The ArtKlick Blog

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!

Day 20 - Saturday

Worked all day doing email’s, adding new tasks to my PlanHQ account and doing market research.

Day 21 - Sunday

Went to Snow Planet with Malc and caught up on these blogs while he went for a ride. Then met Duncan and Cole and drove to Mangawhai Heads in Northland. Wrote another post then the laptop battery died so I we hung out in the sun and jammed on the gat.

Went to a cool Samoan church with Cole and his friend at 7pm which was dope too.

Get Frank - Rich Henry

On day 16 (Tuesday) I met Rich Henry who is the founder of the rapidly growing online men’s magazine Get Frank when he was talking to Pat. Being one of the guys I had to meet when in Auckland it was very convenient and we lined up a meeting for Thursday (Day 19).

Day 19 - Mint day - go to work in a shirt. Day 19 - 10.45am I go outside to walk up to the Get Frank / Grown Up’s office on Parnel Road - its pouring rain - welcome to Auckland!

Rich started Get Frank three years ago while he was working at PWC. Similar to me he spent most of his money on the website development but was Lucky enough to meet angel investor Shane Bradley (APNfinda) to invest into a new site design during 2007 and launched early 2008.

Within this year alone the have managed to increase traffic by 300%  and are now delivering over 35 articles every week to 50,000 unique visitors each month which is very impressive.

Get Frank also recently acquired Big Fella to capture more of the market share and secure it’s place in the online mens market.

Rich had some great advice and ideas and being about a year ahead of where I am with Art Klick it was great to hear what marketing tactics he used to grow his membership so rapidly.

While showing me through the site I noticed the Lifestyle Section didn’t have an art element and suggested I could contribute a weekly article on a Kiwi guys guide to art which he was pretty keen on - (HUGE opportunity!!) 

Writing the pitch to him today so hopefully he’s keen!

Bwagy aka Ben Young

Ben is a 22 year old online marketer and I can easily say he is the most on-to-it guy I have met at his age. With an impressive list of achievements so far and working on secret marketing campaigns with big corporates this is a blog you must follow!

Ben spends more time helping start ups like me out than doing paid work - now that’s cool! 

Things I learned:
- Focus on getting the site tight then expand into other areas (Focus)
- Surround yourself with experienced people to support you (definitely working on that)
- Bootstrap as much as possible - don’t spend more money than you need to
- Partner with the leaders of the industry (Tertiary institutes, art organisations)
- Don’t keep your ideas secret - put them out there - you never know who has tried them before and failed or what advice you can get

I can’t say enough about how cool Ben is - you really just have to meet him.

Looksy

Ben came back at 5pm and picked me up to go to the Looksy Meet-up.

Looksy is a great initiative which is all about Generation C - which is anyone participating in social media such as facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Blogging and online communities that result in transforming the world of entertainment, business, education… everything.

They are doing some cool projects like the “Tell us what your world is like” postcard where they distribute them round cafes and people fill them out and post them back. 

They are also working on organising the making the world’s biggest user-generated documentary, about Generation C, by Generation C. This is an invite to everyone to tell people what their world is like - kind of like guerrilla journalism I guess. It’s a great concept and should take off with a bit of a push.

They also have their own show on Alt TV called Think at 10pm on Mondays - check it out!!

They also organise Flash Mobs which are the coolest things since the invention of the snowboard. 

I put my hand up to run Looksy in Wellington when I move there in November which will be cool bananas!

Lot’s of cool Kiwis kids doing good stuff - that’s just how we roll.

I’m a few days behind so I’m going to keep these posts breif.

Did more research on buyer stats and started putting together a word file of all the info I am collecting.

Then the highlight of the day was meeting the founder of Zillion which is the most popular New Zealand online auction website after TradeMe with over 73,000 members and turning a profit.

After talking to Dylan when I listed the first tattoo for sale on Zillion we have stayed in touch and I was really keen to meet him to get advice and mentoring.

Dylan took me over to the North Shore for lunch which was rad.

The key things I learnt were:
- Focus on your niche and keep things simple
- Once you get the first things right - then expand into other areas
- Make sure you have a good crew dedicated to making the website and business succeed
- Get advice from people who have experience
- Be innovative in your marketing tactics
- Build a loyal community

I came back from meeting him stoked - it’s so cool how all these people who I look up to are making the time to meet with me and give me advice and help.

He is also considering moving to Wellington so that would be cool.

Right it’s Sunday night at 12:20am and I’m three days behind on the posts - will get the rest of them up tomorrow hopefully!

Whitecliffe and Unitec tomorrow !!

Day 17
Got to work to find a reply to the email I sent to the organisers of Rhythm and Vines saying they were pretty keen to do The Free Art Project. 

The Free Art Project Concept:
Get a huge canvas eg 2×5 metres and get as many people as possible to do one brush stroke each, take a photo of them pointing to their brush stroke, get their email and postal address, email them the photo, exhibit it for a month, then cut it into 5,000? (or how many people contribute to it) pieces and post them a piece.

Research on art buyers
Found some interesting stats from the 2006 and 2007 Affordable Art Show and am looking at approaching them as a partner. We could take care of the sales side and we could work together to create an active emerging artists online community. Will try approach them when I get down to Wellington at the end of next week.

Also found a good report by Creative NZ - Portrait of an artist. although its getting a bit old.

The Wellington Fringe Festival
Thinking about doing another Free Art Project at The Fringe Festival in 6 Feb - 1 March 2009 - Should be living there by then so will be good fun I think that’s just going to be my thing for events - that way we build a good database and everyone gets a souviner from their event.

Donate NZ
At 4pm I met Claire Sawyers the owner from DonateNZ to find out more about what she does and her plan for the future.

What does Donate NZ do?
It is a (very well designed and recently launched) website that helps people and companies give things (items, discounts and time) to charities. Apparently there are over 60,000 charities in New Zealand which is insane and most people can only name the top 20 most well known. 

Claire had the idea when she was going to throw out some of her appliances and other things and thought “it would be way cooler if I could give this to someone who needed it” and so began the start of DonateNZ. After getting basically ripped off from her first development company her family got a second mortgauge on their house to fund the new design which cost $90,000!! 

Her mother was running a successful flower delivery website which was funding most of the development but at the same time someone hacked her site and destroyed it - ruining cashflow which is not nice when you have no incoming.

They have decided to make the company a not profit organisation so they can get the tax breaks to subsidise the high start up cost. They have also decided to change the revenue model from getting orgaisations to pay a small fee to recieve the goods to getting big corporates such as banks and insurance companies to fund the costs and brand each area as their own.

This is a good idea and gives companies a great opportunity to show corporate responsibility which I believe should be a given for any company turning a decent profit. After talkin to Andrew Hamilton the CEO of The Icehouse breifly he said that a lot of companies are beginning to donate 1% of their profit to charity and 1% of their company resources/time which is great and I think DonateNZ is the ideal platform to do this the most effectively.

As soon as we can afford to I want to be donating 1-2% of company profit to DonateNZ and sponsor an arts charity section and possibly a mental health oganisaton also (having suffered from depression most of my life until the beginning of 2008).

I also introduced her to Pat MacFie from Start-UP Media and he was really impressed whith the conept and design and is going to help Claire meet the right people to get things moving. With Pat’s contacts and credibility and the awesome service DonateNZ provides I think it won’t be long until they get some decent media coverage - which they deserve

Doom and Gloom Media
I personally think there should be a mandatory 5 minute slot on the 6pm news on positive things that New Zealanders are doing for their country instead of the doom and gloom we are always hearing about. The governernment wonders why we have 30,000 people moving to Australia every year - a lof of it is obviously because of the money, but perhaps if there was more coverage of the good things that are being done in NZ people would be more inspired to stay and instil more pride and loyalty? 

It kind of feels like the news is like school - The bad kids get all the attention while the kids actually trying to do something with their lives get neglected. 

If there was a show on after Campbell Live profiling companies and organisations that are all in different levels of growth it would not only be interesting and educational but would help grow those companies. With the 100’s of million’s of dollars that is being invested into our economy through organisations like New Zealand Trade and Enterprise you would think that a show like this would be a smart move to help grow and encourage NZ business.

It has taken people like Pat, Nigel and Tim to put their money on the line to create Start-Up TV for something along these lines.

Don’t get me wrong - I know there is some good news and some great media such as Start-Up, Idealog, Good, Unlimited, Silicon Welly, Looksy and many others but I am talking mainly about prime time news and to an extent, main stream radio. 

I would like to know what you think about some of these questions:
1. Do we the viewers demand the news we get or is it controlled by the media and why?
2. Why do you think so many people are leaving NZ?
3. What needs to be done to encourage and grow NZ business?
4. What other media do you know that cover positive things?
5. Would you like to see a 5 min slot profiling NZ business and a 30-60 min slot weekly at prime time?

***Please note - This is just what I have been thinking for a while but is obviously by no means comprehensive. If anyone can point me to blog posts talking about a similar thing please drop the link on the comments and let me know what you think.