is solid.
Not one of Art Life Collective's more prolific artists, Weare (who is one of those rare multi-talented individuals whose abilities cover the whole creative spectrum) certainly makes up for quantity with quality.

Again, he has been with ALC almost since the beginning, and his War is Sexy? shirts is one of the more popular designs.

Other artists take note here: If you want stuff to sell well, make sure the design is high quality and that it appeals to people. That seems to be the running theme so far with all of our featured artists.

Featured artist for the Week: Edward Ferrusquia

2007-04-24T23:03:00.000-04:00

Of all Art Life Collective's t-shirt artists and designers, Edward Ferrusquia has been one of the consistently most popular. That's probably because he has worked out an agreement with My Way Entertainment to use their I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch spoof of the X-men cartoons. He has several shirts for My Way and ALC is home to the official My Way Entertainment page.

The amazing Mr. E has also been with the company from it's inception, and there is something to be said for loyalty -- actually, a lot can be said.
Props E. Keep 'em coming.

Featured artist for the Week: Social Zombie

2007-04-15T00:46:00.000-04:00

Since we are busy redesigning and upgrading our custom t-shirt and artist design site, Art Life Collective, and we a pushing 1,000 pieces of art, we have decided to start featuring artists of the week -- people who have been active both in the Art Life Collective project and on our T-shirt Artist Forums.

First out of the gate -- there is just something darkly appealing about the humor here (I about bought the "crayons and paste taste good" shirt for my art teacher wife before I caught the "teacher touched me" scribbled in the background. Still might need to get that one, for me to wear at home) -- is Social Zombie.

me friends with simian iodine,grewaarr! he say this good place to be! make design buy design support artists... or me eat you up!

Ex military scientific experiment gone awry...#06266/00 Neoplastic nanothread DNA recode and development project. After several failed attempts to recode DNA structure and introduce the neoplastic and nanothread technology the subject had become somewhat irrational and non responsive to agreed upon testing. AFter 3 years of military hospital rehab subject #06266 has been deemed fit for introduction back into the public. Subject is required to take daily primordialesopleen spleen and DNA injections to balance small psychotic episodes brought on by man made lighting and processed foods. The military has found these small drawbacks to the subjects condition to be of little concern or threat to the public at large.

Most popular artist of the week, according to page views: Ryager2704

ALC custom shirt site redesign

2007-04-05T00:56:00.000-04:00

We are in the process of redesigning the site for Art Life Collective, so, all our custom t-shirt designers and artists, please report any bugs you run across. We humbly beg your forgiveness for any inconvenience. We would fall on our swords, but there are only a handful of us here, so things would end pretty quickly.

Seriously, though, we have been paying attention to the survey we sent out and now have a million things we want to improve. A couple topping the list are a faster loading front page and making it more user friendly. We also are going to be addressing the transparency issue with the preview boxes that makes it hard to see dark vector designs in those spaces. This has not been a huge issue, since the images show up on the shirts, but it does make browsing the gallery a less than perfect experience.

We are really looking to improve things for both our contributing artists and other shirt designers and think everyone will be pleased with the changes.
Now, there are a few things artists need to do -- if they want to optimize their traffic and really get the full use of what ALC brings to the table -- is to make sure they are not only titling their designs, but filling in the shirt descriptions so our on-site search engine can find them. That's what people looking for specific artwork and shirts use to browse Art Life Collective ... or any site. It only takes a few seconds to do, soo DO IT, at least if you want your images searchable.

This is not just about directing buyers to your shirts, but people to your art. Most of our artists have distinctive styles, that, if their descriptions are accurate, should send people to their pages and work, which often links to other of their works of site and so on.

Also, remember, anyone having any problems or needs any help, please let us know, either to me, graham@artlifecollective.com, or info@artlifecollective.com or post the issue on our t-shirt forums for artists. What ever we can do to help, we will.

Again, the ALC team appreciates everyone who took the time to fill out the surveys and let us know what you want. We are going to implement a serious number of those changes over the next few weeks or so. Anyone who has additional suggestions, feel free to contact us at the above listings and give us a heads up.
Thanks

Keeping custom designer t-shirt art safe from thieves

2007-03-17T01:06:00.000-04:00

Several Art Life Collective t-shirt artists and designers have expressed some concern about their intellectual property.
OK, first off, Art Life Collective is an artist project for artists created by artists, so we will never lay claim to your artwork -- intellectual property issues are very important to us. That is something that will not be changing.

As to protecting uploaded work to the site, the automated imaging section of Art Life Collective that handles everything from creating the thumbnail to positioning the image on the shirt also allows for an larger view so viewers, potentially customers, can get a better look at the work. That part of the site automatically places a watermark (says Art Life Collective) across the expanded image. It does not appear on the final printed version, but it should keep your work out of the hands of unsavory characters.
Should look something like this:

All hail the hypnotoad shirts

On another note, just a reminder to all artists, both new to the site and old hats, the site search engine needs the keyword part of the description to be filled out, at least with the title of the work and what it is all about, for the search engine to work. We are getting thousands of visitors, and we want them to be able to find your art on the site. All you have to do is take a few seconds with existing work on the site or when uploading new images.

Also, we have topped the 200 artist mark. Thanks to everyone who is participating in Art Life Collective and taking part on the artist and t-shirt forums.
Thanks everyone.

Changes coming for custom t-shirt designers at Art Life Collective

2007-03-03T22:18:00.000-05:00

We are looking for some input from our custom t-shirt artists and designers at Art Life Collective.
This message went out to everyone involved this week.
We are planning some significant changes to the look and feel of the Art Life Collective Web site, with the goal of enhancing the experience of our artists and customers. Because you are the heart and soul of our community, we would like to know your thoughts on some of our proposed updates as well as other ideas you may have that we have not yet considered. Your voices are important to us, and we hope that you will take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by completing a brief (10 question) survey by following this link. All responses are anonymous, so please feel free to share both your positive and negative thoughts. We appreciate your time, and look forward to incorporating your ideas into the next steps as we move Art Life Collective forward. If you have additional questions or ideas that are not incorporated into the survey, please feel free to email us directly or to post your thoughts on the bulletin board at http://www.artlifecollective.com/bb/.

Best Regards,
Your Art Life Collective Team

Lots of new artists and custom t-shirt designers

2007-02-20T23:47:00.000-05:00

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

2007-02-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

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.

More tools for custom artist t-shirt designers

2007-01-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

Art Life Collective artist forum administrator and t-shirt artist and designer in residence and all-around cool person (much more so than I) Jules has posted a load of stuff on the forums for artists and custom t-shirt designers to use.
So, check out a rundown of her latest contributions to the Art Life Collective forums. Not only is there stuff there for artists, but she is always finding cool music, artwork, and other things to keep the ganglia twitching.
Kudos, Jules.

All quiet at Art Life Collective following holidays

2007-01-15T23:28:00.000-05:00

We're done catching our breath from the holidays at Art Life Collective. Custom art shirts were apparently popular this season. Great for participating artists, but it did keep us busy.

We are also continuing to see new artists and are pushing the 700 mark on designs. Kudos to everyone who has posted to the site. Also, thanks go out to everyone, ALC artists and others, who continue to contribute to the Art Life Collective artists forums. Again, those forums are open to anyone who wants to talk art -- or just about anything else, with the exception of trolls and spammers. No time for those, nope, none at all.

Overall 2006 has been a great year for ALC. We appreciate everyone's patience as we have developed the site and worked the glitches out. There are still a few, but they are more the exception. Again, thanks go out to everone who is making this project a self-sustaining site. ALC exists for artists to showcase their work -- all of us behind the scenes fall into that category too.

Looking ahead, we are exploring expanding the product line -- especially with sizes and styles of shirts offered. The best way we know how to do that is through feedback from customers and, more importantly, through participating artists. So, jump on the artist forums and let the ALC team know what products you would like to see.

Again, props to everyone who has helped, both by contributing to ALC and the people who have helped get the word out.
Thanks,
The Art Life Collective crew.

More tips for Art Life Collective custom shirt designers

2006-12-30T23:08:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the hiatus. Holidays have been busy for Art Life Collective with a number of new custom t-shirt designers signing up.

We are now up to around 140 artists with more than 600 designs on the site. It also appears that, at long last, we have most of those bugs worked out with the upload issues.

Still, here are a few hints and tips for getting around the site that are worth mentioning.
First off, we offer customers a bunch of options for the color of the shirt they want. I worked around this issue easily when doing some of the text designs for the ALC shop by creating different contrast outlines around the text and creating text effects that will make it stand out on any color.
This is a little harder for people working with art. I have seen several of our new artists uploading multiple designs, different ones for dark or light shirts. That's a great idea and one that works well.
Of course, if your work is framed with a white boarder -- no transparency -- there is also no problem. But, I realize many designs don't look good that way and transparency is essential. Again, the fix here, unless you want to upload different versions, is to put a light boarder (white works best) around dark designs and a dark (again, black works best in most cases) around light designs.

Also, with regards to uploading t-shirt designs with transparency, I have found Photoshop CS or later works best for this. We think we have most of the issues resolved with older versions of PS, but, if anyone has a problem with their upload, email me a graham@artlifecollective.com, and I will either upload the image for you or help you with whatever problems you are having.

Thanks for everyone who is either contributing to the site or just taking part in the Art Life Collective artist forum. It's great to have you aboard.

Also a quick reminder to everyone to post artist bio information and and artist statement on your page, plus any links to outside sites hosting your work. ALC exists to help artists promote themselves.

Have a safe and happy holidays.
Peace,
The ALC team

Aaaah, for all our shirt designers, be aware, new software

2006-12-20T02:41:00.000-05:00

According to one of Art Life Collective's t-shirt designers,
"Adobe Photoshop CS3 has just been released. It's still a trial version. A download is available for a month and if you already have CS2, you can download the trial version of CS3 forever."

That one from the Art Life Collective artist forum.
Becoming more of a online artist resource every day. Carol get the props for today's tip.

Christmas sales and new ALC shop

2006-12-15T00:36:00.000-05:00

OK, for all of our contributing artists, it's the holiday season. That means some really (and we mean REALLY) offensive holiday shirts at the Art Life Collective shirt shop. I appologize for these ahead of time.

Also, the press is installed in its new location in Orlando and Blair is finished with the upgrades. While our custom designer t-shirts have always looked very good by any standards, the new software and ink-delivery system should step it up another notch. If anyone has any suggestions about other ways to improve what we are trying to do, let us know at info@artlifecollective.com

Just a head count, we are up to 127 t-shirt artists as I am writing this and are closing in on the 600 designs benchmark. We are always happy to have people joing the ALC project. The more the better -- for everyone. Part of the reason for creating Art Life Collective is to foster more diversity in the art community. Anyone browsing our t-shirt design gallery can see we have done just that. And for our artists, that means more people with different tasts will be attracted to the site and see their work.

Again, we hope everyone is happy with both the site and how their work is turning out in print. If you are experiencing any problems, let us know. Occassionally, we will have so many uploads at once that the server buffer will fill up, causing delays. We are working with our coder to fix that bug, but it's a minor one and has only happened a couple of times.

Also, Jules has been busy digging up art news and interesting artists and posting the links in the Art Life Collective forum, so check it out. The forum is open to everyone, not just ALC artists as a clearinghouse for right-brainers to share ideas, so check it out.

A reminder, this is the season when lots of people are out shopping for unique gifts. It's a good time to promote both your onsite and off-site work and maybe sell some of it. Best of luck.

Happy holidays
the ALC team

Just what are those new windows at Art Life Collective?

2006-12-06T00:25:00.000-05:00

A few of our contributors may have noticed on the artist admin page, where you upload your t-shirt designs to Art Life Collective, there are some new little tabs down at the bottom of the page.

That's all part of some new code Blair has added that will notify shirt designers and artists what and how many of their shirts have sold at ALC. Also, since it's suck cold right now, we are looking at adding some winter -- read long sleeve -- shirts to the inventory. Maybe in black or white only, depending on demand. Check out the t-shirt forum at Art Life Collective for the latest on this.

On another note, WALC, our shoutcast station, is down at the moment while we upgrade our Internet connection. Seems, since the move from Miami to Orlando, there is not enough bandwidth to support our stream with any sort of quality. That should be taken care of soon and Disco Super Chocolate will be back on the air.

Peace

Technology upgrades for better t-shirts at Art Life Collective

2006-11-29T21:38:00.000-05:00

As we continue to move the site forward at Art Life Collective for all of our custom t-shirt designers and participating artists, Blair is also working to improve our printing system.

Aside from streamlining the process, he is also improving our printing system with new software and an updated ink-delivery system for the press. What this means from a quality standpoint is that, especially with light colors -- pastels in particular -- on dark fabric, images will look better. We already have solid results to date, but these upgrades will take the quality a step farther.

Additionally, we are looking at adding more styles to our shirt options. One of the things the folks at Art Life Collective are considering is V-neck shirts for women. Though we want to do more marketing research and want more input from our customers on what they want before we spend a bunch of money on inventory. That means we need to hear from artists on what they want. ALC exists to help display our t-shirt artists work, so we need to hear from everyone on what they want here. The forum would be a good place to do that or feel free to email us at info@artlifecollective.com .

Blair covers most of this in several threads on the Art Life Collective Forum.

Art Life Collective text shirt shop

2006-11-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

One thing the warm and fuzzy minds at Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, have realized is there is an excessive amount of cutsie phrase shirts out there. Well, that bothers us a bit. So, we have created our own designer t-shirts shop at ALC, with our own phrases that are, well, not so cute.

So far, we have things like:

My other ride is your mom

Your dog is licking his balls again

Even Gandhi thinks you suck

Fission, Bitches

Save the planet, kill yourself

and so on and so forth. It seems all of the “I love my kitten” type sites are making a profit with their stuff, so, to keep karma in balance, we are taking a different approach.

Hope you enjoy the new designs. We are just getting started with these here.

Peace and happy Thanksgiving.

The new Art Life Collective shop

Art Life Collective throughtout history

2006-11-20T16:27:00.000-05:00

Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, custom designer t-shirts have been with us since the beginning.
http://artlifecollective.com/bb/index.php?board=10;topic=130.0#msg423
Thanks Jules for this little history lesson.

More artists join Art Life Collective

2006-11-13T01:06:00.000-05:00

On the Art Life Collective front, we have gobs of new custom designer t-shirt artists on board. We have topped 110 artists with just shy of 500 pieces of work on the site. We have also moved operations from Miami to Orlando — for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which involves cutting down on overhead by half. There are a few bugs on the site right now since we are adding code to increase the search engine and create a section of text-only shirts created by myself and the other dark minds behind ALC. So far, “Your dog is licking his balls again” is my fave. That section appears under the ALC Shop artist page and will soon have its own tab on the front page. Don’t look for too many vomitously cut sayings there … We’re not that kind of people. Also a heads up, because we are doing so much coding, the site is a bit buggy right now. We should have all the glitches worked out soon … hope, hope.

As for artists creating works for the site or doing any sort of shirt designs: If you are looking more to make money than to just showcase your work … try tapping into pop culture icons. Again, our Juggernaut, Bitch shirts and similar creations tend to sell in glowing numbers. What we also see is that artists that have one or two such designs tend to sell other stuff off their pages better simply because they are attracting more traffic and getting their name out there more. Just a though for any artist looking to draw attention to their stuff online. Think about designs that will get indexed in the search engines fast or that hit on a particular cultural trend, then use them as bait to hook viewers to your work. From what we have seen at Art Life Collective and in the Art Life Collective Forum t-shirt discussions, that’s the way to go right now.

Art Life Collective hits century mark

2006-10-23T01:04:00.000-04:00

Damn straight, Art Life Collective just added its 100th custom t-shirt artist. Actually, ALC added its 100th and 101st, but, whose counting.

Also, the intrepid Mr. E has uploaded a new I'm the Juggernaut, Bitch shirt, replacing his old, and amazingly successful, previous Juggernaut design. This one is equally cool.

We continue to have a great level of diversity at Art Life Collective and appreciate all the effort the artists have put into their designs. Also, props to everyone who gives us feedback on the Art Life Collective Forum. Believe it or not, it's a huge help to those of use who keep ALC up and running. I also lets us know, not only where problems are, but also what you all want the site to be. This is a continual work in progress and the input from all the artists gives us some idea how to best direct our efforts.

Also, there have been a few questions about the increase in the cost of the double-sided shirts to $24 and some change. The motivation behind this is simple -- we were taking a beating, both in supply costs and in the time it takes to print double-sided t-shirt images. As a self-supporting artist collective, what we can't afford, especially now in the early stages of this thing, is to violate the first command of fiscal responsibility - Thou shalt not spendenth more than thou taketh in. It just comes down to simple math.

If anyone has any comments on this, please let us know.
Again, thanks to everyone who is working to make Art Life Collective such a huge success.

On a side note, check out the forum under the art section; Jules and a couple of other artists have posted some helpful -- not to mention interesting -- links.
Peace y'all.
Graham

Custom designer t-shirt database now searchable

2006-10-18T00:50:00.000-04:00

At Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, we are continuing to expand services for our contributing custom t-shirt artists. And, with the advent of the search engine, we hope to make the site more accessible for customers and our member artists.

Despite the ongoing development of ALC, including the creation of the Art Life Collective Forum, we are maintaining the site free of charge to artists who upload their work.

A couple of notes about the forum: It is a place for artists and graphic designers to network and share ideas and even promote their work outside ALC. For that atmosphere to remain conducive to such productive exchanges, we require people to behave accordingly. As a rule, we have almost no real rules for the forum -- and are very liberal about what can be uploaded to ALC, copywright issues and pornography excluded, of course. However, for people posting to either www.artlifecollective.com or the forum, www.artlifecollective.com/bb, please keep in mind, we allow no spam or flaming or other nasty behavior. It makes life difficult for those of us lurking behind the scenes who keep the gears turning and pull the levers that make Art Life Collective work.

Also, we have several new artists and some of our current members continue to upload new work, so check it out. The best way to see what's new is by clicking latest under the artist menu or new to old under the gallery listing.

Also, props to everyone who is helping promote their own work in blogs and places like Craigslist and Myspace. We do take great efforts to promote what our contributors bring to the site, but we need everyone to do their part here to make this work.

What's especially encouraging is the huge diversity and range of the submissions to ALC, from simple graphic-text logos to fine arts and photo prints. There is really some great stuff posted on the site. Good job. Also, if anyone stumbles on a marketing strategy that works well, post it to the forums so other artists can follow you lead.

Blair, Jules and I are working on yet another facet of ALC, though that's going to be something of a surprise -- sort of a foray into dadaist expression -- so keep watching the site.

Thanks again for everyone who has made this collective effort a growing success.
Graham

ALC user has great site ... especially for artists

2006-10-06T00:36:00.000-04:00

For everyone at ALC and anyone interested in art in general, one of our contributors, Mindy, has a fantastic blog, Groovy Inclinations, up promoting her artwork and the scene in general.

It's also a very good template for other artists who are looking to get their work out there and discuss it, so I highly recommend everyone take a look at how Mindy has hers set up.
http://groovyinclinations.blogspot.com/

More functions on Art Life Collective

2006-10-06T00:30:00.000-04:00

Blair just sent out a mass email to all our custom t-shirt designers at Art Life Collective. New features and new colors on the way. If you have not done so, got to the Art Life Collective forum and vote on what color shirts you want us to add.

Here is the update from Blair, the real brainpan behind ALC:

Greetings All:

Well, the company is reaching all sorts of new milestones these days, the most important of which involve our ongoing efforts to streamline the site to help customers find your work. The first of those big steps has already been taken, and the artist database is now entirely searchable by name and includes a drop-down menu for quick browsing. The next step in the development of the site in terms of directing customers to your work is to make the database of images searchable by keywords. We are now ready to do this, and to do so will require that you guys update your accounts. Here's how it works:

1. Log in to your account.
2. Select an image by clicking on the thumbnail.
3. There is a new field on your admin page that says, "Description." Write a SHORT paragraph or sentence that best describes the image you selected. Information such as genre, media, and ESPECIALLY subject matter are important. Keep it straight and to the point. Do your best to summarize in words what you think the image is about. The search engine will do the rest.
4. Click "save layout." THERE IS NO NEED TO DELETE YOUR OLD IMAGE OR RE-UPLOAD IT. DO NOT DO THIS! Remember, you're just adding some new info for the search engine.
5. Repeat for each image.

Another feature that is now, alas, working properly is the fact that artists are all instantly notified via auto-confirm when one of their images sells, so there can be absolutely no confusion about whether your work is selling or not. Also, artists may now use an alias instead of their real name if they choose to do so, and may also edit their account settings and update information once they have logged in. As you guys can see, especially those of you who have been here since the early days, we are making tremendous strides to make this site the premier place on the web to accomplish the company's fundamental mission statement, which is this: To provide artists a good place to get exposure, market their work and profit substantially from the sales of their designs. We are truly a collective, working towards a common goal - though our ideas and perspectives on self expression are unique - to share our creative efforts with others and hopefully not starve in the process.

Also, be it noted to all of you now - Two-sided designs are now $24.95 each. This is a simple matter of business and finance and must be done, particularly with those of you who choose to cover both sides of a shirt with an 11.5" x 17.5" image. By the way, let me give a design tip here - they don’t sell well at all. Good elements of design incorporate the use of negative space. Smattering a shirt with ink is not often the best way to go! No business model, however good-karma the intent, could fly with the profit share we give and the cost of ink as well as the time it takes to print a double-sided shirt of that nature. Please understand this is not punitive, but is a matter of ALC remaining profitable. If you really have a good, solid two-sided design, GO FOR IT! It will still sell. It was my personal decision on this one, and was a matter of the bottom line. Thanks for understanding. The customers will also "get it" that two-siders cost more.

Finally, we are adding a new shirt color to those currently available. We have narrowed it down to two colors based on both customer and artist feedback. The final choice is being left up to you guys. You will all have a vote on the new color. Your choice is brown or army green. To vote, all you need to do is log on to the forum, register and then cast your vote. The address for the forum is www.artlifecollective.com/bb. The address for the specific string to vote is under General Discussion, but is located at http://artlifecollective.com/bb/index.php?topic=97.0 - just to make life easy. There are images of models wearing each of the shirts, so you know exactly what you are voting for, and yes - the colors will be the same for women and men even though it's a male model ala Derek Zoolander. I think this look was Blue Steel, but it's hard to tell with the crop.

Oh - coming soon…2XL sizes.

Thanks everyone for being a part of the Art Life Collective. We really are doing things like no other company out there on the web, and are proud you are a part of this experiment in capitalism with a conscience. Best wishes to all!

Sincerely,
Blair Hadley

President
Art Life Collective

Art Life Collective shirt sizes

2006-10-01T20:53:00.001-04:00

Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, is up to 97 artists who have contributed customt t-shirt designs -- three away from the 100 mark.

There have been a few questions about the shirts we use and the sizing available. Art Life Collective uses American Apparel shirts because they are made in America and are pretty strict about fair wage and other issues that are core values important to us.

Shirt sizing is available at the American Apparel site: http://store.americanapparel.net/sizing.html

Also, we are one step close to having the site searchable by artwork keywords. ALC is already searchable by artist and we are about ready with the artwork coding. As soon as that is ready, all of our contributors will need to go back to their admin page and add keywords for each piece of art they have contributed. Anyone posting additional work to the site will get to do that when they upload their image.

You don't have to do this, but it will help direct customers to your work, which means more exposure as an artist and selling more of your designs.

If anyone has any questions, let me or ALC guru Blair, blair@artlifecollective.com, know and we will do our best to help out.

Latest tip from the Art Life Collective forum

2006-09-25T00:48:00.001-04:00

Actually, it's not so new, but something I just found digging through the posts on the Art Life Collective, forum from one of our custom T-shirt gurus.

Just about every graphic artist out there, myself included, heavily relies on some form of raster based software for post production. Photoshop has always been my weapon of choice -- not detracting from some of the other programs, I'm sure they work fine, it's just what I learned on.

While PS is a great program by its self, the great thing -- one of several -- about it is that it so readily accepts plugins, scripts and other customizations.

dr1sean2 posted this link on the Art Life Collective forum. Definately worth checking out:

"When you get sick of photoshops awesome leaf brush and other natural selections, check out www.imageafter.com for all kinds of great textures, brushes, and other types of photos."

Of course, I still draw alot of my stuff on paper, especially since, outside the digital realm, my real strength is pen and ink. However, I have found that, often by scanning my stuff into Photoshop, I have a whole new list of creative options available. Sometimes the work lives just as I drew it, but in digitized format to both preserve it and so I can move it around on the Internet. Though, again, with a few filters and tweaking in the Adjust Image menu, I get something much more to my liking.

If you follow some of my previous posts, you know my feelings about the arguments over whether digital work is actually art when compared to paper or canvas -- physical -- creations. I still don't like that the argument is even going on, but think it's especially silly and inane since I work in both and don't see either as mutually exclusive.

Latest tip from the Art Life Collective forum

2006-09-25T00:48:00.000-04:00

Art Life Collective breaks the 400 barrier

2006-09-22T00:59:00.000-04:00

Art Life Collective continues going strong. We now have more than 400 designs on the site and, at least at last count, 94 custom t-shirt designers on the site.

All and all, things continue to move along well. We have also seen an increase in sales, especially for those of you who are out there promoting your shirts, both online and in public. The online resources seem to be our best outlet for getting designs sold. We have been randomly promoting different designs in different markets to see what works best. So far, hitting classifieds in big cities plus artists posting in places where their specific work will be well received works best.

Also, Art Life Collective contributors need to continue to mention their work in places such as their blogs and Myspace and similar places. I have also found some forums where you are talking about your work. We are doing what we can to promote the site, but all of our artists need to do the same. The more attention you draw to your work the more it will sell. Also, if you have posted links on our site to your other work, any attention you bring to your page on ALC will also direct traffic to your other work. It's a win-win for everyone.

As for the site, as everyone has noticed, we have the first part of the on-site search engine up and running and it appears to be working without problems. We are now putting together coding to search artwork by title, keywords, etc. When we get that part up and going, our artists will need to add descriptive key words to each piece so it will show up in the search window.

The Art Life Collective forum is also turning out to be a big success. Thanks to everyone who is taking part. We especially appreciate the feedback we are getting about the site and the business, especially with regards to what color shirts you want added to the list of options for our customers and features we need to ad to the site.

Keep up the good work.

Art Life Collective gets notice on USA TODAY blog

2006-09-15T01:06:00.000-04:00

Both Art Life Collective and our t-shirt designers got some notice this week on a USA Today blog on pop culture. It speaks well of both the site and our artists.
The site, Popcandy, gives mention of www.artlifecollective.com in an entry on shirt companies that acutally work with artists, not leach off their work. The part about ALC is towards the end of the column

It's great to be recognized this way.

Art Life Collective shirt designer search engine up

2006-09-13T00:47:00.000-04:00

Brief update today, but it's big news for the custom t-shirt site. Art Life Collective now has the first phase of our search engine up and running. So far, it lets people search by artists or pull from a list of shirt artists we have on the site.

Next up, a key word search for the gallery. To do this, we will, once we have the code in place, need all of our artists to add keyword descriptions to their work. The search engine is currently accessible from the Artists Page, but is also in the gallery and other sections.

Also, we have a growing popularity in double-sided shirts, but our customers are not always aware there are two sides. The most popular of these designs is the Juggernaut, Bitch shirt, which has the Juggernaut art on the front and the entertainment logo on the back. Artis are encouraged to make note in their shirt title that it is double sided. Notificaton of such designs does appear on the order page, but not all of our customers are taking note, so lets give them a little help.

On a positive note, we are selling more shirts now. Blair has had to spend the past couple of days turning and burning to keep up with orders. That's great news for ALC and speaks well of the work our contributors are sending in. Keep it up.

Three more t-shirt designers join Art Life Collective

2006-09-11T00:58:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the absense of postings, both here and on the Art Life Collective forum. I have not had much time to do anything on the custom t-shirt front since my newspaper is moving into a new building, and, as managing editor, a hefty chunck of the responsibility for keeping things running smoothly on the news front for the past week -- and next few days -- falls to me.

Things are going well at Art Life Collective, including the addition of several new artists.
Check out Ava E. Berlin's work:
http://artlifecollective.com/shop/index.php?main_page=detail&products_id=1646&page=1&cat_id=233

Again, little time or energy to blog today, just wanted to touch base. Also, one thing to note, we are going to post something at ALC about shipping turnaround times, not because we are having problems, but just to keep things orderly. It does take a couple of days, especially lately because of the popularity of several of our artists' designs -- especially the Juggernaut, Bitch shirt -- to get the images on the shirt and then get them out the door.

Also, we are still coding for a search engine. As Art Life Collective approaches 100 artists and 400 pieces of t-shirt designs, this has become a necessity and is right now our No. 1 priority.

GorillaSushi latest to join Art Life Collective

2006-09-06T23:57:00.000-04:00

Art Life Collective has added yet another custom t-shirt designer to our roster. Welcome Jason Phillips. His GorillaSushi design absolutely rocks.

On another note, I know, I know, we promised a breakbeat session for Labor Day weekend on shoutcast station WALC, the audio outlet for Art Life Collective. Blair was supposed to spin live -- a treat. He, as Disco Super Chocolate, along with the guys from Aranji (Kudos Richmond) and my other brother, Chris, are some of the best DJs around. My iPizzle is full of thier stuff. Much better than most of what I can buy.

Unfortunately, logic broke down or we screwed our karma somehow and could not get the live feed to work. Blair thinks he has the problem licked, so expect great things in the future. I highly recommend recording his sets.

Juggernaut t-shirt still a big seller

2006-09-03T02:23:00.000-04:00

It looks like Edward Ferrusquia has struck gold with his Juggernaut, Bitch t-shirt. It also highlights a tactic for shirt designers, not just the t-shirt artists at Art Life Collective, but anyone who is selling their work online. Find some popular, especially underground, theme and capitalize on it. Artists can do this, sell some of their product - always a good thing, and draw attention to their other work. Smart.

The Juggernaut shirts have sold so well, they have set records across the board for ALC, so we know this works. They are also bringing in people who are buying other shirts from other artists. So ALC t-shirt designers, take note on what works.

Also, notice Ferrusquia's bio and other info on the site. Art Life Collective exists to promote artists, for free -- heck, we even pay them to do it when their shirts sell -- so use the resources we are giving you guys.

Helpful hint: It also makes sense to promote your work on as many sites as possible, either in blogs, Myspace, Craigslist, etc. Just make sure you follow their terms of use policy and don't cause ALC or yourself any problems.

Juggernaut, Bitch shirt comes to Art Life Collective

2006-09-01T02:40:00.000-04:00

Ok, we have been kicking around with our artist on how to sell their designer t-shirts.
Here are several posts from our forum on what we are trying to do. While we at Art Life Collective work very hard to promote the site -- not to mention keeping it maintained and running -- the best way for everyone involved is to help out.
Here are a list of suggestions from myself and one of the other forum administrators posted on the site.

If you have any questions whether or not it works,
http://artlifecollective.com/shop/index.php?main_page=detail&products_id=1388&zenid=53e6755d300fd250b719bdbbfa1aa66f&page=1&cat_id=95

After a little promotional efforts, that Juggernaut, Bitch design is our hottest seller right now.

So, here are the suggestions:
From Jules:
"My personal plan involves heavily masked manipulation, shameless eye batting, and total ridiculousness.

Get the word out over and over again... any way you can.

Post updates and pictures about shirts in blogs/on web pages (which reminds me...) - start a MySpace page, a LiveJournal page and blog about your experiences as a T-Shirt designer, a Social Networking page, link, link, link and link again to ALC through your other websites/webventures - people DO click on them.
Put links in the signature lines for all forum sites you belong to.

Send out "Glory to You" emails, begging to be forwarded to recipient’s friends and family. Send them out often (I write the stupidest emails just so that I can have the chance to email all my friends, imagine that).
AND YES. I beg. I don't care. I also use guilt tactics too. Shameless.

Upload new designs on a regular basis, and let people know - set a personal goal of uploading 1 new design every X weeks which gives you the chance to remind those around you of ALC, while providing new content consistently. If you have paid attention to the Shameless Self Promotion Threads, Mr. E has done this since joining the forums - a model which I applaud loudly. I watch for his posts about new shirts now.

Encourage other artists you know to join ALC. Now you have another member who knows you, who can promote your shirts as well as theirs. I have two buddies who joined and whenever I speak about ALC to other people, I always recommend looking at their designs as well as mine. I also prod the two of them to upload new content because I am fascinated about the work they bring to the table. Support your artist friends because they support you
(FUZZY!!).

Get a few of your own shirts printed and wear them out. Bring it up in conversation. Talk about the site. Talk about your designs. Get some cool shirts from other artists you like. Use their shirts to bring up your shirts.

Buy your own shirts and give them as gifts (birthdays, holidays, just because).

Design shirts for a specific event/specific group of people and let everyone know about them. Example: You are a member of Car Club (yes I am tailoring this for you right here.... Wink ) who meets regularly. Design shirts you think they would buy. Ask for suggestions... in the process you are rewarded with a new design that may sell to others perusing the site. If you meet with a group of women every Friday night, maybe they would enjoy knowing you designed something in celebration of that (which they will most likely find amusing and purchase as a group)... and there you go, another new design you can email/blog/promote to everyone else too. Tailor it and then promote it.

I also have similar plans of promotion that involve World Domination and Iron Fisted Persuasion. I will share those as they are birthed."

And, from me:
"And folks, don't forget about free classified programs like Craig's list and the like. I know I have seen a few ALC ads there, but we can always use more ... just make sure you follow their terms of use rules.

I agree with Jules about wearing a few of your shirts out in public, especially in places where the audience will be receptive to your particular work.

While I hope I can sell a few of my designs, I'm much more interested in generating general customer interest in the site. We have a bunch of designs that I think will go over well in Birmingham. Next time I head to the skate park or the Five Points South near UAB, I will be wearing an ALC shirt, either one of my designs or one of several others I have my eye on the site.

So far, the method of being seen in the shirts and getting them out there in the public eye has really worked. A couple of weeks ago, I did a one-off design for an employee who was leaving -- the shirt featured a local crazy one of our photogs just happened to catch. Amanda wore the shirt for a couple of days before she left and people have been going nuts around here to get similar stuff. And remember, this is Talladega. If we are getting this kind of response here, think what exposure in larger markets can do.

Also, you can't beat a grassroots, word-of-mouth method for promoting your work, especially online. Think we will call that the snakes-on-a-plane effect. No joke, the more your link and talk about it online, the more attention you will get. Check out some of the forums specifically for artists to share ideas and talk about your work.

Of course, we are working in similar ways, just shy of world domination, to bring customers to ALC, but the two are by no means mutually exclusive. The more people see your work or hear about it, the more it will sell."

Hope this helps.

Juggernaut, Bitch shirt comes to Art Life Collective

2006-08-31T02:43:00.000-04:00

We continue to see a bunch of talented artists design custom shirts for Art Life Collective.
While there is no shortage of talent, occassionally a design just snaps. We have a couple of them right now.
Edward Ferrusquia has added Juggernaut, Bitch shirt, which is guaranteed to bring some interest to his section of the site. That's a double-sided shirt by the way.

Equally cool, olive47 has added a bunch of her designs to the site, also well worth the effort. If you get the chance, check out her personal Web page, buy some stickers, join a cult ... I did.

Peace

Not just designer t-shirts, it's about the music, baby, yeah

2006-08-28T00:52:00.000-04:00

Now Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, has added to our list of creative outlets. Yes, of course, custom t-shirts are still our mainstay, but a bunch of us involved, myself - but especially head guy Blair, are DJs and general music junkies.

So, ALC now has its own Web radio, WALC.

Jules, one of our forum administrators, explaines:

"Our man with the plan, ALC President Blair Hadley a.k.a. DJ Disco Super Chocolate, streaming the freshest of tunes to the internet airwaves 'cause he's just that f*ing cool.
Featuring a wide variety of music that will make you sing, move, remember, sigh, gasp and *sometimes* wish you were deaf.

Where else but Radio ALC can one listen to New York Dolls, Massive Attack, Paul Simon and the theme song from The Love Boat all in one day? No where.

He's so multi-talented it will make you sick.

Radio ALC can be found streaming though WINAMP on your SHOUTcast radio dial.
Search: WALC

If you are using itunes or another mp3 program, you can listen to the stream by pacing the url, "www.blairsworld.mine.nu:8000" in the field where you select radio stations. For example, on itunes, it is under the "advanced" tab at the top. Click "advanced" then "open stream" then paste the above referenced web address into the field.

This ain't no Cafepress corporate marketplace, baby.
Welcome to the Underground."

Though I was the first DJ in the family, both my brothers have far exceeded my meager abilities. I am working on getting Blair to add some of his and Chris' mixes to the list.

In other ALC news, we are still moving, sooner than later, to getting the Art Life Collective site revisions done, again, with an emphasis on making the site searchable. The on-site search engine has become a necessity, much faster than we had expected, since we have something like 84 artists and around 355 pieces of art on the site.We appear to have most of the upload bugs debugged, so, if anyone is still having problems, especially with formats that support transparency like .png, please let us know.
Peace,
Graham

Searching for designer t-shirts

2006-08-22T01:22:00.000-04:00

Coming to Art Life Collective soon will be a way for everyone to search for designer t-shirts and by t-shirt artist. That's right. We have the Art Life Collective Forum up and debugged now, but we have not put in the front page links yet. The main reason is we want the artists and designers to use it first, then we will let the paying public in. This will give us all, those of us running ALC and keeping it healthy and our artists and contributers, time to get better acquainted.

It will also let us make sure the forum has no bugs before we go public with it. Right now, the forum can be found at www.artlifecollective.com/bb and a link exists on the Artist page.

That being said, it looks like the forum IS working well, so we have moved on to other things. First up, we are working with a new coder on a search engine for the site. We have something like 83 artists now and well over 300 art t-shirt designs on the site, so we are putting the search engine at the forefront of what we are trying to do here.

I also want to point out we have added some links in text on the front page to make it easier for artists - and customers - to get around the site.

So, all is going well so far. I can't begin to express my appreciation for everyone who has helped make Art Life Collective work so well, from the peopel who actually built the site to our photographer, Jules on the bb, and most of all to our contributers.
Kudos folks,
Graham

Where we are going with promoting t-shirt art

2006-08-17T02:47:00.000-04:00

This is the latest from Art Life Collective guru and chief, Blair Hadley, for everyone involved in creating designer t-shirts:

Greetings All:

My, how we've grown - well over 300 images…80 plus artists! As Art Life Collective moves into the next phase of business development, with the upcoming implementation of a search engine for the gallery, additional site improvements and the recent creation of the forum, there are some other matters I would like to discuss with every artist who is featured on the site. As we continue to do our part to spend capital to develop the site and promote the business, I would like to talk with you all a bit about the nature of the Collective and my vision, which may be ambiguous to many of you.

There is a reason I chose to call the business the Art Life Collective. That is what I truly see it as being - a collective, cooperative effort designed to benefit all of us. That is why, when someone buys one of your images, I share roughly 25 percent of the revenues I take in directly with the artist. That is quite literally the biggest cut I can manage and still have the business model itself hold together. One of the big reasons I started this company was because I feel there is a great need to provide a resource such as this on the web, which is at the very least free to artists, and at the best a profitable venture. Although I have a business to run and I need to make enough money to pay my bills and be comfortable, that is about the extent of my own financial aspirations from this venture. Many of my motives for creating this are passionately philosophical and philanthropic in nature. I want you guys to have a good place to go to get exposure as artists. To this end, I seem to be succeeding, and receive requests fairly frequently for contact information on someone who is posting work on the site. I always pass this information on, regardless of whether the interested party buys a shirt or not. We want you guys to succeed.

We also want the business to succeed. So far we are doing ok and it looks like we'll be around for a good while, but if you are interested in the success of this venture as well as making money and getting exposure, you need to start self-promoting. Advertising dollars go only so far, and reach a mixed audience. But you guys have the direct ability to drive traffic to the site and more specifically to your work by taking advantage of the web. This can be done in many ways. The best way is to start blogging and posting in forums about the site, your work, and what ALC is about. The best way to DRIVE CUSTOMERS DIRECTLY TO YOUR WORK is to paste the url of your artist page into a link, like this: http://artlifecollective.com/shop/index.php?main_page=detail&cat_id=28 . Ok…that is a really nasty looking link to my artist page! But, although some of you may know how to do this some of you may not, there is an easy way to clean that up and make it nice to look at. To take a link like that and make it look pretty on a forum or blog, all you have to do is this - these are called html tags - and the following ones are UNIVERSAL for turning a link like that into something nice:

< href = " LINK HERE "> WORD (or words) HERE < / a >

What that does is this: Blair Hadley

What I just did is insert my artist page URL into the first field and my name into the second. The only thing that will appear as a clickable link is my name - Blair Hadley - much better looking than that big, cumbersome link above. Put anything you like into the second field. My name was just an example.

I know a lot of you out there know how to do that, but some may not, so there it is just in case.

Art Life Collective is something we are all a part of. It is my life's work at the moment, not yours, and I appreciate that. You make the art. I'll make the shirts. But, its success depends on those who care about selling their art here helping themselves and the company by self promoting. We've created the resource and will, of course, continue pounding away at improving the site and increasing its visibility. All we are asking is that you pitch in, for your own sake if nothing else. Also there is a link to the new ALC forum (www.artlifecollective.com/bb) posted on the artist registration/login page. That will be the primary means by which we get news out to you guys from now on, so I hope you will register and check it periodically. It is also a good way to network and communicate with one another and ALC staff. Also, we will be adding features to the forum such as shirt giveaways and featured artists, etc., so it really is imperative to at least register.

Finally, thank you all so much for being a part of this adventure. We have together created a site and a business unlike any other on the web. We are way cool. Go us!

-Blair

Time to work on promoting your own artwork

2006-08-17T02:37:00.000-04:00

Sorry it has been a few days. Special sections at the newspaper have been keeping me living there most of my waking hours.

Good news for Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, we have topped 80 artists and 340 t-shirt designs have been uploaded. I also put the Design your own shirt section through its paces, doing a one run of a photo of a local crazy on a t-shirt as a going away present for one of our young reporters who is moving on to a bigger paper. It turned out great and I may add the design to my page, since a bunch of locals have been asking for copies. Go figure, I actually end up making money off a photo of a guy who goes around pretending to be nuts for a living. Regardless, I should have a picture of Amanda in her shirt on the forum, www.artlifecollective.com/bb, in the next few days.

Way to brain burned from nutso work hours to add more tonight.
There is a bunch of other stuff going on at ALC, so I will hopefully have another update tomorrow night.

Peace,
G

New stuff coming for Art Life Collective

2006-08-13T03:05:00.000-04:00

First things first. Blair is moving ahead with a search engine for Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com. It will allow customers to search for favorite artists and t-shirt art, by work, title and topic. At least that is what is in the works for now.

The reason for this is we have had 78 artists sign up and something like 325 custom t-shirt designs on ALC already. So, given the scope of what we have already, which has by far surpassed our expectationw, we figure making the site searchable is the next logical step.

If anyone has any suggestions, please give us a heads up, either at info@artlifecollective.com, graham@artlife.com, or the new forum at www.artlifecollective.com/bb

Also, we have a bunch of new artists, including Olive47, who has gained something of a name for herself in the art world. Her work is some of my personal favorites, but then again I joined her cult last year. Check out her designes on her page here: http://artlifecollective.com/shop/index.php?main_page=detail&cat_id=213

Also, if you go to http://www.olive47.com/, it will take you to her other site, where you can see loads of cool stuff, especially if you need stickers, which you do, and, of course, join her cult. Also Google her, since she has stuff in online magazines and other places.

Any way, it looks like things at Art Life Collective are gaining momentum and all is well. Keep spreading the gospe.

Peace,
Graham

My appologies ... bad links and such

2006-08-11T00:44:00.000-04:00

Someone informed me today that the link from one of our ads to this site is bad. That has now been fixed. I typed the thing on my word processor and pasted it over. While I was writing it, the copy editor in me took over and put periods at the end of the link, like it would appear in print (I realize AP style says not to do this, but I think sentences without ending punctuation look dumb.)

Anyway, the problem is fixed.

Just a reminder, we are beta testing the forum and a bunch of artists and designers have started using it. For once, it seems all is going without a hitch. Anyone who needs tips on how to use Art Life Collective, the best way to design images for printing on shirts or who just want to share art trade secrets can get on there. There is no link on the page yet, since we are still beta testing, so go to www.artlifecollective.com/bb to get to the forum.

Graham
www.artlifecollective.com

Letter of greetings from Art Life Collective chief guru

2006-08-09T03:01:00.000-04:00

Blair sent this out, hope it clarifies what we are working on with the Art Life Collective form for all our t-shirt designers.
Again, went to the forum today, since as ALC PR guy, I get administrator access, better make sure I know what is going on, and all looks good.
Anyway, without further delay, Blair's letter:

Greetings All:

As promised, the ALC forum is now up and running. Although we are still tweaking a few features, it is time to get started with some hardcore beta testing. There are a wide variety of topics to post in and the forum will also become an easy way for us to get vital news out to our artists and customers. Right now the forum is exclusively for our artists to communicate with each other and staff members, but will soon be expanded to become a general forum for customers and artists alike. The best thing, of course, is that this is a safe way for all of us to get together and talk about improtamt matters while protecting our privacy.

That stated, get out there and make your voice heard. Links to this page will be visible on the site later this week. For right now, just bookmark www.artlifecollective.com/bb. That is the forum URL for the moment. It will probably change when we post the link on the site. Also, if you are interested in bacoming a moderator, the ALC forum will be policed by its own artists, so please drop me an email.

General forum rules apply. Play nice out there, gang. No cussing and no spitting.

Sincerely,
Blair Hadley

President
Art Life Collective
www.artlifecollective.com

Forum Live, mostly

2006-08-08T12:46:00.000-04:00

Hmmm, seems I spoke too soon about the what and the where for the Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, forum.

Yes, the forum is now live, and you can see it at http://www.artlifecollective.com/bb/, and we have already had several artists and t-shirt designers posting there.

Where I was off the mark is exactly where the site can be accessed from. We don't as yet have links from the ALC pages to the forum and are debating what sections to put them in.

Also, the forum is still in something of a beta testing mode, so we need artists and other contributors to Art Life Collective to get up there, post and use the site so we can fix any problems - hopefully - before we put the links on the site for the general public.

Again, the Art Life Collective Forum is up and running now at http://www.artlifecollective.com/bb/, so go check it out.

Graham
www.artlifecollective.com

Art Life Collective forum going live

2006-08-07T01:47:00.000-04:00

Just talked to Blair and he says our artists and t-shirt designers will be able to communicate via the Art Life Collective forum either later tonight or early Monday morning. Again, we hope that this will give everyone a better medium than the ALC email newsletters and this blog - which is not going anywhere despite the forum - to communicate, share ideas and information on image processing, whatever.

It will also give everyone who has contributed their work to ALC a better way to give us a heads up over problems or ask questions about the site. So, in the next few hours or so, check the site and register for the forum. I think, but don't quote me on this, that registration for the forum is a seperate process than registering for ALC as an artist. This will allow customers to also log on and give their feedback. They can also request specific designs from various artists. So, in that regard, we also hope the forum will help promote your work and maybe act as a medium for people to get in touch with you.

That will be especially helpful for artists who have not put their personal Web links in the biography sections.

Graham Hadley
www.artlifecollective.com
graham@artlifecollective.com

More Art Life Collective features coming

2006-08-04T01:17:00.000-04:00

Blair is doing more than churning out shirts, working with artists and designers, and keeping the wheels turning at Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com. I talked at length with him the other night - journalists never sleep - and he showed me a preview of some of the things to come.

One of the things he and our Web designers are laboring away at is a forum. An Art Life Collective forum will not only allow us to better communicate with the growing community of artists who are contributing to the site, but it will also allow everyone involved with the project communicate with each other.

This means people will be able to share tips and techniques on everything from design to making their graphics software work better. It will also hopefully bring more of a community atmosphere to Art Life Collective.

I have to say, after talking with many of you and exchanging emails, we have a great group of people who have come together for this project. The forum will hopefully give each of you the opportunity to get to know Blair and I better and each other.

Blair and our Web gurus are still ironing out a few bugs, but the addition should be up an running soon.

Also, I realize and appreciate that many of our new artists have come on board because some of our veteran members have been spreading the work. Thanks and keep up the work. The more artists we have and the greater the diversity of the artwork on ALC, the more attention customers and other artists will pay to the site.
Again, I appreciate everything everyone had done to help keep this site going. Blair and I know there are still a few bugs to be worked out and some improvements we can make, such as a search engine for ALC. Those are coming. Have patience.

If anyone has any suggestions or is having problems with the site, please feel free to email me, graham@artlifecollective.com or Blair at info@artlifecollective.com or through the contact page, http://www.artlifecollective.com/contact.php, on the site.
Graham

Transparencies and art

2006-08-01T13:19:00.000-04:00

A most excellent couple of days. We have had a bunch of new talent joining Art Life Collective in the past couple of days. Great t-shirt designs.

One pointer to our new, and existing, contributors: Some of your artwork would probably be better set up without a background around it. This makes a huge difference in the look of some images, especially when printed on dark or black t-shirts. Check out the green face on My Page and play around with the shirt colors to see what I mean. Depending on what software you are using .png and .tif should support transparency backgrounds.

Some older software has problems doing this, especially when uploading to the site. If you have any problems or questions about uploading an image that are not covered in our upload guide available from either the Design Shirt page or from your Artists page, let Blair or I know by email, either to graham@artlifecollective.com or info@artlifecollective.com.

Thanks,
Graham Hadley
www.artlifecollective.com

Making artist t-shirts

2006-07-30T00:28:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the protracted hiatus. Lucky Blair is the one responsible for the nuts and bolts of Art Life Collective - actually handling the hardware and getting the designs from the artists and printing the shirts because ...

Since Tuesday, I have had the unique, at least to me, pleasure of dealing with an inner ear infection. For the past five days, the world has been spinning in not-so-slow circles and I have the verticle rolls not seen since those days in college when chasing everclear with vodka seemed like a great idea.

In short, I have been out of circulation. Even updating the blog has been n
early impossible - getting violently ill into a computer voids the warranty.
Anyway, though I am by no stretch 100 percent, things appear to be improving slightly. I have been able to answer emails, more or less, but if I have missed anybody, please be patient.

Vertigo resulting from vestibular neuritis may be God's way of keeping me off my new longboard - still recovering from broken arm, incident of which began with sentence: "No, kids, really, dropping in is easy, just watch."
Still, can't wait to try out new Freebord, check these things out at www.freebord.com. Riding this thing will be my way of thanking the ortho who rebuilt my wrist with repeat business. Actually, for a former wakeboarder and general water junkie, this is as close to snowboarding or wakeboarding I'm going to probably get here in central Alabama. Love the mountains, miss the beach.

Moving along, according to Blair, he is about to step up the advertising for the artwork on the site and hopefully increase our traffic, which he says is good now, but not where he wants it.

I will update this site as soon as I hear more from him this weekend.

On a positive note, we continue to attract some very talented artists who are lending t-shirt designs to Art Life Collective. Latest count puts us at 67 artists and 276 designs. I have also noticed more and more of you are posting biographical information and linking to outside sites where more of your work is available. That's exactly what the site is for, to help artists and designers promote their work, so keep at it. For those of you who are already on ALC but have not added bio information, just go to the artists page and log in. You can add your bio and statements, or modify them, even if you are already registered. Make sure to save changes.

Thanks again to everyone who is contributing to ALC.
Peace,
Graham Hadley,
Art Life Collective

Single-run art and photo T-shirts

2006-07-25T02:11:00.000-04:00

Almost forgot,
Several people have asked about doing single-run artist shirts, such as for gifts or just to have to wear for promotional purposes or at shows. While we love to have those images uploaded through the artist section and become permanent parts of the site, not everyone wants those images displayed ... except apparently on their bodies.

We have a single shirt design page at www.artlifecollective.com that is accessible from the front page or you can go here to the Design Shirt section. Actually, I have used this feature to do a single shirt as a going away present for one of my friends here in Alabama that, while both sick and funny, would in no way be appropriate for ALC or among the work I have up on the site. Remember, aside from being an artist, being a newspaper managing editor pays the bills, and some things I have come across in my day job, while funny inside jokes, probably should never see the light of day outside the newsroom.

Anyway, hope this helps.
Graham
www.artlifecollective.com

T-shirt art and copyright issues

2006-07-25T01:52:00.000-04:00

Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, is fluctuating around 64 artists now who have sent in t-shirt designs.
I have to say I am particularly impressed with the range of designs we are seeing, from friendly logo-style artists like Debbie Gray to the darker images of Kenneth Goff, we are seeing it all. And that's great. ALC was designed to give all artists a good venue to show off their work ... keep it coming.

A word of note, though. We have had a couple of cases of copywrighted material uploaded to the site. Unless an artist owns the rights to an image, even if it has been altered or is only part of their work submitted, it cannot be up on Art Life Collective because, aside from promoting artists and their work, we also sell it on shirts to promote the site. Now, that being said, some images are allowed in parody situations, especially photos of famous people. We have had several artists contribute politically charged images ... which I think lend themselves well to t-shirts and tend to be good sellers ... and their right to use those works is protected by a number of court cases, most notably Falwell v. Hustler, which covers fair comment and criticism (sorry, journalists have to know the legalese here, it protects us on the editorial page).

Still and all, be careful about using copywrighted images and artwork. There are a couple of other notable exceptions. Some files of clip art allow it to be used for commercial distribution. The paper I work for uses such libraries and resources when we build ads. But not all clip art and art libraries, even if you have purchased them, allow commercial distribution of the work, so read the licensing agreement that came with the service carefully.

Again, Blair and I are overwhelmed by the number and diversity of the people who are taking part in Art Life Collective. Kudos to you all.
Graham Hadley
www.artlifecollective.com

Report upload problems

2006-07-22T01:32:00.000-04:00

A couple of our artists are still reporting problems with uploading images for shirts at Art Life Collectives. If you are having problems, let us know, but please be specific. You can either respond to this blog or to our contact page. Again, let us know what kind of problem you are having. If we can't resolve the issue or it appears to be something at your end, we will request you email us the image and we will take care of things at our end and upload the photo ourselves.
Thanks to all our contributors for your patience.
Graham

Promote Art Life Collective time

2006-07-19T01:03:00.000-04:00

Good to be back. After a few days off, it's time to once again turn our attention to promoting our artists and designers who have contributed their work to Art Life Collective.

Talked with Blair at length last night, and we are exploring a couple of advertising options to attract people to the site who want to buy the artist T-shirts here. Generally, it is a complicated market, given that the artwork we have covers a wide spectrum of styles. Still, we are going to put some ads out there that hit the broadest market possible, preferably to people with both the taste and spending power to purchase these shirts.

At the same time - this will be especially helpful to those of the Art Life Collective contributors who have posted bios and links to their other work - we will be drawing attention to the artists on the ALC site.

This is a work in progress, and we are always flexible. If anyone has suggestions or knows of an advertising market we should tap into, let us know by emailing either myself a graham@artlifecollective.com or to info@artlifecollective.com. Remember, this is an online resource that can reach the entire country, as contributing artists, you may have a better idea how we can reach certain markets and segments of the population.

Also, we are handling the advertising, including its costs. So, we won't be hitting up participating artists or contributors for any additional cash.

Graham
http://www.artlifecollective.com

Weekend break

2006-07-16T00:20:00.000-04:00

Topped 60 artists today who have contributed T-shirt designes to Art Life Collective. Again, it looks like we have made massive progress on the few image uploading problems that survived beta testing before the launch of the site.

I encourage anyone who had problems with images to try uploading them again. If anyone is still having problems, please email us.

Given that, it has been a busy week, so we are both taking a day off, taking some downtime and a little recreation. We are monitoring emails if anyone has a problem or a concern, let us know.

Things continue to go well for ALC, and we thank everyone who has contributed and worked on the project.
Graham
www.artlifecollective.com

A good day to post artwork on Art Life Collective

2006-07-14T11:56:00.000-04:00

According to Art Life Collective President Blair Hadley, a bunch of our technical difficulties involving artists uploading their t-shirt designs have been resolved.

"Today, after a two-day battle with the fixing some fairly serious problems, is a good day to upload images. Tomorrow should be a good day as well….and hopefully the day after that. Sorry for the recent troubles with image uploads. All should be well now. Good luck, and let me know if any of you continue to have problems. Cheers!"

Blair

So,

Go to the site and add images. If any of you are still having problems, let us know on the contact page. To upload images or to register, go to our artists page.

Graham

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

2006-07-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

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!

Finding art customers

2006-07-11T13:13:00.001-04:00

To date, Art Life Collective has been focused on building a solid base of artists. We have had a great response, with 56 talented artists and designers signing on.

But the real purpose of ALC is to promote their work. To that end, we are working on letting other people know about the site and who is displaying work there - and what can be bought on shirts.

Also to note:
Again, if you have posted to ALC, feel free to create links in your biography section and link to sites containing other examples of your work. We have a bunch of artists who have just uploaded their work without adding anything about themselves or what kind of art and design they do or how to get in touch with them. Those biography sections are an important tool for our contributors to promote your work, so take advantage of it.
Here are a couple of examples
Carolina Gallegos
Edward Ferrusquia
Jessica Lum

So, remember, this is a free service, might as well use it.
Graham

Image quality

2006-07-10T03:13:00.000-04:00

Artists and t-shirt designers, a note about image quality.
Be sure the images you send us are at least 170 dpi and in the right format: .png (suggested), .tiff, .gif, .jpeg - see the earlier post about .png issues.

We have had to kick some images back to the artists for additional work, usually because they are too low a dpi - 72 is fine for onlie work but does not print very well and look rasterized.

Also, check to make sure your image is high quality and is not a small image that has been scaled up, again, it results in a rasterized image.

Some of these problems, if they are very minor, we can fix, but more serious problems we can't rectify and the artwork will have to be resubmitted.

Fine tuning ALC

2006-07-10T02:45:00.000-04:00

Blair has yet to post here, but not to worry.
Talked at length with him today and he has been working on optimising the printing process to get the best art images possible and waste no shirts (he says loading shirts upside down in the press is bad, mmmkay).

Still, things are moving in the right direction at Art Life Collective. We have gotten loads of feedback from contributing artists. We appreciate all of it and Blair is working on some revisions to the site to make it more user friendly for everyone concerned. We have also updated our contact information page phone numbers.

We have had several artists ask questions about how to best upload their images. If anyone has questions about not covered in the FAQ secton of the site or in the image uploading section - or are having trouble with any other aspect of ALC - please let us know on our Contact page so we can fix the problem or post a comment, with your contact info, on this blog.

Also of note, we added two more artists this weekend, bringing us to 54 in just a couple of weeks and topping the 200 mark for pieces of uploaded work.

Thanks to everyone who is contributing and keeping ALC a growing concern.
Graham

Working on some more images

2006-07-08T15:01:00.000-04:00

Should be uploading some more images of my own in the next day or so to Art Life Collective, depending on schedule at the paper - shy a copy editor and reporter just now. Found one of my old backup CDs with some early stuff archived on it. Remember the joy of working in Photoshop with no layers and a single undo? Still, I did some good work with the tools at hand and hope some of it will be worth a look today.
Also, got the blog listed on some directories, and they want us to reciprocate, so here goes a link to Blogarama.
Found lots of good artists links there. So check 'em out.
G

PNG shirt artwork, a few issues

2006-07-08T14:03:00.000-04:00

In our t-shirt design section of Art Life Collective, it says .png is preferred. This is true, however, not all versions of Photoshop handle this file type the same way and older versions of Adobe's flagship are creating some issues ... we think. This is happening from either our artist upload page or our Create-your own-shirt page.

At the newspaper office, we just upgraded all editors, photographers, pagination stations to OS 10.4 and went from QuarkXpress to inDesign and Photoshop CS2. The version of Photoshop CS2 and, probably going back to CS, appears to save in png format differently than the older versions.

My version at home, Photoshop 6 on OS 9, appears to create png files that ALC's server reads as four or five times too big. It's something we are working on. But if you upload a png file and it covers the shirt art postitioning window or looks giant - images should appear proportional on that screen to the way they look once printed - it's possible your version of Photoshop is older and you have come across the same problem.

If this happens, use our contact page and let us know what is going on - we should be able to upload the image for you if you email it to us. Also, you could find someone with a newer version of Photoshop or send it to us in another one of the formats, like jpeg. The only problem with not using the png format is it supports transparencies so well.

Again if you are having any trouble in this regard, use our contact page or post a comment to this blog.
Thanks,
Graham

Shameless promotion of wife's work

2006-07-08T04:17:00.000-04:00

By contrast, the Wife is old school when it comes to her art. She is comfortable in any medium, and often combines several at once, but does nothing on a computer artwise.
Check out her work:
http://artlifecollective.com/shop/index.php?main_page=detail&cat_id=38

She actually has a bunch more, and I am working on getting it on the site. A little more difficult, since much of it is matted and framed and must be at least taken out of the frame. I use a professional digital camera in a studio setting to capture the image. I have found it works much better for reproducing art on our shirts than if I use my flatbed scanner. Colors are richer and less rasterization of image. It's much closer to the original this way.

But it also takes longer and is more labor intensive than grabbing up my digital files and uploading them. Also, everything shot with camera requires some work in Photoshop.

Shameless self promotion

2006-07-08T04:14:00.000-04:00

I realize I mentioned I do some newspaper editing (small-town-paper plug: www.dailyhome.com), and that pays the bills, but art has always been a huge part of my life.
Again, I love living in this area, but it's far down the food chain of progressive art hot spots. So, so long as I have the opportunity, check out some of my stuff on the site.
http://artlifecollective.com/shop/index.php?main_page=detail&cat_id=39

After years of working with pen and ink - and realizing in college an art degree was out since I despise the way charcoal feels on paper, something akin to fingernails on chalkboard - I turned to journalism and, after a brief, yet successful, stint as reporter became a copy editor - and someone left Illustrator, Photoshop and Adobe Dimensions on my pagination machine. I started doing some illustration and graphic work for the paper between making sure reporters correctly spell Alzheimer's disease and throwing pages together.

Aside from reading a few books on the matter, I am largely self taught. I tend to use a buch of software, especially combining modeling effects and Photoshop, though everything is always tweaked in Photoshop before it sees the light of day.
The nano technology creation was very tricky, especially since Ray Dream, though great in its day, has some severe limitations and gobbles processor resources, especially with multiple layers of transparency being rendered.

Still, that one is getting printed on a shirt soonest. I figure it will be my own personal benchmark for how well our press handles high-contrast images.

Blair says he has some similar images of his own, as far as contrast goes, and he had good results with our printing system before www.artlifecollective.com was ever launched.

Looking forward to seeing it.

Getting Art Life Collective started

2006-07-08T03:31:00.000-04:00

Hopefully, my brother and I will be able to regularly use this space as both a news and info outlet for the goings on at Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com , and a space for people who are involved with the project to give us feedback on what they think about our work - the site and our own artistic creations.

Most of us involved in this project have day jobs. For instance, I am the managing editor for a small daily in Alabama. My wife is an art teacher, among other things.

My brother is the brainchild of the entire thing, it was his idea and he gets all the credit for www.artlifecollective.com. Also an artist himself, he shares that with his many other talents. When he can tear himeself away from the presses, he has promised to jump in here and give everyone a heads up for what he is doing.

He is also our technical guru, both for the printing press and our computers that make the whole thing possible.

Aside from that, it is his vision that has brought so many different artists and other talent together, his energy, that is making the whole project possible.

As a newspaper editor, I am more of the PR gerbil for the affair. ... Of course, it also gives me a chance to pimp some of my work in the process. ALC is a great outlet, especially for myself, since my art would find little market here in rural Alabama.

So, as we move along, I hope to be able to keep everyone informed about what we are doing and developments with the Web site and the printing operation.
ALC also wants feedback about what we are trying to make happen here. As a self-sustaining artist collective for artists to promote their work, ALC is a great idea, but that does not mean it can't be improved on our that our new Web site may not have a few glitches that beta testing has not caught. So, let us know, here, please.
Graham Hadley,
semi-official PR gerbil for ALC.