john t. unger studio

It's only life or death. It's always only life or death

The best thing that ever happened to me was the night an angry, messed up cab driver pulled me into the back room of a 24 hour diner and held a huge handgun to my head for over ten minutes, all the while describing in intricately fetishistic detail exactly what would happen when he pulled the trigger.

Why? Because it changes you, staring down a nutjob holding a gun. After that, the small stuff just doesn't get sweated. You either break, or break through to a mandatory satori of keeping things in proportion that most people never get to walk away from. It's an ice calm I wouldn't trade for anything.

The second best thing that ever happened to me was when the dot com crash of 2000 wiped out most of the design industry at the peak of my career as a freelance print designer. I went from turning away work every week to working exactly 7 days of the next year. I lost my girl. I lost my loft. I lost part of my thumb in an accident moving out of the loft. I pretty much lost it all.

Of course, the only reason I was working in offices was to fund the art career I wanted… materials, space, tools, etc. I worked eight hours in the office and ten in the studio, sleeping when I passed out involuntarily. I decided that if my industry had tanked, I was damned if I was gonna retrain to do something else I didn't want to do. I chose to make the art be my sole means of support. I built some monumentally scaled commissions working out of borrowed shop space, with borrowed gear, sleeping on borrowed couches.

It worked. I've been making my living as an artist ever since, and these days I earn triple the income I ever did from the best corporate gigs.

The third best thing that ever happened was the day my studio building collapsed under a load of snow while I was standing on the roof shoveling. I rode that roof to the ground like a gut-shot rodeo pony. The building and some pricey tools were completely destroyed, but I was unharmed… until I spent the next three months (December, January and February) without heat, running water or a stove because the natural gas line into the house had been severed in the collapse. The gas company refused to fix the line until they could bury it in the spring. I lost a few brain cells, I'm sure, by running an unvented kerosene heater inside the house to stay alive.

How was that good? The bank came out to assess the damage, saw my work and suggested I do a $10,000 commissioned sign as the down payment on the remaining two buildings I'd been leasing with an unlikely option to buy. Getting this place had a lot to do with making the art career fly. I had affordable space to work and a place for customers to find me. I don't think the deal would have happened without the disaster… They didn't want to take a loss on the property (or hold it) and I was willing to take it on at the cost of the mortgage before the building fell.

Bottom line:

The only way you can tell the difference between disaster and opportunity is to decide to make an opportunity out of every event.

Postscript:

During the second and third disasters, my friends were pretty evenly divided in their response to my choice to make the world work on my terms.

One camp said, "Dude, you're so brave to just bail on the day job and do your own thing. You're my hero. I wish I could do that." The other camp said, "Look, don't be crazy. Just take whatever work you can get until you're on your feet, even if it's fast food or something. You're never gonna make it without some cash." Really, both camps were wrong (though I love them all dearly).

I wasn't brave. Not the least bit. I was frickin' desperate, is what I was, but not terrified. I was back to that ice calm… you learn that it just ain't over till it's over, and that giving up never got anyone out of a jam. I didn't want a life of stability if it meant I had to do digital layouts of junk mail for a living. I wanted to do what I was best at, what I loved, and get paid for that. It was worth the risk. It was the only real way I could see to better my situation.

I wasn't crazy either. By the time I figured out that the design work wasn't just in a slump, that it wasn't coming back any time soon, I had about $5 in cash and $20,000 in debt. There was no way that a subsistence level job was gonna fix that… I ran full tilt towards the art career because I knew if I did it right, and worked my ass off, I could probably make enough to get out of the hole

I had to think about it again when the building crashed. That time, I almost did pack it in. It felt like my dream was a stupid idea after all, that I had just run everything into the ground betting on a long shot. But in the rural economy here, few jobs pay well enough to escape the poverty line and there are fewer and fewer jobs available anyway every year. A job wasn't gonna save me. It would just suck all the time and energy I needed to realize my dreams, while keeping me alive enough to resent it.

I remembered other businesses I had started on a shoe string earlier in life… each of them ultimately failed the first time something major went wrong because I hadn't had enough cash to keep them going. Or had they? Had money really been the only way to get them back on track, or was it a failure of creativity and nerve? Had they really failed because when faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem, I'd believed it to be what it seemed, bought into it, walked away because I didn't feel able to do the so-called impossible? I decided that what I really couldn't afford was to waste all the time and energy I had put into building an art career that was just on the edge of being sustainable. I'd come too far this time to back down.

Having weighed the pros and cons of sticking to my guns, I decided to force a positive change out of the crisis. Within a month, I unexpectedly sold a few major pieces, paying off the last of my old debts with the money and having cash left over. From that moment, the art has sold exponentially better each year. If I'd given up at the moment, none of the great things that have happened since would have come about.

A beautiful new hack for my press page

In the past, I've been really bad about updating my press page and my CV… mostly because they were extensively hand-coded in table-based HTML with a lot of inline CSS formatting. So it was a real pain to add stuff and took too much time and effort.

I spent the holiday weekend working on a solution to this problem and came up with a new format for the press page that I'm absolutely in love with… all the formatting is done in templates and CSS and so from now on, all I need to do is post the citation and / or images as a blog post and everything else is automatic. Although it took a couple of solid days to design the templates, once I entered the actual content it went so quickly that I felt I was dreaming!

Here's the old Press page for reference.

Here's the new and improved Press Page.

The whole thing is created as a separate blog, though you probably wouldn't notice that except if you looked at the URL structure. I based the design largely on Michael Sippey's (un)filtered blog design, which he was kind enough to share with me. Thanks Michael! (Update: Michael just changed to a new design! Oops)(Second update: Actually, both designs are live at the moment… it's just that the RSS feed now links to the second design at filtered). (Yes, it's confusing, don't worry about it).

Here's a list of the notable features:

1. I'm much better represented in the media than I thought!
2. Each category has it's own icon to make it easy to skim the full list. Clicking on the icon will bring up all the entries in that category.
3. The only shows up if there are thumbnail images in the extended post.
4. On individual entries, the magnification icon shows up automatically on posts with extended entries but not on entries that contain only the citation.
5. The drop-down menus at the top make it much easier to sort the list by date or media type.
6. I love the breadcrumb navigation on archives and individual entries… Turns out that was really easy to set up.

I haven't built the new template set for the CV yet because it's a bit more complex, but I'm really looking forward to having it… Being able to add things with a single post will make it so much easier to keep up with and should help me to be more complete. When you only update once a year or so, it's hard to remember what-all you've done in the last twelve months!

The noiser it gets, the quieter it appears

Yeah, I know, sound isn't visible (usually) so my headline's a bit off. What I mean by it is that the busier I get, the harder it is to find time to write about it.

Hugh Macleod lists a few explanations for the slow down on blogs this summer: why we're all blogging less.

A common conversation thread I'm hearing a lot among the veteran bloggers, is how we all seem to be blogging a lot less. The reasons are numerous; here's a short list of the main ones I'm picking up.

1. We got busy. For many of us, blogging created opportunities for us in the offline world, just like the early blog evangelists predicted. And as we found out the hard way, it's actually quite hard to do stuff and blog about it at the same time. As my father, a very smart and observant man once quipped, "A lot of these bloggers seem to have a lot of time on their hands". That may have been true in 2002, back when the recession was still on. It's certainly less true with a lot of people I know.

He seems to have struck a nerve. The comments on the post mostly agree that time is a scarcer resource than when we all started this stuff. Check out his follow-up post for the rest of the story (in which, blogging isn't dead, it's just getting more focused).

I can relate to the whole time issue. I've got scads of photos of new work that haven't made their way to the blog yet. Tons of news, scores of ideas, lots and lots of things that really should get mentioned here. It'll happen, but not until I get caught up on some of the work and opportunities that have come to me through the blog.

I've been through this before, actually. When I bailed on college and hit the streets back in the late 80s, determined to make it as an author, I had a simple theory of how to write. "live an interesting life, and write it down." I quickly found out that there wasn't that much time to write if you really had an interesting life… Plenty of stories to tell, but you had to choose between telling a story or living one. Back then, living the story often took preference over recording it.

Sooner or later I reckon the break-neck pace will slow. And then there'll be a lot of catching up to do.

Interviewed at Felix Salmon's Blog

Felix Salmon just posted an email interview about my thoughts on investing in art. It all started with a comment I left on Felix's post contesting Todd Gibson's assertion that art is a poor long term investment. Yeah, that's an awkward sentence, isn't it?

So go check out the first post by Felix, and then read the interview if you're interested in how I've turned a consistent 400% or better profit on any work I've sold from my own collection.

I'm more than a bit excited to be interviewed by Mr. Salmon… He's a brilliant journalist and consistently makes topics that I thought I could caree less about sound totally fascinating.

Technorati Tags: art, blog, culture, folkart, interview

Business Cards People Will Save and Remember

Do you have piles of business cards you've picked up, but no idea why they seemed important at the time? Have you ever wanted to get in touch with someone and started digging through a wad of cards, only to find that you can't tell one from another?

Has it ever occurred to you that your business cards might be in a similar pile? That someone may be looking at your card, scratching their head and wondering "Who was that person? What do they do? Why did I think I might want to get in touch with them?"

If so, that's a problem. Because if no one can remember why they grabbed your card, then really, they're not very likely to call. And if they don't call, well, hey, what's the point of giving them a card in the first place? You might as well write your number on their hand with a ballpoint pen… it's cheaper, and it'll hold their attention just as long (maybe longer).

So what do you want your card to do? At a minimum, it should do the following:

1. A card should entice people to pick it up even if you're not present.

The best way to do this is to make it interesting. That doesn't mean that it needs to be die cut, or a funny size or a bright color. Sometimes the most interesting thing is something that clearly solves a problem. Especially if you leave your cards in places where people whose problems you can solve will find it.

2. It should give people a reason to hang onto it, aside from the obvious.

The best way to do this is to make your card beautiful or remarkable in some way. It could be a sticker, or translucent or printed on wood. But whatever you do in terms of design should reinforce what you actually do. If it doesn't look like it came from you, it doesn't help people remember you.

3. It should remind people what they found interesting about you or your business.

Why you, over all the other choices in the yellow pages? What makes you special? If you can get that across in a 2" x 3.5" space, do it. Hugh MacLeod does it a few times a day usually, but then, that is what he does. It doesn't matter how many cards you give out… it matters how many people remember why they took them, and eventually call you.

4. A card should provide several ways to reach you and a way to learn more about you.

A blog or web site can go a long way towards helping people remember what they found interesting about you. In the process, they may find other things that interest them about your business.

5. There's no reason a card can't include a call to action, such as "present this card for a special gift."

That can get tricky depending on what you do, but it can also work well if it suits your business. A free cup of coffee would be bad for a cafe, because it's hard to tell if someone has already been in for their free cup. But say you run a deli… your card could offer people a free taste of something from the deli case. Every day, you let them try something new. It's a great reason to come back, and the more they try, the more things they might learn to want.

Here's how I make sure that my cards will be saved, remembered and used.

First off, I print my own cards. I make them in limited numbers… Say, 100 or so at a time. If I'm doing a large show or art fair I might print as many as 1000, but generally I find it best to keep the number down. There's a reason for that. I have a template that lets me lay out ten standard size business cards on an 8.5" x 11" page. It looks like this (click it to see it lifesize in another window):

The text stays the same for each card, but I change the images every time I print a new batch. When I do an art show, I have cards with the image of every piece in the show. When I make new work, I make new cards. I keep some images in constant circulation, either of custom work I've done or of my "greatest hits," but basically, they're always new.

This system works for me on several levels

The most important is that when someone is interested in a particular piece or style of work, I can give them the card that features that item. That way, they always remember why they wanted it.

The side bonus, is that everywhere I go, I always have a mini-portfolio of my most recent work. When someone asks me what I do, I can show them. And then I get to let them pick their favorite card.

This approach might not be perfect for everyone, but if you're an artist or designer I strongly recommend it.

Tags: art, business, design, marketing, purplecow, advertising, sales

A Resource For Chicago (and other) Artists

I haven't had time to explore this site in depth yet, but I'm impressed by the resources for artists seeking space to work in Chicago. This is likely to be really useful for a lot of people I know. My one big complaint about the site is that I'd prefer to be able to get notification of updates via RSS rather than email… I frickin' hate email lists, since they just clutter my inbox. Other than that, it looks like a great resource. Check it out, even if you aren't in Chicago… There seems to be a lot of useful info that applies regardless of where you live and work. Found via Strange Bungalow.

From the About page:

CAR is created by artists for artists.  A program of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, CAR is intended to assist artists with their creative and professional practice and to strengthen the community of artists in Chicago.  It is a tool for artists and organizations in every discipline - visual, performing, literary arts -- to publicize events and opportunities and to provide deep and solid information about the many facets of being an artist in Chicago and the world.

With hundreds of articles from several national partner organizations, especially the New York Foundation for the Arts and LA-based Side Street Projects, as well as extensive links to grants, funding, awards and other services for artists, CAR offers a rich platform for every artist's interests.  This national content is combined with a rich array of links to local organizations.   

CAR has been designed to accept new information and articles dynamically - so there will be new information appearing every day.  It has also been designed to enable artists to contribute content dynamically - through forums, through space, opportunity and job posts, and through the words and images created by artists in the CAR community.

Much of the initial content in CAR has a visual art focus, but artists in every discipline will find a wealth of information as well. Some special CAR features to look out for are:

Space Search: Need a studio, rehearsal space or meeting room?  Have a room for rent? Space Search is a database of permanent art-related spaces throughout Chicago, as well as a place to list or locate temporary spaces.  Find detailed information for many types of spaces, or list your own. 

Square Feet Chicago: SFC is the new comprehensive manual for artists and organizations who are buying and leasing space.  SFC has profiles of the art and community resources of all 77 Chicago neighborhoods, and in-depth discussion about everything from ownership models to mortgages to negotiating leases, homeownership programs and safe and healthy design.

Artist Stories: Chicago is home to over 80,000 people engaged in the arts, and each of them probably have a tale to tell that another artist would find of interest.  We asked several Chicago artists to write about their experiences as related to the topics on CAR, and have featured their stories, and artwork, throughout the site.  Click here for submission guideines.

Banners: All the banners on CAR are details of artwork created by Chicago-based artists.  This virtual exhibition can be expanded with additional contributions from any registered user (one image per person).  Each banner lists the artists' name, title and their web address.  Click here for submission guidelines. 

Forums: Even though there's a lot of information in CAR, nothing beats first-hand advice from another artist.  Check out the forums, and if you have a question or comment on any of the topics on CAR, log on and post it for feedback. 

CAR is a growing organism and a powerful tool.  It has been designed to accommodate your input and your content.  We have laid a foundation of information that we believe is solid, long term and from reliable sources.  But we have also designed the site to grow with your experiences.  As rich as we think this initial launch is, we hope that the future of CAR is that much richer -- with nuances, personal anecdotes, and recommendations yielding a deeper and more powerful foundation on which to build.  The more you use it, the better it will be!

Watch this space

I've been working late all this week on a new blog that should be launching by the end of the week. Maybe sooner, maybe not quite that soon. But it's gonna be good. I'm almost done with design issues and want to get a few good posts in before I officially post a link to it.

If you found me via Hugh's post on the Global MicroBrand, I think you'll like the new thing. So stay tuned.

In fact, you might wanna click that little link in the side bar or the footer of this post to subscribe to this blogs feed.

The Power of Blogs

   

 

I just came up with a line I really like in an email to a friend:

My life continues to be a huge drama on the world stage with a small, ratty and low budget set.

In other words, a lot of exciting things are happening and yet, I never leave the house. Well, not much anyway.

I've been getting quite a lot of press and sales and commission inquiries this winter, from pretty much all over the country. Right now I'm working on drawings for 10-12 sculptures to adorn the courtyard of a 17 story Chelsea highrise in NYC. I'm waiting to hear back from an architect in Topeka, Kansas about three Great Bowls O Fire that he'd like to fit out with gas flames and install on stone pillars in a new restaurant. I just got off the phone with a client who bought a Great Bowl earlier this winter and now wants to surround his pool with some of my torches. Rock on.

I've done three interviews for magazines and websites this week. The Sprint Ambassador Program is sending me a free cell phone with six months of free service. School children write emails from overseas asking about my art for school reports they're doing. HGTV contacted me a while back about possibly featuring my work on their show, Offbeat America (it doesn't look like it will happen this time, but it's still pretty cool to be asked). I've also met a lot of incredibly cool people this year that I consider to be good friends despite never having seen them in person.

Almost all of this has come about because of the time I've put in writing blogs. The only drawback has been that at times, the response becomes so overwhelming that I don't take the time to post about it here. I'm working on that. And if things keep going the way they're going, maybe this will be the year that my "small, ratty and low budget set" gets a significant facelift and becomes the theater of my dreams.

Tags: johntunger, art, globalmicrobrand, blog, marketing, branding, blogging, business, design,

Conversation With Hugh MacLeod

 

I just got off the phone (well, Skype) with Hugh MacLeod. This morning he posted his Skype
handle to his blog and is taking calls. I had only just added his handle to my contact list when the laptop rang and there he was. Cool. (actually, I was gonna finish my coffee first to make sure my brain was firing, but it was fine. He's an easy guy to talk to.)

For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, Skype lets you make free phone calls from your computer. You should go get it right now (yes, really, there'll be a test later). Hugh is an artist (he might deny that) and marketing genious who's been at the front lines of blogging and web 2.0 since before the hype. He's also one of the people that has managed to make blogging a viable business model in ways that are more interesting and useful than the paid advertising model. What initially brought him an audience are his amazingly true and funny cartoons on the back of business cards, a series of incisive posts on how to be creative and his concept of the global microbrand.

So, was it good for me? Hell yeah, hope it was also good for Hugh. The skype call was cool because it made it easier to talk about some of the "off the record" stuff that I've long wondered. Sometimes voice can be a lot more human than typing… in fact, probably most of the time. There's no editing. So now I know a few "secrets," which is fun. And I had an opportunity to talk about some of the ideas we share without having to lay it all out online, which can be a good thing. Besides, he said nice things about what I've accomplished and hell, it's always nice to hear praise from someone whose work you admire.

I love being able to put a voice to someone whose work I've been following for so long, and who I feel like I've come to know pretty well over the last couple years through comments and emails. Hugh was pretty much the guy who inspired me to take blogging seriously as a way to increase the market for my art and design and it has seriously paid off. The global microbrand concept has worked well for me. Although I haven't yet quite reached the level of fame and fortune that his projects have, I'm making a living doing what I want and I'm able to make that happen from pretty much the dead center of nowhere…

 

Traditionally, artists need NYC or LA if they're gonna make it, and most of them don't make it. I mean, hey, the market is a lot larger in a major city, but compared to the entire world? And I seem to be able to reach the world just fine from here. So yeah, I feel like it's been a good ride and I think it's only gonna get better.

 

 

I love that one. It really doesn't describe most of my experiences in the blogosphere, but it does crack me up. Hugh is one of the glaring exceptions to the cartoon… Opinionated? Rough? Scathing? Sure. But he does actually give a shit about people. He's always been approachable, which I think has been one of the keys to success for bloggers who make it. And yeah, although we don't always agree, I think on the whole we see the worl in a pretty similar fashion. Anyway, I guess the point here is that if you have something to say, or are doing something interesting, most of the big names will take the time to check it out. And those who don't? Don't let it get you down… just refer to the above cartoon.

 

 

So here's the deal. If you've been reading this blog (or my other blogs) and you feel like you have something to discuss, or hell, even if you just wanna shoot the shit about any of the topics I cover, etc. go download Skype and give me a buzz. Add johntunger to your contact list and click the button. I haven't yet activate the voicemail feature, so if you don't get through the first time you can always reach me by email or regular phone too. I've made a lot of good friends in the last couple years through blogging, and really, it's always cool to know more about who your readers are. If people tell me what they like best, or don't like as much, etc., it makes it much easier to improve the blog.

I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say and finding ways to make my work better for them. A lot of my best work has been custom stuff that I did based on the input of clients… I see it as a collaboration, and I enjoy the process of adapting other peoples idea to my own vision. It's a cool challenge that seems to help everyone feel more involved and engaged (including me). Rock on.

Technorati Tags: gapingvoid, hugh, macleod, hughmacleod, skype, conversation, cluetrain, marketing, blogging, blog, business, humor, blogs, creativity, advertising, art, cartoon, branding, globalmicrobrand, microbrand

The Studio Blog's Top 20 Posts

I spent some time today going through the archives to compile a list of links to what I consider my best posts since I started blogging. Some of these have been heavily read and/or linked to, others kind of just slipped in under the radar. If you're new to the blog, or just want to skip to the juciest bits, this list might come in handy.

Most of these post are ideas which could benefit from discussion and collaboration: If you agree, disagree or feel you have something to add please leave your thoughts in the comments at the end of the post! Thanks, and enjoy!

Open Source Public Art

American Guernica: A Call for Guerilla Public Art
An invitation to participate in an open-source Street art project by putting up large-scale reproductions of Picasso's Guernica as an anti-war protest.

Links and discussion about American Guernica: Visual Resistance, Social Design Notes, descartavel, collision detection, New Art, Spy's Spice, Eyeteeth, Eyebeam Reblog, MemeStreams, FlightDynamics.

Open Source Public Art: A Proposed Model
A design brief for an online center for the creation of public art. I would especially like feedback, participation and collaboration on this idea.

The Vista Project
Vistas is a series of identical sculptures designed for installion in a site-specific context in multiple locations. Designed as a pilot project for Open Source Public Art.

Rough Concept Sketch For Cheboygan Arts Park Project
A fence design based on the idea of advent calendars, featuring Mondrian like grids of doors which, when opened, would reveal steel silhouettes. What I love about the design is the interplay between privacy and discovery… The face of the fence blocks the view of what's behind it, but the invitation to open the doors and look within them opens another world of imagination.

Collaboration, Business + Marketing for Artists

Sharing Makes Sense (And Dollars) For Artists
Why collaboration among artists is a more viable economic strategy than competition.

A Few Ideas I Salted Over At Marketing Begins At Home
Thoughts on why blogs, and especially comments, are such a valuable promotion tool.

Collaborative Art Purchases: Why Not?
Artists often collaborate on making work. Now, I'm entertaining the idea of collectors collaborating to purchase work together that they might not be able to afford individually…

Resources on portfolio development for artists
The best online "how to" resources regarding what should go into each piece of an artist's promotional package.

Art of Business, Business of Art: A Start
If you want to make a living in the arts, not only do you have to be good at business, you have to be really good at it. If I've learned anything over the last year, it's that if you want to make it in the arts your business model has to be as creative as your product.

Bring The Noise
You can be all gonzo, all the time. And if it doesn't get you killed, it might just get you a pretty decent life.

Do I drink all that Beer myself? Heck no, I hire professionals!
Everybody has a ghost story — even people who don't believe in ghosts. And everyone has some kind of story about how art or creativity made a difference.

Neil's Collaborative Woodworking Shop, In his own words
I asked my friend Neil Verplank to write up a description of the collaborative work environment which has evolved in his shared shop space.

Collaborative Economics, Take One
The more people work together to create a scene that enriches their ability to produce (through collaboration, criticism, education, whatever) and to thrive (monetarily and otherwise) the better off everyone is.

Creative Process

T+S+R=W The necessary equation
If you're going to work in the arts, there are three things you must have—Time, Space & Resources (Resources meaning materials and tools, or the money to get them).

What Isn't It?
Creative misinterpretation as a design strategy

Shiny, Happy Puppy
A little story about naming a reproduction mosaic, language and culture.

Sculpture, Shadows and Designing for Light
I've put a lot of time and thought into creating linework sculptures that anticipate movement— dancers that broadcast the movement they are about to make, etc. This is the first piece I've done in large flat planes that has the same feel.

An Interesting Conversation on "Attention Deficit Trait" at collision detection
Learning how to use a broader focus as a tool, without allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed. Though the condition may in fact be biological, the ability to make it work for us rather than against is very definitely a learned (and learnable) skill.

Other Ideas

RIP HST—The Great Gonzo Doctor is Gone
My obit for Hunter S. Thompson. People said some nice things about it.

Chicago: Copyrighting Public Space
My response to an article in the Chicago Reader about copyright issues surrounding Millennium Park. The Reader published this post in the letters column of the following week's issue and did a follow-up article on the scandal.

Quick Links to Art + Projects

Most popular work: The Great Bowl O Fire, Bottle Cap Art, New Bottle Cap Fish, Garden Torches, Kinetic Sculpture, Mosaics for sale, Commissioned Mosaics, Furniture.