Local events, holidays, national news, and even world events are great sources for new content to blog about, to write articles, shoot video, or even as a base to write new press releases. Not only are people already interested in these topics, but they also tend to get searched on in search engines, so it’s an opportunity to get boost in search engine traffic. Here are few examples:

Holidays- Holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving…even Groundhog’s day gives you a great reason to create holiday-related tip sheets, articles, or crafting or art tutorials. For Groundhog’s Day, The Naughty Secretary’s Club wrote a cute blog post on how to make a ground hog puppet.

Local events- Do you have a local art show, craft show, or exhibition that’s of interest to your customers or readers? Offer to write an article for a local publication (either online or offline) about the event. Or perhaps you’re participating in one of these events? Use this participation as a reason to write a press release or a blog post about the event. The Publicity Hound, Joan Stewart talks about how write press releases based on local events in her free ecourse 89 Press Release Tips.

Word events- World events like the 2010 Winter Olympics and the Haitian relief efforts is news that everyone wants to keep informed about. With a little thought, you can figure out how to make these events relevant to your article writing or blog. For example DIY Life wrote a nice blog post about Craft Hope for Haiti which is an Etsy store that donates it’s proceeds to Haiti relief.

Popular culture or trends- Don’t forget to look to pop culture and trends for content ideas. What are some of your favorite television shows? Movies? Music? Books? Design*Sponge has a great series on it’s blog called “Living In” where a popular movie, television show, or book is chosen as a interior design inspiration. Here’s a blog post about the animated movie Fantastic Mr. Fox.

So, the next time you open up your newspaper, watch your favorite TV show, or go to the movies, keep your eyes and mind open. The inspiration for your next blog post or article might be closer than you think!

Some important points to note

• Pam shot this video using her camera phone. Remember, you don’t need to have fancy equipment to do stuff like this. Camera phones, digital cameras that can take short videos, and small video cameras like the Flip Mino
  are great for quick, impromptu videos.

• Most people attending a craft show or a trade show don’t realize or even think about the amount of effort it takes just to prepare and set up for a show. If a customer sees a video like this, how much more respect will you gain as a result?

• Short videos like this makes great content for your website and your blog.

How Pam can leverage this video further

• As well as putting this video on her blog, Pam can also put this video on her Facebook page or open an account on YouTube and post it there. This gives her more places where people can find her online.

• Add her website address to the video. Right now she has a final shot that explains how long it took her to set up her booth. This could be followed by another shot that tells people the address to her website and asks them to visit for more information.

• Make it sharable. If other artists and bloggers like me, find this video interesting and want to share it with others, it should be as easy to do as possible. If you use a video sharing service like YouTube it’s pretty much a no-brainer.

You can find Pam online at her website, Rock, Paper, Scissors, her blog, Business of Crafts, her Business of Crafts Facebook page, or you can follow her on Twitter.

If you’re thinking about doing some videos of your own and you’re a subscriber to my weekly newsletter, you can check out the 5-part article series I did on “How to Use Video to Promote Your Art Website” in the article archives. If you aren’t a subscriber, you can download a PDF version of the series here.

What did this change mean for Facebook users? According to some consumer advocates, you could easily interpret this change to mean that Facebook would own the right to do what they wished with whatever you post on Facebook (photos, video, comments, etc) even after you’ve decided to delete your Facebook account. According to Facebook, they’ve made this change in the Terms of Service so that they can help keep certain aspects of a person’s content active even after that person has terminated their account. For example, if you’ve made a comment on another person’s Wall or participated in a discussion on in a Facebook Group, the provision would allow them to keep the comment active even if you’ve deleted your account.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, stated both yesterday and this morning after the decision to go back to the original Terms of Service that the change in no way meant that Facebook wanted to “own” the content of it’s users, but rather it was trying solve the sticky issue of what to do with content that’s shared among a lot of people.

As an artist, this a very real issue that you should be aware of. Terms of Use provisions that allow a third party website like Facebook, Myspace, Flickr rights to use the content of its users is not uncommon. And while the chance that any of these companies will do anything with your photos or videos is fairly small, in some cases the language to do more than that is already there. So should a company decide to do more with your content than they’re doing now somewhere further down the road, if you’ve agreed to the Terms of Service that gives them that right there may be very little you can do. If you’re a painter, a photographer, a videographer, a cartoonist, a printmaker, or anyone who’s art “is” the image, this can be a serious issue.

My advice? Be careful. You should be very aware of what you’re signing up for before you start uploading your images on a social networking site. Before you start sharing your images on places like Facebook or Myspace, be sure to read the Terms of Service contract (you know those long pages of legal stuff that no one ever reads) and pay close attention on how they handle your content. And then weigh the risks and benefits for yourself. Social networking is still a great way to promote yourself, just don’t give away your rights to do so.

For more information on this issue, check out the following links:

• Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information

• On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information

• Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”

• Facebook terms of service compared with MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter

• Update on Terms

• Technical rebuttal of Mark Zuckerberg’s rebuttal to Facebook TOS change

Well, I don’t know if I should be telling you this because I’m not sure what it might indicate about the kind of person I might be … but faced with many stacks of paper waiting to be printed {see above}, I decided to do the math on just how many passes of the press these 2009 calendars are going to take. Let me tell you, it’s a lot. A LOT.

Here’s how to add it up. There are 14 pages in each calendar: 12 months + a front cover + a back cover. I am starting with stacks of 405 pages for each of those 14 pages. {Why 405? Well, it was going to be less, but I admit that my brain has been operating at a little less than 100% these days so I ended up ordering more paper than I needed … so I figured I’d just print what I had and this is the magic number.} Of those pages, there is yet another break-down according to how many colors per design.

Lynn goes on to figure out the total breakdown which comes out to a staggering 21,880 passes of the press!

In this post, Lynn does a couple of things:

1. She illustrates in pretty concrete terms, how much work is involved in the creation of her calendars.

2. She increases the value of her calendars in the minds of her current and potential customers.

While people might know “mentally” that handcrafted work takes a lot of effort, the idea really doesn’t connect unless people “see” it in a crystal-clear way. For some people, you need to provide concrete numbers, kind of like how Lynn broke down the work to the amount of “steps” it took. With other people, describing the process is enough to make the connection. With others, they have to actually see the process in action. And still others don’t truly appreciate it until they actually “experience” the process.

So how do you get people to make the connection for your work?

• Break the process down step by step. You don’t have to get into specifics like what your glaze recipe is or where you source your materials if that’s proprietary information. But describe what’s involved in your creative process and do it in quantitative terms.

• Make a video or a slideshow of you at work. Provide ongoing commentary and closeup detail shots of your works in progress. Post these photos, slide shows, or videos to Slideshare, Flickr, or YouTube

• Blog about your works in progress and provide media such as photos and video to illustrate milestones of your progress.

• Invite and answer questions about your work and your creative process and post them to your blog or a “Frequently Asked Questions” section on your website. If you get a lot of questions on a regular basis, you may consider creating a feature for reader’s questions on your blog. Getting people personally engaged with you is also a great way to get them more connected.

• Teach. The saying about walking a mile in a man’s shoes is true. Consider teaching some of your techniques by writing downloadable tutorials, making how to videos or slideshows, or by teaching a live class. Every year I teach a class on how to make these fairly “simple” beaded chain bracelets. Every year I get students who take the class with ambitions to learn how to make these items as gifts for their family and friends. And almost every year, I get a less crafty student that says, “You know, maybe I’ll just buy from you instead of trying to make this myself.” Even among my more handier students, they respect the process more once they learn how to do it, especially once I explain how many of these bracelets I average per year*.

  * Incidently I’ve also found this to be an interesting response to the irritating, “I could make that!” comment so frequently heard at craft shows. When someone says that, my response usually is, “Well, I make about X amount of these a year and I want to expand to more. I could use more help.” It’s a gentle reminder to these wanna-be artists that making 1 item and making 100 isn’t as easy as it seems. Most people seem to make the connection in that context. At least no one has taken me up on the offer yet!

• Have a story. People interested in art are interested in the artist. I wrote about how important it is to have story earlier this year, and it’s an important thing to remember because Lynn’s customers don’t buy from Satsuma Press, they buy from Lynn Russell. So even when you’re quantifying how much goes into your work, make it clear that there is a story behind it and that small part of you also goes into it. And that makes the ultimate connection.

You read the rest of Lynn’s post here. And be sure to visit here website at www.satsumapress.com.

It doesn’t even have to be a matter of people who speak or read and entirely different language. It could just be a matter of visitor’s from the UK that understand “British English” as opposed to “American English”. It’s very likely that you’ll have visitors from the UK, Canada, or Australia and you’ll run into that “translation” problem, like the fact that in the UK purses are “handbags” and backpacks are “rucksacks”.

The Storque has a really interesting article on a couple of things that you need to watch out for when tagging some of your items on Etsy for an international audience. Like why you don’t want to talk about “fanny packs” to your UK audience. A lot of these tips will also “translate” to your website, so check out the article on the Storque:
International Tagging, Yeah Baby!

• How to care for your artwork- If your artwork or craft item requires some maintenance or special cleaning, create a video with tips on how to care for and clean your artwork.
• Frequently Asked Questions- if you have an unusual craft or art technique, chances are that you have alot of questions from your customers that you answer over and over again. Create a video that answers some of your customer’s most frequently asked questions.
• Create a day-in-the life video- customers find the artist’s life fascinating, so try shooting some scenes from a typical day in the studio.
• Create a “how to” or “advice” videos- A lot of craft and art items are used as personal accessories or in interior design. If you paint for example, create a video showing the best way to hang or light your paintings. If you make hair accessories, demonstrate the latest fashions using your accessories.
• Lectures and presentations- If you’re lucky enough to land a art-related speaking engagement or were invited to lecture at an craft related conference…ask for permission to videotape your session and to post brief clips on your website. This shows you as an authority in the art world…plus it has the added bonus of encouraging more speaking engagements.
• Media appearances- If you’ve landed some time on the small screen, see if you can get a copy of your television appearance and permission to show clips on your website. For tips on how to prepare for a television appearance, check out this past post:
  9 Ways to Prepare Your Site for a Television Appearance.

• Participate in Etsy’s “Handmade Story” video project- Right now in conjunction with the “Handmade Pledge” project, the online craft marketplace site Etsy is creating a documentary project in which they encourage artists to explain how making and selling their artwork affects their lives. You can find out how to participate here.
• Your art in motion- Does your art move? Then still pictures won’t do your work justice. Have video showing your art in motion. Artist Ann P. Smith does this perfectly with her video animations of her handmade robots on her website.
• Bonus Tip:- Remember that you can extract the audio from your video and make an mp3 audio download, a podcast, or even an audio CD. Especially useful if the video itself is not the best quality.

Are you already using video on your website? Leave me a comment and let me know about it!

Did you know that 52% of all web traffic video-related? Or that over 70% of people surfing the web watch online video? Or that on average YouTube visitors spend 27 minutes watching video? So what does that mean for you as the average artist or crafter working away in your studio? It means that if you don’t have video on your craft website, you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

Crafts actually are the perfect subject for video. Those who buy craft or those who collect art love to watch artists at work. Those who attend craft shows say that meeting the artists and talking with them about their artwork is part of what makes the whole experience fun. If you sell exclusively to galleries or exclusively online…this is an important piece of promotion that you are missing.

Having a video of yourself working on your art or a video of yourself explaining what your craft is all about is a great way to duplicate this experience on your website. Those who visit your website get to see you at work in your studio…they get to see that what you are selling on your website did not come from a factory. Plus, they also get a better idea about who you are as an artist by hearing your voice and seeing your face. Instead of a lifeless image on the web, you and your craft becomes an actual person that they can make a connection with. And it’s that connection that art collectors love when they are purchasing art.

So how would you get started? In the past online video used to be a huge undertaking. But now with the availability of tools like iMovie and Vegas Video, the spread of high speed Internet, and the ability for even the smallest cellphone to take video any artist can get video on their website with just a little effort.

Here are ways you can use video to promote your art on the web:

• Remember that the videos don’t have to be a huge production. Short videos of 1 to 3 minutes are usually perfect for the web.
• Be yourself…craft lovers are interested in the real you. Don’t think you need to become an actor in order to make your video.
• Take a small video tour of your art studio. If you don’t hold open studios, this is a fantastic way for your customers to see where you make your art.
• Take video of you working in your studio. People love to watch craft being made.
• Create a video artist’s statement where you talk about your creative philosophy. Even though you may have a written copy of your artist statement already, people are more likely to watch a short 1 to 3 minute video than they are to read your artist statement.
• If your craft has historical roots, create a video where you explore the history of your craft.
• Did you know that you can make video without owning a video camera? Choose photos you and your craft and record audio narration to create a video slideshow.
• Don’t restrict yourself to posting your art video just on your website. Open an account at YouTube and post your video there. And don’t stop at YouTube. While they may be the most popular there are other video sites out there as well. Open accounts at Dailymotion, LiveVideo, and Blip.tv and post your videos there.
• Share your video link with craft bloggers. Links to videos make great content for those who blog about crafts.
• Remember that the more places people can find your craft video, the more people can find your website. So be sure to share your video with everyone you can think of!

Now, in my opinion, if you’re using your blog or website to either promote your work or yourself, introducing Google Adsense has more drawbacks than potential pluses. Here’s what they are:

1. You’re sending traffic away from your site- If you’re busting your butt trying to encourage people to visit your website in the first place, the last thing you want to do is to send them right back out again? By introducing Google Adsense to your website, you’re essentially building traffic for someone else. Not good if the goal of your site is to promote yourself or sell your work.

2. You have no real control over what kind of ads show up- While Google Adsense can be fairly good at provide ads that match whatever content that’s on your website or blog, you may still have a situation where a questionable ad shows up because of something innocent that you post on your website. Here’s an example. I know of one blogger who blogged about her sister being diagnosed with breast cancer. So guess what type of ad showed up on her blog? Ads for breast cancer information of course, but also ads for breast enhancement as well…just because the word “breast” appeared on her blog. This lady is an abstract painter…why would she want to have ads for breast enhancement on her blog?

3. Adsense can totally distract from the look of your website or your blog- If you’ve spent the time and/or money to have a nice attractive website, why muck it up with a piece of content that you don’t have much control over. Besides the fact that to many visitors, running up on a Google Adsense while looking at an artist’s online portfolio is similar to having a salesman come up to you trying to hawk timeshares while you are trying to tour a gallery. Adsense can completely distract your visitors away from the reason why they’re on your website in the first place…to look at your art.

4. You probably won’t make much money…if any at all- People do make money off of Google ads and some people can make quite a lot of money by displaying Google Adsense. But the only way to make real money by displaying ads is to design your blog or your website specifically to gather Adsense traffic and to encourage the people to click on the ads. If you do that, then you will be taking the focus off of you and your work…and if that’s the reason you have a website, that’s exactly what you don’t want.

Bottom line…if you want to make money on your blog or on your website you need to focus more on trying to get leads and trying to sell your artwork rather than trying to get money from Adsense.

Apparently the art critics writing about the biennial exhibition of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum weren’t so much criticizing the art as they were criticizing the commentary about the art. I believe the criticism involved the words…”unalloyed gibberish”.

Ouch!

Why is it the fashion to use phrases like “inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion” (an actual excerpt from the exhibition) when it comes to writing about or talking about art? I experienced a lot of this when I was in school. When the professor called on students to make a statement about their work, those budding artists seemed to automatically gear up into this kind of high flown and incomprehensible language to describe a collage made out of paper and a variety artfully arranged found objects.

And I, who much to the disappointment of my professors and fellow students never quite got the knack of inventing such phrases like “invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs” (another actual excerpt), would be at the back of the class rolling my eyes.

And guess what? That’s how most people will react to your artist statement or any kind of description or commentary about your work if you start writing about how your work “is a conflation of art space and work space” (the hits just keep on coming!).

If you’re exhibiting in galleries or museums, if you’re selling at an art or craft show, if you have a brochure or website, sooner or later you’ll be called upon to write about yourself or your work. Your artist bio and artist statement are the things that speak for you and your art when you aren’t there to speak for yourself. Do you want your potential customers to roll their eyes when they are reading your artist statement?

When you’re writing about your work, be natural. Pretend that you’re explaining what you do to your best friend. That doesn’t mean that you should be talking down to people or that you can’t use 50 cent words like “nonsequiturs” if you need to. Just don’t go for the complicated word or phrase when a simpler one will work just as well. And FYI, no one is going to type in “nonsequiturs” when they are Googling your website. So web-wise, writing naturally about your work will not only make your fans and customers happy, it will also make Google happy when they are trying to rank your site in search engine results.

If you’re in the midst of writing an artist statement, artist Deanna Wood wrote a great blog post on how to write an artist statement a while back ago. Check it out for some great ideas. Plus, read a previous post I did on what words to avoid when you’re writing your artist’s bio. I’ll admit that I’ve been guilty of using these words!

If you’re interested in how not to write your artist statement, check out Carol Diehl’s blog, Art Vent. She wrote about the Whitney exhibit and was the source of these interesting tidbits from the show.

I thought that the most interesting part of the podcast was during the age-old discussion about pricing. One attendee said that she suspected that most people thought that her items were over-priced and she asked how she could convey the time, quality, and hard work that goes into her products. One of the panelists pointed out that when they were first starting to sell their work on the web, one of the biggest mistakes they made was trying to make their site look like Macy’s or Nordstroms. There wasn’t a sense that the items were handmade, but rather, it almost looked as though everything on the site came out of factory somewhere. It was only when they started blogging about the creative process, started telling the story about the creation of each item, and including photos of works in progress that they started making more sales. In fact, some of the items that they featured as works in progress on their blogs were often sold almost before they completed it. People became intrigued through watching the process that they couldn’t wait for it to be available.

This is a tip that I’m sorry to say that I don’t use as much as I could on my own blog and website, but I do plan to implement more in the coming year. One indie designer that does this very well is Australian graphic designer, Lara Cameron on her blog Kirin Notebook. Lara designs printed stationary, textiles, and various other things. She’s always blogging about the process of developing her fabric designs, posts some of the loveliest photos of her works in progress, of items made with her fabrics, and every so often she’ll post directions to a craft project that uses her fabrics.

By the time she posts an announcement that her fabrics are on sale in her Etsy store, her readers and fans are just itching to get their hands on them. I’ve seen her sell out of fabric within hours of posting the announcement on her blog.

So what can you do to start telling the story of the work you do? What parts of your creative process do your customers find fascinating? What techniques can you use to start illustrating the story of your work? You can begin by taking more “in-progess” photographs of your work. Get a digital camera to make it easier to take and post photos quickly. While they don’t have to be studio quality photographs, take some time to make them nice. The Storque, Etsy’s blog for buyers and sellers has a nice tutorial on taking photographs for online sales that can give you some tips on how to do this.

Write about how ideas for your work came about. Talk about what was going on in your life or in your career when you were working on a particular piece. Get your customers in on the action. Ask your customers for photos of them displaying, wearing, or using your items and post them on your website or blog. If you have access to a microphone or a video camera start recording audio or video commentary to include on your blog. Use services like Flickr, Slideshare, and YouTube to get these stories out.

It’s easy for all of us to forget that part of what fascinates people about our work are the stories behind it. Use this tip from the ladies from the BlogHer panel to to show what your work is all about.

P.S. Be sure to check out that CraftSanity episode on Jennifer’s site. The discussion about pricing starts at about 35 minutes and 40 seconds into the show, but I suggest listening to the whole thing if you have the time…lots of great info there!

Check it out here:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/07/
copyright-explained-i-may-copy-it-right/

Check out the “About” page of multimedia designer, Dave Werner. Using a mixture of video and animation, you’re not likely to forget this page…or this artist….

…and the website’s pretty cool too. Now after that introduction, would you hesitate to hire Dave? I wouldn’t.

While I’m not suggesting that we should all make our “About Me” pages into a multimedia production like Dave did, wouldn’t it be great if we could figure ways to make our bio pages and “About Me” pages a little more memorable? That’s one project I’ll be working on for my own websites in the near future.

Well his most recent podcast made cringe a bit, because he talks about skimpy About Me pages…that web page that lets everyone know who you are and what you do. I must admit that when it comes to an “About Me” page for my own websites, I don’t give it as much attention as I should.

If you haven’t been living in a cave in the last couple weeks, you may have heard about the launch of Apple’s new iPhone. You of course may have seen the ads on TV, in magazines, and all of the news reports about people camping out in front of the Apple Store so they could be the first to buy a new iPhone. But what caused all of this frenzy in the first place? In the Media Artist Secrets podcast, Franklin pointed out that while all of the advertising and media attention was great, it may not have captured nearly as much attention if it wasn’t for the very well designed, detailed video tour of the new iPhone where you got to see all of the cool new features, how they worked, and saw the iPhone in action…before you even got to see one firsthand.

So what does this have to do with skimpy “About Me” pages? Franklin McMahon puts it like this. The iPhone video behaved just like the perfect “About Me” page that everyone who has a website should have. If you were curious about the iPhone, the video told you all about it. And then it went a step further…it also made you want to have one yourself. Before you saw the video, you were only curious about the iPhone…after the video, you were so excited that you couldn’t wait to have one or at least touch one. And your “About Me” page should develop the same reaction in your visitors.

How many of us have an “About Me” page that just lists a brief biography and a colorless description of the kind of work we do? How many of use don’t even have an “About Me” page because it’s hard to write one without seeming like we’re bragging? How many people go from curiosity to “I gotta have something from that artist!” after reading your About Me page? I know personally that the “About Me” page is not my favorite thing to write, but I have one because I know that visitors to you website trust you more if they can learn more about you and know that you’re an actual person. But, as Franklin pointed out, your “About Me” page should take it a step further and should transform readers into buyers.

If you want to check out the Media Artist Secrets podcast, visit Franklin McMahon’s blog at http://www.fmstudio.com/2007/07/05/media-artist-secrets-episode-69/ and check out the July 5 show. The entire show is about 35 minutes long, but if you want to skip ahead to the iPhone marketing segment, it starts about 22 minutes into the episode. The beginning of the episode also has some pretty good tips on keeping yourself from getting distracted while you’re working…so you can’t go wrong by listening to the whole thing.

Why is knowing when to use a semi-colon and when to use a colon is important when it comes to your web pages (you use a semi-colon to separate a complex series of items and a colon to introduce a list…just in case you were wondering)? Good writing is part of what gives your web site a professional look. Nothing screams amateur so much as someone who can’t write or spell a proper sentence…and you should also know where the hyphens and apostrophes go too.

Check out the article here.

• really
• very
• extremely
• literally
• actually

If you find them it may be time for a rewrite, Alyson Stanfield from the Art Biz Blog posted an excerpt from publicity expert, Marcia Yudkin’s weekly newsletter, The Marketing Minute. According to Marcia Yudkin, in any marketing piece you should use adverbs sparingly…if a word doesn’t add to your point or even worse…mucks it up…eliminate it.

Ouch…I think I just found a couple in my artist statement.

Check out the rest of Alyson’s post here.

You can also sign up for Marcia Yudkin’s Marketing Minute here.

Chris Garrett’s answer is to create “Killer Flagship Content”.

I ran across Chris Garrett’s blog after I downloaded his ebook, “Killer Flagship Content: How to Create and Promote Truly Compelling Blog Resources”. In his book, Chris describes his “Killer Flagship Content” concept like this:

…Walk into a shopping mall and at the ends or in the corners are usually huge big-name stores. These are anchor units, the flagships of the mall. For many people they are a destination in their own right, or a big part of the decision process in choosing where to go. Attracting these big stores can make or break a mall, without them the customer numbers aren’t as great and the smaller stores go elsewhere…

So how can we apply this to professional blogging?

What is your blog known for? Is there anything that you could point to that your blog really owns? It could be a single post, a series of posts, an over-arching “message”. Now think about your favourite blogs. I am sure you go back to these blogs because of good quality regularly updated content but is there also a reference or series that you can refer to again and again?

This is “flagship content”. It is an effective way of creating a powerful blog property using a core of content that you build around…

As an artist, how can you apply this to you and your work? Let’s say you’re an artist working in glass, what kind of information can be a “flagship” to your customers? Chris’ ebook lists several ideas including:

1. Your biggest tip- what is the one thing that customers and beginning glass collectors need to know about buying and collecting art glass?

2. FAQs- what kind of questions are customers always asking you and your fellow glass artists? Can you answer these questions on your blog?

3. Message- are you trying to send out a bigger message in your art? Perhaps you are creating your art to advance a political view or to point to a social issue. Your blog can also be a resource in help people learn more or even do something about it.

These are just to name a few…

I read a lot of blogs and I must say that the ones I enjoy reading the most are the ones that have information that can be classified as “Flagship Content”. One I can think of right off the top of my head is Grace Bonney’s blog Design*Sponge. Grace Bonney runs an online store called Design*Sponge shop that showcases the work of independent designers and artists. Now while she does use her blog to make announcements about what’s new in the store and in the business, much of her blog focuses on her discovering the works of new designers. Every day there’s at least 3 or 4 posts of her featuring the work of a new independent designer (some of whom shows up in her online store), or of a new trend she’s noticed in design, and every so often there’s a post about some design event that her readers might be interested in.

During the holidays she creates a series of shopping guides that focuses only on the works of independent designers. She happens to have a special love for letterpress, so she’s created a Letterpress Guide that has the contact information of small, independent letterpress artists and print companies. She even has a guest blog where every couple weeks a new designer writes about their design picks. I read her blog every day and always find something that interests me and more than once I’ve written in my own jewelry blog about a new designer she’s discovered. Now when the holidays roll around and I’m looking for a nice, unique gift, or if I want to get some invitations printed in letterpress…who am I likely to turn to for information?

That in a nutshell is the point of Chris Garrett’s ebook.

Chris’ ebook is very readable and at about 17 pages, you can read through it very quickly. But don’t be fooled by the size…it’s a very information packed 17 pages. The best part is that you can download his ebook for free if you subscribe to his blog…which is another blog that I find myself reading every day.

Check out Chris’s blog at http://www.chrisg.com/

1. What kind of materials are you using and why?
2. Where did the initial inspiration for the work come from?
3. What is the central or guiding image in the work?
4. Are there elements such as sound or installation?
5. Any notable collaborators?
6. Where does the piece fit into your overall work or career?
7. Is the work a limited edition?
8. Is there a specific venue that the work is geared for?

If you have a web site, you will definitely need an artist statement, so check out Deanna’s notes here.