VTAW – Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu
Here’s some spec work from my internet slave Len, who is working closely with me in my efforts to devalue design work worldwide. This is his visual response to “Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu,” and as usual it was in my inbox just a couple hours after I posted the song. If you’d like to actually pay for an excellent illustration by Len (like a sucker), I urge you to do so at MonsterByMail.
Pixish Flap
Scott left a comment on my T-shirt contest post, leading me to this discussion on Metafilter about Pixish and spec work. There are some who are saying that Pixish is essentially enabling Web 2.0 slavery practices, cheapening design work, etc. My contest, and specifically my language about how I will use your design on T-shirts and not pay you for it, are cited as one of the examples of how Pixish can be used for evil. As someone says in a comment in that thread “Am I the only one that notes the irony of a musician gleefully admitting they will be using another artist’s work for free?” Oy.
Let me be clear about a couple of things:
1) I wanted to run a contest, not because I wanted to get free design work, but because I wanted to get a design that comes from, and is ratified by the community here on this site. I think it’s fun when fans get involved – it’s the same reason I got people to send in hand claps for “We Will Rock You” and why I held a solo contest for “Shop Vac.” That was fun, right? Right?
2) I have no idea how much it would cost to commission someone to design a shirt for me, certainly it would depend on who it was and what they and I thought their work was worth. But for the record, it’s going to cost me $200 for the iPod, maybe 50 bucks in raw materials for Thing a Week Box Sets, a few bucks for shipping, and probably a few nights sleep while I worry about this whole affair and read a bunch of flamey comments. After all that, I’m not sure I’ll end up with any designs that I want to print (in which case just having had the contest will have been worth it to me). Honestly T-shirts are not a huge profit center for me, in fact, they’re just barely less trouble than they’re worth.
3) Another quote: “[H]oly cow, JoCo is going to get an assload of free design work that is only going to cost him a single iPod, and on top of that, he might use anyone’s submission without them winning anything.” Yes, that is what I said, I can see how that last part is not really fair, and in fact it seems to be against the rules at Pixish: “…publishers have no rights to your work if you don’t win.” So I’ll change that. Only the winning design may be printed.
4) I admit this is not the first time I’ve felt a little weird about getting free work from fans – I’ve got helpers working on this video shoot for comp tickets (or not, if they already had tickets), many fans who have sold merch in exchange for comps and free merch, website work from Kerrin, illustrations from Len, forum moderation from Bry, music videos from all sorts of people, not to mention the free handclaps I tricked the internet into giving me. And I’m not the only one getting free stuff from the internet: Amazon gets book reviews, YouTube gets videos, MySpace gets, erm, error messages. But seriously, where do you draw the line?
Anyway, this whole thing was supposed to be fun, but it’s feeling a lot less fun now that the internet thinks I’m some kind of Web 2.0 plantation owner. I myself am pretty sure this contest is way different from me asking a bunch of designers to do spec work for me, and I’m also not comfortable deciding that Pixish is evil just because it can be used that way. But I am curious to hear what you all think (and folks from the Metafilter thread if they find their way here – I was going to sign up and post a comment, but it costs $5). If I’m wrong, I’ll call the whole thing off. Then I’ll just buy an iPod and smash it in the street, I don’t care, I’m rich.
New Song – Lady Aberlin’s Muumuu
Took a bit longer than expected to finish – I had some trouble getting the mix right (it’s not) and also I wanted to get some lady vocals in there (courtesy of my lovely and talented sister Lacey Kohl). But now, here it is.
One of the nice things about being a father is the opportunity to watch Mister Rogers again. I have such fond memories of the show from when I was a kid, and watching it still makes me all happy and fuzzy inside. It’s just so great. Fred Rogers was a genius and a saint and probably a space alien from the planet Love, Johnny Costa can make pianos play just by thinking about them – the whole thing is so mellow and pleasant and awesome. If opium were a TV show, it would be Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
But watching it again for the first time in many years, I was reminded how much I loved (I should say: LURVED) Lady Aberlin. I always picture her in this one particular blue dress with flowers on it, I have no idea if it’s a muumuu. But she’s pretty and has a pretty voice and she’s so nice to little Daniel Striped Tiger. I’m getting all flushed just thinking about it. This song is sort of a love song to her, by way of that dress.
JoCo T-Shirt Contest
NOTE: I should have said this before, but the four awesome photos taken by Dale May are off limits for T-shirts – I didn’t pay for that. This includes labcoat me, leaning-floppy-disk me, sultry-on-the-bed-me, and sitting-at-the-desk-with-stuff me. And in general, please don’t use any source material that would be illegal for me to print and sell as a shirt.
I’ve been meaning to do this for some time but couldn’t quite figure out how I was going to handle the details – submissions, voting, etc. Then I hear about the launch of Pixish, where you can post image assignments, allow the community to vote, and offer prizes to the winners. Just the thing I needed. It’s in beta, so we’ll see how it goes, but I bet it’s going to be awesome.
The winner gets an 8 Gig iPod Nano, their choice of color, signed by me if they want, and loaded with my entire catalog. The top five get signed Thing a Week Boxes and downloads of the complete catalog. See other details on the contest page. I may or may not print the winning design (or designs), for instance if it turns out to be something embarrassing like a picture of me naked.
You have until March 2 to submit. Get cracking!
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