MURKETING

Do you have a “crafty” tattoo?

Well, don’t tell me about. Tell the makers of Handmade Nation, the forthcoming documentary about the DIY/craft phenomenon. Details here.

(I was going to say “DIY tattoo” in the headline, but, really, a DIY tattoo is a bad idea. See a professional.)

Etsy TV

Have you seen this yet? If you follow the whole DIY craft thing, then you know that Etsy is the big online store where many thousands of handmade-thingmakers sell their handmade things. Now Etsy has launched an e-zine, and video “newscast.” I think it’s pretty funny, but what do I know? If you have an opinion, I’d like to hear it.

“Craft My Ride:” Scion, down with DIY

The DIY/craft community has, to date, had a somewhat mixed response to big-company efforts to get down with their scene. But the efforts continue, and it’s interesting to keep an eye on how each new effort is received. The latest, from Scion:

Beginning September 10, 2007, crafters will have until October 22 to submit accessory designs for items such as key chains, seat covers, floor mats, steering wheel covers, tissue holders, etc., to www.CraftMyRide.com. Crafters will need to go to the website to obtain rules and instructions. A pool of craft-friendly retail stores chosen from across the United States will judge submissions, and finalists will be chosen November 2. …

Committed to fostering independent artistic expression, and creating competitions in multiple genres such as fine art, street art, architecture, music and film, Scion is consistently looking to bolster communities with an inherent independent spirit. The arts and crafts community is one such population.

Hmmm…. Well, like I said, we’ll see.

More on this subject soon.

Product of the day

In addition to cups and plates and other useful things, Circa Ceramics sells a number of these small (about 2 5/8 inches by 1 7/8 inch) “tabs.” They are actually not useful, but rather are “cute little bits-o-art.” Oddly appealing. The creators are interviewed at Crafty Synergy.

Strange moments in DIY tinkering

According to the winning entry in the Instructables Office Supply Challenge, you may be able to fix your broken iPod by popping it open sticking a folded business card inside. I have no idea why this would work. My iPod isn’t broken, so I’m not going to try. But maybe yours is. Are you out there Stay Free?

Urban’s image

Something I did not know until pretty recently is that Urban Outfitters has a cool-spotting-ish kind of blog. One recent post pointed to the work of Barnaby Barford — “mass produced ceramics get remixed,” the site says.

Another post points to another web project called Free Yr Radio. “Urban Outfitters loves College and non-commercial radio so we’re putting on shows in our stores to help raise money so they can keep their share of the airwaves.” Also mentined is that Free Yr Radio is “crafted” by Urban Outfitters, and Yaris. Yaris is the Toyota car brand that seemed to be trying, a year or so ago, with the DIY/craft asthetic. (Its slogan was “D.I.Y. — Drive It Yourself.”) This got a mixed reaction. Urban, meanwhile, has kind of been a favorite punching bag of indie designers, crafters, and so on, because it’s got a reputation for stealing ideas.

I’ve heard many anecdotal reports of Urban trying to reach out and do damage control with the indie community. I’ve not heard many reports of anyone being convinced. I’m not sure how these online projects will help or hurt those efforts, but I’m quite curious.
Something to monitor.

Cyberoptix update

Got a note the other day — okay, the other month, it’s been busy — from Detroit-based artist/musician/DIY creator Bethany Shorb at early Murketing Q&A subject Cyberoptix. I’d asked for updates, and she said: “We’re growing like mad and things are good.”

Aside from lots of new designs in the Tie Lab — including a collaboration with Detroit’s Ghostly International, below — Cyberoptix now offers a range of … ascots! “100% charmeuse silk, hand dyed and hand screened ascots/scarves. All edges are hand-finished with silk thread.” Available through the Tie Lab and, I gather, a Los Angeles store called All Purpose. The Raven design, above, looks quite nice on the tie-as-medium as well.

In other news, while she was too modest to mention it, her music project Dethlab played at the Guggenheim! And it sounds like more attention, from mightier forces than Murketing, is on the way. I’m glad to hear it.

Cleaning Up

In Consumed: Making a hit in the culture of handmade soaps.

Of all the consumer goods cluttering your well-appointed home, one that seems relatively innocuous is soap. It turns out that this is misleading: choosing a soap involves — or at least, can involve — a thicket of choices guided by the full array of factors that define who you are as a consumer. …

Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site via this no-registration-required link.

Additional links: Indigo Wild; Natural Magic; Indie Friendly Directory; Etsy; Craft Revolution.

Buyer Be Aware

In Consumed: Obsessive Consumption: Products that are meant to make you think – about your purchase.

In 2000, Kate Bingaman-Burt graduated from college and took a full-time job as a designer and art director for a gifts company in Omaha. She worked on ads and packaging and products but didn’t feel great about any of it. Mostly it was stuff that “people didn’t really need,” she says, and ultimately it made her wonder about why people buy what they buy. Eventually she quit, went to art school to pursue a master’s degree — and started wondering about the things she bought. This led to a project she called Obsessive Consumption, which involved documenting pretty much all of her purchases; soon she started collecting those images on a Web site. And this turned out to be the first iteration of something that continues to this day: “I basically built a brand out of Obsessive Consumption,” she says, “and ran with it.” …
Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site via this no registration required link.

Additional link: Obsessive Consumption.com.

Advice

Some of the entrepreneurial DIY types among you — I know you’re out there — might be interested to read this from Grace Bonney of Design Sponge: A basic overview of making money from blogging. I’m really in no position to evaluate any of this on a practical level (I don’t even track readership of this site, let alone have any fantasies about selling ads here or whatever). And it’s a bit vague on some points, some numbers would have been interesting. But what’s there seems straightforward and, possibly, helpful.

The best thing about the piece, by the way, is that it’s all part of a “special promotion” for some American Express product on Slate. So I’m assuming — well, I’m hoping, for her sake — that Bonney actually got paid to write a post giving advice about making money from blogging! That’s why she’s Design Sponge, and you’re not.

A Turn of Phrase

In Consumed: “Snakes on a plane” (the phrase, not the movie): When a movie promotes the hype more than the hype promotes the movie.

You could make a good case that the great comedy hit of the year was “snakes on a plane.” Not the film (which wasn’t really a comedy, or a hit) but the phrase — or, if you prefer, the phenomenon. There has been a lot of theorizing about this and its implications for, or lessons about, the future of marketing in the postmodern, participatory era and so on, with the inevitable invocation of words like “viral” and “meme.” But really, it was never rocket science to figure out why “snakes on a plane” was popular: It was funny. More to the point, it was funny in specific ways: it was instant, mutable and unmoored….

Continue reading at the NYT Mag site via this no-registration-required link.

Broken iPods…

If you’ve had just about enough of products and projects that involve indivualizing or otherwise arting-up the iPod, maybe you’ll enjoy this: Stay Free! is “seeking artists and (broken) iPods for an upcoming project about planned obsolescence.” You are invited to turn your broken iPod into “something deliciously useless,” or to send it to Stay Free, which will hand it over to a participating artist. Details are here.

Sounds promising. For the record I should mention I own two iPods — the original version, and the third generation. Both still work.

Impressive

Now this is some Halloween costume. Via Gizmodo, which offers a few more pix that show a bit of how this was made.

How to leverage how-to-ness

Today’s WSJ has an entertaining article on web sites playing to “the next iteration of the burgeoning self-help industry: teaching people the obvious.”

At Video Jug you’ll find films on how to fold a T shirt, and “use the shower.” Other sites include eHow, wikiHow, and ViewDo. The DIY Network and others are sort of getting in on this, blending amateur (I mean grass roots!) advice with that of experts. But as one DIY Network interactive guy notes: “companies need to be careful about how they incorporate tips from amateurs. ‘If someone gets electrocuted or their deck falls down, that reflects poorly on the DIY brand.'” Indeed.

Carry Art

In Consumed: Poketo: How a promotional vehicle for undiscovered artists became a desirable purchase.

Back when they lived in San Francisco, Ted Vadakan and Angie Myung were part of that city’s tight-knit community of young artists, and they would help organize or participate in a variety of gallery shows. It was always a lot of fun, but there was a problem. “No one was buying art,” Myung says, “because all of us were pretty poor.” Their response has gradually turned into a small business called Poketo, which has worked with more than 70 artists in creating wallets, messenger bags, T-shirts and, beginning in the fall, stationery and housewares.

Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site by way of this no-registration-required link.

Related links: Poketo; Poketo blog; Poketo Myspace page; The Little Friends of Printmaking; Boy Girl Party (Susie Ghahremani); Hot and Cold; PCP.