Some little snaps from around my new home. It’s cold here in Sydney, but oh, the sun. The glorious, glorious sun.
goodie bags at the door – inside each was a special gift, made by hand by Kylie
I can’t believe this spectacular event in Brisbane was over a month ago. I’ve been wanting to share these photos with you for all that time. They were taken by the very talented Natalie McComas who is a Brisbane-based photographer. Natalie wandered around for the whole afternoon snapping gorgeous moments like you see above and below…
Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.
The other day at a book event I was asked “what is letterpress?”. I described it the best way I could, but this morning I came across this fab video by talented graphic designer naomie ross visually explaining the process. It’s so lovely.
(found via graphic exchange which I found via the year I discovered sagmeister).
wow, getting a hundred comments was like pulling teeth! But we made it in the end and created a great wave of enthusiasm across various social networks as well as had fun doing so all the while and that’s what matters. I can’t thank you all enough for making the effort to spread the word about giving credit, I do hope it’s a topic of conversation that keeps spreading to help make the online community we have going here a more rewarding and inspiring place to be. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading all your comments and blog posts in reaction to the new “giving credit” prints.
Choosing winners has been rather more difficult than I expected as there have been so many thoughtful comments. Among them I loved Natalie’s honesty in her comment,
“I have to admit I’m not the best at giving credit where credit is deserved… the part about finding it on weheartit really hit home. I will for sure go that extra step and give the original person credit”
along with Tricia’s fab frankness,
“Not only is it common courtesy, it’s the right thing to do. Stand up and be proud of things you find interesting and beautiful instead of feeling jealous and insecure – promote your fellow artists work and it will come back to you.”
I loved this remark from sweet Hayley:
“The internet is an intricate WEB of information, not a one way flowing river, and really, giving credit is just good karma!”
while Michelle said,
“I would feel almost as if part of my identity were stolen”.
Dear Tara wrote,
“too many people seem to mistakenly have the idea that anything online is free” which I whole-heartedly agree, and mommycammille said,
“If something is good enough to capture your attention, then you owe the creator credit” – indeed.
Another one that resonated with me was this from Kim:
“…for me personally it can be so frustrating to come across an image and want to know more – who made it, where it came from, the story behind it – but not have even a link or a name as a jumping off point!”
And this one from Dara:
“It is hard enough to create works of art without having to worry that your creativity and talent will get taken from you. There is nothing easier than adding a little “photo by” at the bottom of a photograph or image. If nothing else, it gives the artist a little jolt of appreciation and if there’s one thing we could all appreciate more in this world, it is artists.”
See the difficulties in picking two clear winners? But I finally chose two. Please join me in giving thanks and congratulations to Rebecca and Debbie for their lovely comments…
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These are stunning!! I love the deep sea colour.
Reading this flow chart has made me realise that I need to work harder at giving appropriate credit when I use other peoples images. The old saying ‘do to others as you would like done to you’ comes to mind, and I’d love to be properly recognised for the work that I’ve done & others should be too.
Also, I feel that if we recognise people properly for their effort, they will continue creating & inspiring (which can only lead to more good things!).
Thanks for creating such an inspiring blog xx
Rebecca
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As a teacher librarian I am always driving home the message of plagiarism to my students as they have no concept of intellectual property. I would love one of these posters to have in the classroom to teach a whole new generation to respect and credit the intellectual property and the creativity of others! Wonderful idea!
Debbie
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Thank you everyone for your support, encouragement and continued enthusiasm for this topic. Remember, for those of us who blog, we were all blog novices at some point and no doubt posted images with ‘sources unknown’ in the early days. But we’ve learnt, and this print is a culmination of what we’ve learnt and what we feel is important to pass on to others who are new to the online world, or who have not quite worked out the importance of crediting thus far. This is a starting point, a place to create awareness and support of one another.
May online artists prosper!
all photos taken on my iphone using instragram
While on the topic of crediting, I’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to my dear friend Kylie who, when I hollered from her living room a few weeks ago, “I’m hopeless at picking colour words – have you any ideas for words that are more creative than ‘green, pink, yellow and grey?” and she answered boldly and confidently, “yes! how about ‘deep sea, fuchsia, butterscotch and storm cloud’!” Brilliant I thought, and hence the names of the print colours were born. Kylie and her incredibly generous creative community in Brisbane will be the topic of my next post, so stay tuned.
xx
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UPDATE: I’ve decided to wait until there are 100 comments on this post before I announce the winners and before I continue posting in the (blog)house. So, please help spread the word, post this post on your blogs, let’s all help to get this message out there! Victoria from sfgirlbybay wrote a lovely post about it today – thank you vic! And there have been some great comments & conversation on her post in response to it already. One thing that comes about in conversation time & time again with this subject is that bloggers fear that they have to ask permission every time they post about someone’s work – please let me clarify – this poster’s message is not targeted to people who promote other artists work – for example, I’m fully aware that people write posts about my work and they have not first asked me permission, I personally do not have a problem with that because I appreciate the exposure. Instead, this poster is to raise awareness and educate bloggers – new and old – who take images off people’s sites and do not credit the image at all, and do not bother to find out who created the image. At the very least my fellow bloggers, we need to credit the ORIGINAL source – not the last place you saw it, but the original source. Thank you to all who have commented on this post so far, and to those who have helped spread the message. px
PS these prints which are for sale in special limited edition by Mammoth Collection are NEW & IMPROVED – you may have noticed on the original poster there were a number of little mistakes, but since then I had help from my dear friend Therese who helped form the original poster into a beautiful, printable piece of art. So, if you are blogging about the print, please use the NEW print, not the old one. Thank you!
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You thought I’d forgotten all about “giving credit”, didn’t you? But I hadn’t at all, in fact, I’ve been working determinedly this past month with the awe-inspiring online print house Mammoth Collection, turning our original ‘streetcred’ image credit flowchart into something rather spectacular.
With many thanks to Troy & Ben from Mammoth, and my dear friend + designer Therese Petre who helped me shape the original piece into poster format, I would (finally!) like to announce that the “giving credit” print is now, officially, for sale…
It comes in four gorgeous colourways: Storm Cloud (pictured above), Fuschia (pictured below)…
and Butterscotch…
And they each come in four sizes: 8×10(edition of 200), 11×14(edition of 100), 16×20 (edition of 20)and a whopping 24×30(edition of 10). Each print is made in-house using archival pigment inks on heavyweight 100% cotton fibre archival paper, and each is numbered by hand and signed. For more info about the prints, Troy & Ben asked me some questions for their fab Mammoth blog, click here to read the full interview.
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The extra exciting news is that Mammoth are offering to giveaway 2 $20 vouchers as part of the launch of the collection. This means 2 lucky (blog)house readers can choose an 8×10 “giving credit” print in any colour or put the voucher toward one of the larger prints! To be in the chance to win, just write a comment on this post about why you think giving credit is important.
On Wednesday, June 1st we’ll announce the winners.
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A big thank you to Erin, Chelsea, Lisa, Nichole, and Amanda for being such wonderful support and inspiration throughout this giving credit journey. It’s very exciting to know that our email conversation some months back have amounted to these beautiful prints. And a never-ending hug to my dear friend Yvette for offering her incredibly handmade fonts, of which I do believe make these prints so special. Each of us hope that this little initiative will spark the beginning of other online projects as well as be able to create funds to put toward an education+arts foundation of sorts. Small steps first, but what a wonderful beginning.
Please feel free to spread the word about the prints and special giveaway on your blogs, to your friends, or to people in the street! You are welcome to use any of the photos in this post to help spread the word – I give you my permission with one request: “give credit where credit is due”.
Thank you mes amis!
xx
