“The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches.
But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators. Individual artists, producers, inventors and makers are overlooked in the equation. The long tail does not raise the sales of creators much, but it does add massive competition and endless downward pressure on prices. Unless artists become a large aggregator of other artist’s works, the long tail offers no path out of the quiet doldrums of minuscule sales.
Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?
One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans.”
“For the first time, I no longer have a copy of Microsoft Word installed on either of my computers. That’s some change. I wrote my first two books, and many hundreds of articles, in Word. But I’m writing my third book in an inexpensive yet wonderful piece of Mac-only software written by a single person instead of a “business unit” at Redmond. Scoured of Word, my computers feel clean, refreshed, relieved of a hideous and malign burden. How did it come to this?”
“I recently asked if you were ready for WordPress 2.5, but let’s go through the steps to prepare your blog for upgrading to the new version next week.”
“It’s an Online Comic Strip, Made by YOU! Got a funny joke or a story to tell? Get ready to share it in a whole new way. Our FREE online toys make it FAST, FUN and EASY to create awesome comics.”
“I am in the process of printing a postcard out of InDesign CS3. The background was created in Photoshop CS3, and the information has been added with InDesign. When printing a proof from Photoshop, I get the color I expect to get. Printing out of InDesign, I do not. I even created a box in InDesign with the same color values, and the color is still not correct. I have checked the color profiles, and the object color profile, and they are the same. Any Ideas?”
“xScope ($27) is a great utility for Mac-based web and UX (user experience) designers. It provides a number of floating tools for measuring, aligning, and inspecting on-screen graphics.” (Thanks swissmiss!)
“One of the easiest ways to shoot down good ideas, interesting policies, or worthwhile experiments is by injecting the assumption that whatever you’re doing needs to last forever and ever. Which means that the concept has to scale from 5 people to 5,000 or from 100,000 users to 100 million. That’s a terrible way to get from those 5 people to 5,000 or reach those 100 million users.”
“Maps are everywhere these days. The ubiquity of global positioning systems (GPS) and mobile directional devices, interactive mapping tools and social networks is feeding a mapping boom. Amateur geographers are assigning coordinates to everything they can get their hands on—and many things they can’t.”
“In 1996, Supreme Court Justice David Souter told a congressional panel that ‘the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it’s going to roll over my dead body.’ While the controversy over whether or not cameras should be allowed in courtrooms rages on, sketch artists remain fairly non-controversial, covering even the most important trials. The general public sees their artwork on the news, online, and in print. These artists see the trials for us, and often their artwork is our only glimpse into the proceedings.
I found myself wondering who these artists are….
(Thanks Waxy!)
“CR Blog is at the Design Indaba in Cape Town and reports on a talk by graphic design legend Ivan Chermayeff. This animation of hundreds of logos that his studio has designed is a real gem. Chock full of famous brands such as Mobil, National Geographic and Chase Manhattan, it’s ten minutes long – if you don’t have the time just watch the quick rewind in the last five seconds (caution – flashing images)…”
