The good news and the bad

[Clay]

Good News:

- I have made some enhancements to the database which made it faster. If you visit the designers section often, you should notice it loads up much faster now, as well as the rest of the site.

- The visitors are pouring in. Its incredible actually


Bad News:

- Due to the increased number of visitors, we have gone over our bandwidth limit for November, and I got a bill in the mail today for extra charges.

- We have already surpassed the limit this month, and its only the 19th. Looks like a bigger bill is on its way.

- We are going to have to fork out more coin to purchase a better hosting plan.

- Our hosting space is 2/3rds full. We only have room for about 2000 more posters... then we will have to upgrade again.

[DaveGink]

Clay-
You may need to re-visit that calendar idea or hold an on-line poster raffle to help out with the funding. I'm sure you'd find a ton of support on this site. You may even wan't to set up a paypal donations account (if that's legal...I would think so but I'm not sure)
Anyway...just a few ideas to hopefully help out.

[MaximumFluoride]

We should all try and find a way to help Clay and Kendra. What they do here is cool beyond words. Lets figure it out.

[robschwager]

Something I was discussing with some other members on here the other day was an idea about doing a poster that Clay and Kendra could sell to help put a little extra cash towards maintaining this site.

Kinda like the Posterpop posters that Posterpop sells. A poster that is nothing but a cool promotional piece for Gigposters.com.

All flame wars and bashing of the last week or so aside, I think this site is an AWESOME thing. Just for the archival aspect alone.

Of course, it would most likely have to be done on a volunteer basis from the creative side.

I don't have access to my old presses anymore, so I'd have to farm out the actual printing. But my design and illustration I would happily donate to help support this site.

Of course I can't speak for anyone else, but I have gotten good feedback, alot of interest in my art and some e-mails offering possible work.

All because people I don't know saw my stuff up on this site. That's pretty cool.

Most of you freelance art folks on here can appreciate the value of some FREE worldwide self-promotional advertising.

Donating a design to help out Clay and Kendra probably won't break your bank. I know it won't break mine, I just gotta work it into my schedule.

Anybody else willing to throw their hats in the ring (especially folks with presses) let's hear from you.

Think this is a feasable idea?

Thanks for listening.

Rob

[DaveGink]

I'd be more than happy to donate some design time.

I don't have access to printing presses but I have worked with printers that way in the past, especially with things like Christmas cards and charity events. Generally the printer gets to put their contact info and a "printing donated by" line on it.

Clay, if you are seriously interested and no printers on this forum speak up, I can talk with one that I do a lot of work with. Just let me know. -Dave

[goad74]

I would love to contribute a piece of some sort, but I'm sure there are other designers who have spent more time in the trenches that would deserve a spot more than I. Maybe you could have a Call for Entries or something. Like Trucker said, pretty much everyone represented on the site could benefit from some exposure, so I don't think getting entries would be a problem, just tricky to narrow it down to 12 artists.

[Clay]

Hey guys,

Sorry.. I didn't mean for this post to sound like we are asking for hand-outs.. I just thought I'd share that info with you. (can you believe it? .. over 27 GIGs have been transferred already this month!)

Thanks so much everyone for your kind words and generosity..

I think some sort of fund-raiser or project might help us out.. I don't have time to post more right now.. but I am open to any other suggestions as well. If we do something.. I want it to be fair to all parties involved.. and we should all benifit from whatever we do.

[drowningcreek]

We open the new printing studio in January..actually in about 3 weeks and we should be in production.

I've been screenprinting for over 20 years and I recently purchased the San Francisco Art lab's equipment when they closed shop. I had it all shipped to East Coast and we are presently getting everything in place in our new building.

That press has a hell of a history and many pieces of killer poster art have passed thru it.

I would be willing to contribute some art and printing to the project, and I'm sure my gang of illustrators would pitch in. If we could get the community to scrape up some cash for raw material costs (paper, inks, etc.) I would handle the rest. I would suggest a full sheet of like 4 small posters (11x17) that could be sold as set or individually. That way we can get more artists involved on one press run and have more product to sell, not to mention one hell of a great collectors piece.

I think this site is a good place for people to learn the craft and maybe I could even work with Clay on putting a how-to article up on gigposters and document the process. It would be a great learning experience for new guys wanting to see how the screenprint process works and generate some much needed cash for the gigposters gang.

I think if we work together as opposed to slagging each other, that the WHOLE poster community would benefit from what Clay and Kendra are doing.

More art and less grumbling and ego stroking is always a good thing.

My studio works with a lot of the guys posting on here, and we are used to working as a group to further the studio's cause. No egos...just good art.

Let me know what everybody think of this idea....

...and, yes, we will be doing printing for other artists at the studio. We will have a limited amount of extra press time, but I will post the open times on the boards so people can some work in que.

I'll also discuss any projects that people might want to collaborate with the studio on. I do quite a lot of that also.

I plan on getting more involved in doing posts on this site and hope we can make this a focal point for people to learn the "craft" of postermaking. Hopefully if we get more instructional and informative about how we do what we do, there will be less of the nastiness on the boards and more sharing of knowledge and technique.

Remember kidz, it's all about the art. Let the art speak for itself and friendly instructive critiques will make all of art better.
--
Jeff Wood
Drowning Creek Studio
jeff@drowningcreek.com

[Nolen Strals]

I've said it before, but this site is like a dream come true...a place to show my work to other poster artists, to see their work, and to interact with them.

I don't have access to great presses or anything, but would be happy to do what I can design-wise or with a small run of something or whatever.

Maybe I'll sell some posters on E-Bay and donate the money to you guys.

OR...if someone could coordinate an auction like they just did to save teh Crass House in England...a bunch of artists/musicians from teh punk rock community worldwide put up rare items for auction and all the money went to keeping the House open.
SO...maybe an auction of that sort could be set up where everyone who wants can contribute a poster to be auctioned off and all the proceeds would go to gigposters.com!

I think all the ideas so far are really good, anything that supports keeping this site alive is a good thing.

I also like drowning creek's idea of talking more about the craft of printing on here, or just more about the art itself.

[Barry]

Right on. This site deserves it.