The ArtKlick Blog

Hi, I’m James Stewart, this is the story of what lead me to print organic T Shirts of New Zealand art and tattoo the designs on my legs. If you want to skip the story and just buy a tee just click here. (Don’t worry - I won’t be offended - I won’t even know!)

Art Klick was created to be the solution to helping emerging artists increase their profile and sell their artwork to the world.

I thought it was going to be easy. “Turns out it wasn’t“.

After three attempts, about $60,000 and two years of unpaid work I got it to it’s present state (which is OK but could be at least three times better).

After working hard in the online industry all 2008, visiting 1000’s of websites and absorbing information like a sponge I finally know how the site should look and operate for the new design.

But - I’m all out of $$$ - What is an aspiring entrepreneur to do? I KNOW! Why not sell advertising on my leg in the form of tattooed art work from Art Klick, getting companies to buy a piece of my leg? Cool idea - do a press release - see if we get some interest…..

The media seemed to like it, getting global media coverage and some pretty cool articles - the only problem was I didn’t have a site ready for it and as a result potential advertisers were reluctant to fork out $500 for 1cm of leg. Fair enough - lesson learned.

So what next? I’m stuck in Christchurch with a reasonably stale IT scene, working from home with no income… Right - one month road trip around the North Island to meet all the tertiary institutes.

First stop - Wellington - I had been reading the Silicon Welly blog and emailed Tim Norton to see if I could meet him - he offered me a desk in the new Silicon Welly office for the week and I couldn’t believe the cool vibe that was going on there. He spent a good couple of hours hanging out with me and giving me some awesome advice. On Friday I met Patrick Macfie who runs StartUp and he invited me to hang out in The Icehouse in Auckland which was great and really inspired me to get things moving.

One month later I get back to Christchurch - What now? Move to Wellington - I want to hang out in Silicon Welly!

After a couple of weeks of looking for a job to pay the bills to getting Art Klick moving Tim asked me if I would like to come on board as the Community Manager for Made From New Zealand - the dream job! Answering emails, running the social media and now I am Production Manager of the Film Crew - doing really cool 90 second video profiles on companies.

Awesome - so now I have a job to pay the bills. What next?
My dream has always been to run a clothing company (as it is for 1000’s of New Zealanders). I have talked to so many people who have cool ideas for tee shirts but to go to the effort of getting them printed, and more importantly - selling them is beyond most people - fair enough, there has to be a solution to that.

There is a great website in America called Threadless that has solved this gap in the market. The concept is that designers, artists and illustrators submit designs for T Shirts and the community votes on them. The top ones get printed.

Threadless has a passionate community of designers and tee shirt buyers, and the designs are chosen by the customers - so you know they are probably going to sell.

New Zealand has nothing similar - most companies have designers who create designs, often logo oriented and we buy them and “label bash” up a storm for them - that’s pretty lame.

Why not: Print awesome emerging New Zealand artists artwork onto tee shirts and pay the artist a commission on each tee sold?

One of my favourite artists on Art Klick Kim Loasby painted an amazing 50’s Pin-up style fairy called “The Orange Bangle” which I have chosen for the first T Shirt.

Pain in the name of art? To prove that I back the tee’s we print I am going to tattoo each of the designs on my legs (an adaption from the Million Dollar Leg Project - see below). I don’t know of any clothing company owners that are that passionate about their designs that the would tattoo them onto their legs. That’s got to be a good point of difference.

Getting environmentally concious: Did you know conventionally grown cotton accounts for more than 25% of worldwide insecticide use and 10% of the pesticides? Not only that but deveoping countries are being heavily exploited by their governments - forcing their people (and primarily children) to work in the pesticide ridden cotton fields. Thousands of people die from Tuberculous and Cancer each year due to exposure to the pesticides. After watching this video I couldn’t buy non-organic clothing and for an extra $5/T Shirt you can get organic Tee’s. The only drawback is the lack of colour selection, but that is something I am happy to deal with to play my small part in being a better human being.

The cost? By the time most clothing goes through the distributors and stores it gets pretty over priced - not to mention organic clothing - sitting up at $75 a Tee which is pretty rediculous.

The first Art Klick T Shirt is only $35 - I won’t make much on it but at least there will be 400 people wearing an Art Klick Tee, representing New Zealand art and spreading the word

If you like the design and keen to see more just click here to visit the online store.

Also: Anyone who buys a tee will also go in the draw to win 1/20 of the next design

I would love to hear what you think about the design and what you would like to see in the future - please leave a comment. The new Art Klick will incorporate a design submission and voting element so you can submit and vote on designs for future prints and subsequently, tattoos

PS Stay tuned - I should have a cool video of the tattoo up by Monday 12 Jan 2009.

(If you like the tattoo and you are in Wellington go to ALC at 162 Cuba St and ask for Jimmy their new tattooist - tell him I sent you and he will hook you up.)

In case you hadn’t heard I work full time for Made From New Zealand which is a global network for New Zealand businesses and entrepreneurs as their community builder and film crew director in the Silicon Welly office which is super fun.

We have been working on a Wordpress plugin to help syndicate top New Zealand bloggers content through the Made From New Zealand site and get them some good Google love.

If your interested in installing it on your blog before we release it officially send me an email on james [at] madefromnewzealand.com

Here’s the lowdown:

The aim: To increase the visibility/recognition of your blog, the companies, people and industries you talk about both on Made From New Zealand and in search engines.

How it works: When you mention a company and insert the code around a companies name it will link it directly to their profile page on MFNZ. A link to your post and a small summary will then appear at the bottom of their profile, in their industry, region, network and on the homepage.

Example: The post on Silicon Welly 27 people, 9 businesses, 1 space. ProjectX Technology is mentioned: It is linked to the ProjectX Technology profile page on MFNZ. Your post then appears at the bottom of their profile, on the Wellington IT/Communications, Wellington Region, New Zealand pages and can also be promoted to the homepage .

Currently the plugin is capable of linking to company profiles but we are working on adding people and networks soon.

You will also be able to register your blog with us and be included in our blog directory (See mock up below).

If you are interested we would really appreciate it if you could have a play with it before we release it properly. It would be great to hear what you think about it and if you come across any issues.

Hope your getting everything sorted for the holiday season windup!

PS Check out the Art Klick profile and ‘Give some Love’ if you like us

Hi guys, sorry it has taken so long to send out an email to keep you up to date - I have been travelling and moving cities for the past couple of months and used that as an excuse to not learn how to create a newsletter….. Never again.

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The Art Klick Why Not? Gallery
Two months ago I moved to Wellington to work in the Silicon Welly office as it is the place to be if you are a start-up IT company in NZ. Here I am surrounded by eight other new companies all working hard to get off the ground. I also met Teriu Lemon the Programme Director for Digital Media at WelTec and discussed the idea of a design house for graduate graphic desiners, a gallery and “Think Tank”. Within three weeks we had secured a ground floor place of the same building as Silicon Welly - 97-99 Courtenay Place, Te Aro, Wellington (See photos below). The aim is to transform this into a gallery that any member from Art Klick can exhibit in, while giving graphic designers work experience and a place for creatives to come up with crazy ideas - hence - “Why Not?”

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Global Business Network

MadeFromNewZealand.com launched on the 20th October and brought me on as the general Community Manager and have also asked me to develop the arts community within the website which is a huge opportunity for any New Zealand artist.

I highly encourage you to create a profile on Made From New Zealand as an artist and join the Art Klick network. This is a great chance to market yourself for free and be part of a huge vision.

When creating a business profile if you don’t have a website use your Art Klick URL eg www.ArtKlick.co.nz/jamesstewart which will drive traffic to your profile increasing exposure and hopefully result in sales.

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New Website design and marketing
To be honest I haven’t pushed Art Kick any where near as hard as I can as I really want to re-develop it to increase the functionality and features. The main things I want to add to the site are increased prints options, a T Shirt design competetion / printing page and COMMUNITY!!! So just hold tight and early 2009 we will have an amazing new site and market it through all the avenues I have access to now.

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Uncompleted Profiles
We currently have just over 190 members but only 100 of your profiles are visable as you need to add an artwork or print to become visable.

To add an artwork go to Art Klick, log in and click “Add Artwork” at the top of the page.

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Free Art Project
The Free Art Project is an open invitation to anyone attending the New Years event Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne to create a collaborative artwork.

The Concept:

1. Get a 1.5×5m canvas for anyone to do ONE brush stroke (squiqqle, splat, flick etc) on and get a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke.
2. Email the photo of them pointing to their brush stroke.
3. Cut the canvas up into pieces and post them a piece as a souvenir of their 08/09 New Years.
4. This will be a fun project and we hope to encourage accessibility, participation and collaboration of the arts with the public.

• If you are attending R&V and would like to be part of The Free Art Project give me an email and we can hang out

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Get in Touch
It’s an honor to have you signed up to Art Klick, sorry it has taken a bit longer than expected to get things moving but we are definitely making some awesome progress and the new site will be amazing. It’s been a very humbling (and expensive) learning curve!.

If you would like to suggest any ideas or features just flick me an email on james@artklick.com.

If you know any artists or art buyers who you think might be interested in Art Klick please forward this email on to them

All the best for the holiday season,

James Stewart
Art Klick Founder

I think the YouTube Debate is a great idea - The Government is getting really Web 2.0 on us! (When will we be able to vote online?)

My question is: “What have both parties done and plan to do to promote and encourage the arts in New Zealand and internationally and is funding going to be adjusted for inflation?” (If not it is an effective 4% cut each year).

I can’t seem to get the video working so check it out here and when it gets accepted on the YouTube Debate channel I will post a link to it there too.

Nationals Arts Culture and Heritage policy appears to be a copy of Labour’s - Committing to maintain funding at current arts levels. The question is: A) Will the current funding be adjusted for inflation? and B) Where are the forward thinking initiatives/policies to support creative entrepreneurs?

This is 2008 - We have the internet at our disposal. As Elisabeth Vaneveld the Executive Director of The Big Idea Trust says “The policy is not forward thinking, just maintaining the status quo. There needs to be policies designed to encourage resource generation (govt or philanthropic) and investment funding to support creative entrepreneurs.” You can listen to a good podcast from Radio New Zealand on the subject here.

Kris Herbert’s article in Idealog “The Joke’s on us” illustrates the importance of the New Zealand Creative sector, summarising it well in this paragraph:

“New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has identified the creative industries as a crucial key to economic transformation because the creative sector has great potential to influence global perception and brand New Zealand as a nation of innovation and talent. The sector, NZTE describes as ten industries ranging from advertising to fashion to performing arts, currently contributes about $2.86 billion to the New Zealand economy. While that’s just over three percent of our GDP, NZTE publications show the creative industry is growing at an annual rate of nine percent—twice the rate of the economy as a whole”

Considering the creative sector is the sector that defines our culture as a country and it is growing at twice the rate of the economy as a whole, you would think National would have put a bit more effort into thinking of original ideas to take our creative industry to the next level over the next term. Instead they have basically said “Labour has done a good job - we will do what they have been doing but won’t make any effort to better it”.

Chris Finlayson was recently interviewed by John Daly-Peoples for the NBR and although he has been traveling the country meeting key people it is still pretty clear that he doesn’t know how to take the arts to the next level or stimulate demand for the arts, talking more about

My thoughts on how to do this include:
1. A website designed to help New Zealand creatives profile and sell their work and services both nationally and internationally (Cough Cough Art Klick!! The new design will allow this a lot easier than how it is currently)

2. Development of fun and free/cheap events for the general public to participate in and contribute to eg The Free Art Project, National Snow Art Day.

3. Internationally toured exhibitions, performing arts events and film - most of which could be funded by sponsorship (More next post).

4. Streamlining Creative New Zealand funding (which they have apparently just done).

5. If it was viable - reinstate regional arts councils with a set amount of funding to develop the arts in their region.

If I worked for Creative New Zealand I could come up with 5 ideas for national events right now that would cost hardly anything to organise yet involve 10’s of thousands of New Zealanders. The idea (and one of Creative New Zealand’s key aims) is to involve the public in the arts.

How do you do that? Make something fun that they can be a part of and reward them for participating - weather it be a competition like International Snow Art Day where they get their creations voted for by the public (exposure/publicity) or something like the Free Art Project where they are contributing to a history making event, getting a picture of it, a piece of the canvas posted to them and publicity on the internet and TV.

When it comes to international exports and marketing - there are plenty of media hungry for good arts stories (just look at what happened from the press release for The Million Dollar Leg Project). As we build a reputation as a country doing fun and iconic events, then exports and tourism will increase.

It all seems so easy to me and I don’t know why good events like this haven’t been done - but if the government isn’t going to do it then as Kris Herbert says:

“NZTE insists there is no shortage of export opportunities, only a shortage of companies capable of taking up these opportunities. Though there is some support through NZTE and Creative New Zealand, which has listed international success as one of four strategic priorities in its 2007–2010 strategic plan, it will largely be up to individuals to make it happen.”

PS Creative New Zealand I’m looking for a part time job - if you want an aspiring arts guerrilla marketing expert get in touch and I’ll help you market New Zealand creativity to the world (affordably).

Please note: The government has done a reasonably good job of developing the arts but I think some fresh ideas and taking hold of the technology we have available to us could easily market our creative industry on a new level which would result in increased jobs, exports and tourisim.

After 4 months of beta testing a good list of design changes has been created. This summer I hope to get two interns through the Summer of Code program - a graphic designer and a programmer to work on making some big improvements.

Elements I would like to add/improve on the Art Klick include:

- Redesign of the homepage to profile new members, popular and new artwork and prints, tertiary institute profiles, a new footer and header with links to the Art Klick Twitter, Facebook and YouTube profiles.

- Competition page for T-shirt design and artwork competitions

- Art Klick TV - Interviews with artists and collectors, event coverage, arty stuff

- Art Klick Shop - Selling Art Klick T-shirts, magazines and possibly art supplies

- Comments on artwork and profiles

- A forum (Community!)

- A whole redesign on the blog (currently it is just a Wordpress site) into articles and resources.

- Art Klick News - Act as an aggregator for major art news websites like TBI, NZLive, user submitted articles, events, jobs etc

- Possibly adding a rental/leasing service - buyers could request to rent an artwork instead of buy it - we could buy it from the artist and rent it out.

- A smoother checkout process

- Badges and mini gallery widgets

- An affiliates system

- A Facebook Hot or Not application

Prints
- Redesign of the prints section - heading toward the Redbubble.com functionality/interactiveness

- Expanding the prints internationally and increasing printing mediums into photo blocks, framed prints, photo books and calenders.

- Any member will be supplied with a base price which they can order from or add a percentage on top of to earn commission - ie Base Price + 40% means the cost of the print will increase by 40% from the base price and the member will receive it as a credit to their Art Klick account which they can then request to be paid into their New Zealand bank account.

- Event photographers will also be able upload all their photos of gigs, weddings etc and direct their clients to order directly from Art Klick - saving them from needing to take orders, payment, organize printing and shipping etc

Art Klick Tattoo
- After all the hype of The Million Dollar Leg Project I realized there is no website that profiles New Zealand tattooists and their artwork well. As tattooing is an artform a lot of people are passionate about (including myself) I want to create a section for tattooists to submit their artwork, a forum for designs and advice, a “rate my tat” feature and an ability for artists to be commissioned to design tattoo designs.

- I also hope to build the new design for The Million Dollar Leg into the site and re-launch it to publicise Art Klick going international.

Feedback
Any feedback is always greatly appreciated - please feel free to comment on this or any post or send me an email on james@artklick.com
Thanks for stopping by

Phew - it’s been pretty full on for the past couple of months so I thought I would put together a summary of the progress and plans for Art Klick.

Membership
- 140 members signed up with 63 filling out profiles and listing artwork.

Sales
- 5 sales of original artwork, two of which have led to commissions.

Feedback
- The feedback from artists, photographers and developers has been really positive and encouraging.

Tertiary Institutes
- Met with almost all the creative tertiary institutes in New Zealand and they are keen to encourage their students to sign up and profile their art.

Art Klick Moves to Wellington
- On Monday the 29 September I am moving to Wellington to join the growing number of stat-up’s who are working together to inspire, support and learn from each other.

- Wellington is also the place to be for the arts with new things going on all the time. One opportunity that has been presented is to set up the Wellington division of Looksy who are a group of like minded people collaborating to encourage a community of user generated creativeness. They already have their own show on Alt TV so if anyone is keen to get involved get in touch!

- I have also applied to be a company in The Summer of Code program which pairs IT students up with (usually) start-up companies in the industry - giving the student great work experience and the companies an opportunity to expand their scope. Student wages are subsidised by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology which is great. I hope to get a skilled graphic designer and programmer to help re-design Art Klick into a more functional and community based website (See New Design Plans in next post)

Art Klick Blog (this) and Zine
- Now that the North Island trip is over this blog will begin to serve as a resource of articles, interviews and events. Anyone is welcome to contribute - this is a great opportunity for new journalists who are looking to get started. At the moment I can’t afford to pay anyone (I don’t even get paid) but opportunities are sure to arise. If you are passionate about the arts and journalism or if you have something you would like to see covered please feel free to get in touch.

- The Zine will be a free monthly online magazine with the best of the blog posts and events for the coming month. Depending on budget and popularity we hope to turn the Zine into a print magazine with a similar vibe to Juxtapoz and Vice.

Art Klick T-Shirt Design Competition
- What would be a cool New Zealand art website be without an opportunity to get that art on a T-Shirt? We aim to launch a T-Shirt design competition similar to the highly successful model of Threadless which would involve designs being submitted and voted on by the community. The top 5 designs will then be printed as limited edition T’s and sold via the website at an affordable price - and yip - they will be organic

The Free Art Project - Rhythm and Vines 08/09
- The Free Art Project is set to be launched at the New Years music festival Rhythm and Vines in Gisborne. The concept is for as many people as possible to do one brush stroke each on a canvas, take a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke, email them the photo and then post them a piece of the canvas. A T-shirt will also be created of the completed artwork.

- The aim of the project is to get the public involved in the arts, increase brand awareness and have fun. This is just one of the many ideas to get the public involved in contributing to the arts and growing our unique culture.

Art Klick TV
- Video is the way to go - it’s so much more interesting to watch a 3-5 minute video than read a blog post (if you got this far congratulations!). Art Klick TV will include coverage of art events, artist and collector interviews and anything that is relevant to New Zealand art. Anyone that has some good recent footage or would like to submit videos feel free to give me an email - it’s all about community, the more you get involved the more it becomes yours

New Design
- After running the beta version of Art Klick for the past four months I have received some great feedback. Two elements of the site I really want to improve are the community and prints. I will leave this for the next post as this one is already getting pretty long!

Summary
- So things are moving forward pretty fast, I can’t wait to move to Wellington and get started on the new design. And again, anyone who is keen to get involved and help out is more than welcome - I have some good people helping me but the more the merrier!

Thanks for taking the time to catch up on the progress, and I hope you are enjoying the great spring we are having so far

James

Day 25 -Friday

Worked from home for most of the day, Simon aka Brunch aka Kevin brought an electronic drum kit and a ipod touch so it was cool playing round with them.

At 5.30 I went to the Looksy meet up. Simon and Marie Young from iJumP were there and Ilai Amir who is also one of the key people involved in the Looksy movement.

Ilai is really cool and doing some great things so I’m going to list them off:
- He runs a film and website development company called Bruv Design - Almost ready to launch
- He blogs at Dizzy Again
- He volunteers for Connected Media and The Outlook For Someday

After the meet up we drove into town to check out the Public Access preview by 42Below and Sideroom.com “Month of Street Art” exhibition of stencil artists which was packed out and amazing!

Public Access will feature works by the prominent local street art crew Cut Collective. Comprised of four central artists Component, Flox, Trust Me and Enforce 1, Cut Collective have established a firm reputation in the Auckland street art scene. Their work ranges from commissioned artworks to gallery exhibitions, curation, public murals and workshops. Local artists Peepshow, Kool and Gasp join the Cut Collective crew to round out the stellar Public Access lineup.

It was a great exhibition and I highly recommend you go check it out if you are in Auckland.

Day 26

Bummed round most of the day and then flew back to Crimeschurch - good to be home to catch up with the crew but really looking forward to moving to Wellington in November.

I would like to say a thank you shout out to:
- Escape Rentals for the usage of their awesome van for the month

- Wade Hammond for putting me up at his pad for the week in Welly

- Tim Norton for letting me use Silicon Welly as a base for the week

- Patrick MacFie and Nigel Lewis from Start-UP who mentored me and let me work with them in the Icehouse

- Joel Soma for his contacts and help in the art buyers scene

- The PT Chev crew - Malc, Joe, Simon and Tim

- Dylan Bland, Simon and Marie Young, Rich Henry, Ben Young, Margaret Lewis, Vera, Weltec, Massey, WITT, Wintec, Unitec, Elam, Whitecliffe and everyone else who took time out to meet me and give me advice and help.

It was a great trip and I learned so much, it’s really cool to be able to get out there and meet people after all the hard work, time and money that has gone into getting to where Art Klick is now. I have so much more to learn but I love it and really want to help our countries talented creatives get their names out there and make a living from their passion.

From now on this blog will be focused on the New Zealand art’s with guest posts, video interviews and artist profiles. If anyone would like to contribute or has a story they would like to talk about please feel free to give me an email on james@artklick.com

Day 24

Vera followed me on twitter and I saw she was a writer for The Channel which is a new IT site for NZ. She has moved here from Portugal and has fitted into the scene really quickly. 

Then at 4pm I went and caught up with Simon and Marie Young from iJumP who are the leading Social/New media experts in New Zealand. I love hanging out with these guys as they are so enthuastic and have so many great ideas.

If you are a company that want’s to learn about how to break into this new “social media” thing you have been hearing so much about, Simon and Marie are by far the people you need to talk to.

They are also on Radio New Zealand and you can listen to a great summary of what social media is here.

Gotta jump on a plane - will catch up the last couple of days of the trip tomorrow then I’m changing the blog to a proper art’s blog with artist interviews and guest posts from leaders in the art scene!!! 

ijump

Met Margaret Lewis from The Big Idea which is New Zealand’s largest online community of creatives. They have been working on a new design which sounds realy great and I believe will help move the creative sector into an even more professional space in the online world.

It will be packed full of profiles, job listings, news and resources. As they are a non-profit organisation they rely on paying the bills with advertising and donations from their community. 

This resource is invaluable and takes a lot of hard work which is done for the love. If you are a regular user it would be nice if you could donate some $ towards their new design via the 500 Star Campaign.

Their new artist profiles and galleries will be great as the artist will be able to say where the art is being sold - whether it be a cafe, gallery or on Art Klick.

I am really looking forward to their new site design and look forward to working with TBI in the future.

You can also find a great article about Margaret here.

Day 22

Met Martin Street the Publication and Communication administrator for Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design at 11am. Whitecliffe is great, packed with beautiful art and obviously talented students!

At 2.30 I Met Sarah Smith from Unitec. Unitec is huge and used to be an old hospital - the best part are the studios in the old mental institute wards - it’s got such a cool vibe. Unitec has art everywhere and I couldn’t help walk slowly through the hallways - I can’t wait to start seeing some of these talented artists profiling on Art Klick!