In the fall of 2012 my Sister told me she was thinking about getting my fiancé, Lauren, a 3 month gift subscription to this thing called Birchbox. Every month she would be sent a cute little box full of about 5 cosmetic and beauty samples. She wouldn’t know beforehand what samples she would be…
I was in the room.
It was Fall 2006 and I was working in a shared office space with this small web shop called Davidville.
The open office space was different than what I was use to. Around 12:30 pm everyone stopped working and we would all cram into the elevator and head to the chicken deli. We would trot back and all sit around the lunch table.
David was telling us he had some downtime between client work and just finished up this new blogging platform called Tumblr. I didn’t think it was a very good name; It reminded me too much of Flickr.
I was on Blogger at the time and although I was using it, it just felt like so much work. I’m not a writer, I’m an artist.
He asked me if I wanted to try it out.
I said, “Sure, but only if I got the username Lee”
He laughed.
I signed up, posted a few photos, and instantly got hooked. This new platform was so much easier to use than Blogger.
Many months went by when I got this idea with my co worker, Ben Ross, that we should create a blog on Tumblr where we can post our drawings and doodles that we created during the day. We decided to call it “Eat Sleep Draw”.
After a few weeks of just the two of us posting and gaining a few dozen followers, I went to David and I showed him what we were doing with Eat Sleep Draw. He loved the concept. Then I told him, “I want an art gallery and I want to invite all my friends.” “So you mean like multiple authors?” he shot back quickly.
About a week later we had multiple authors set up on Eat Sleep Draw and within a month we had over 50 authors posting their artwork daily.
I was having a hard time fielding all the email requests for people wanting to sign up.
I went back to David and told him there has to be a better way.
“Can’t just people just submit their work and link to their blog without me having to make them an author?”
“You mean like public submissions?” David replied
For six months, Eat Sleep Draw was the only tumblelog that had public submissions enabled.
Now I had my art gallery and people were submitting their art like crazy. But I was still posting everything manually. It would be several more months until Tumblr created a post queuing system.
Five years later, our audience has grown so much that I recruited my sister, Sarah, to help with community management as well as one of my best friends, Tony, to become the Senior Editor of the site.
Eat Sleep Draw receives over a thousand art submissions per week and by the time you read this we will have reached 350,000+ followers and well over a half million page-views a month. We publish art about once every hour, 24 hours a day, Everyday. This is more traffic than most regular, physical art galleries get in a year.
I don’t think of Eat Sleep Draw as a blog anymore, it’s more than that, it’s a finely curated art gallery. It’s just amazing that I get to wake up, look at my messages on Tumblr, and see this wealth of unpublished art. The quality of the artwork submitted is truly incredible.
Tumblr is more than an online publishing tool, it’s changed my life.
Tumblr user #7 and Cofounder of EatSleepDraw.com
Like most people, I can generally tell within the first few seconds that I’m watching a car commercial; the camera angles, the music, the deep voice of the announcer. It’s doesn’t matter what brand or model; they all look the same.
Here’s a perfect example:
Earlier this year I traveled to the beautiful city of Paris and I, like many artists, made the pilgrimage to the worlds most famous museum, The Louvre. This is the place that holds art from the masters; Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Delacroix, as well as 35,000 other pieces of art. Not only was it the first art museum ever, it was by far the largest.
On my way back from my trip I started to think of the other famous museums; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musee d’Orsay, Tate Modern, The National Gallery, and now The Internet.
My theory: Gap knew it was a crap logo.
Which is why they also knew that it would be get talked about…a lot.
How do I know they weren’t being serious with that 10-minute Powerpoint logo?
If they were serious they would have updated every single social media logo, email campaign header and info-graphic globally all at the same time. In store signage would already be on display and new gap hoodies would be available for me to purchase.
Why pay for a rebranding when the audience will do it for you?
Design websites around the world started contests to find a better logo.
Fake changing their logo was the biggest hook they could throw into this big ocean of a Internet and every single designer bit the line.
(update: They are sticking with old blue faithful, an opportunity missed in my opinion)
In regards to this post about starting a subscription plan for eatsleepdraw magazine >
quietbrava answered: In this day and age you’re going to START a magazine?
Why start a magazine?
Because the technology exists to self publish something that doesn’t have ads and doesn’t waste trees.
Advertising:
Lets talk about advertising in magazines for a second. Next time you pick up a
I’ve been reading alot more in that last 6 months and with Amazon being the leader in digital books, I’d like to get a Kindle; but there are two features missing from the Kindle that’s been holding me back. One feature is software related; the other is hardware related.
1. If I had a Kindle, and my friends had a Kindle, why can’t I borrow books from them?
Microsoft’s Zune player experimented with this feature but with the sharing of music, it didn’t do so well because the restrictions were ridiculous (you have it for 3 days or 3 plays which ever came first).
How would borrowing a book from a friend work on a Kindle?
Here is how I would like to see it work:
You sync up wirelessly with your friend’s Kindle; you look at their selection of titles and pick one to borrow. That book would transfer to your Kindle.
Obviously there would be some restrictions.
• Your friend can’t read that book on his/her device while I am.
• Once you have the book you can’t let someone else borrow it (because you don’t own it).
• You would have the book to read until you either finish it or in 14 days, whichever comes first.
• Then the book would delete automatically off your device and your friend would get some sort of notification that you either finished reading the book or that the borrowing period had ended. It would then return to your friend.
Books were created to share knowledge.
Everything digital is so easily shared now; why can’t I share a digital book?
2. One thing that is great about regular (paper) books is that you don’t have to charge them.
The Kindle is the first book ever that you have to plug in and charge.
Sure the charge lasts 4 days with the wireless turned on, and up to 2 weeks with it off. But what if you didn’t have to plug it in at all?
My solution?
Solar power.
The back or front top portion of the Kindle is perfect for a few micro solar panels.
Since the Kindle has no backlit LCD, it’s power consumption is low. A few small solar panels on the back or front top portion of the device would keep it chugging along just fine. You already have to have some light just to read the thing.
People may not want to leave their Kindles in the sun; but look at all the books that are left in the sun all the time! Nothing happens to books, except maybe the edges of their pages turn yellow while basking in the sun. Obviously we don’t have a problem with leaving things in the sun.
In the end, I probably will end up getting a Kindle, but I’m going to wait and see what features are in the next generation. It would be awesome to see at least 1 of these features added.
