We're Looking For People To Create Calendars

The All-In-One RedBubble Interview...

RedBubble is a place to be inspired, meet like-minded folks, exchange ideas, make friends and more. It's also a community of people who are passionate about art and creativity. "We are obsessed (with) the idea of creating a place where all artists and designers feel welcome - we provide them with the tools to advance on their creative journey."
Unlike a typical art gallery, RedBubble does not charge artists any fee to sell, or any commission on any of their sales. They simply set the base price of the product and let the artist set the retail value by adding their mark up.
( ~ Read on for our interview with Martin Hosking, RedBubble CEO)

Q: What do you have in mind when you talk about Living Art? (Ie; "Share it, wear it, hang it.") How do calendars fit into that?

When I think about art I think about how it is used to reflect people's aspirations, ideals and possibly even neurosis. Art is a living embodiment of the sentiment of a person or a society. RedBubble tries to create an environment where the art is "everyday" but without this being at all pejorative.

I mean that people should feel like they can live in a creative and artistic environment without having to go to a museum.

High art, of course, has a place in society but RedBubble is more in the tradition of William Morris in that we try to create a place where art can be part of the very texture of our lives - whether this be what we wear, hang or put on a calendar.

I particularly like the calendars as they are concrete expression of the fact that art is part of the everyday experience of people.

When you look at a RedBubble calendar you should connect directly with the artistic experience behind it - whether that be photographs of a place you love or images that make you smile.

Q: What was the impetus to come together and create a website (or inspired community 'hangout') that helps people shape, express and promote their creativity?

We first created RedBubble for ourselves as we were not happy with the websites which were out there then. They seemed either terribly elitist or terribly mediocre.

The art was either inaccessible or it was trashed. The web has provided this huge opportunity to allow for people to participate in the artistic experience in a new way as creators, fans and purchase that which was not possible before.

Q: Is it easy for passionate photographers, designers and artists to sit down and create calendars using RedBubble? (How do you compare price-wise to other print-on-demand sites?)

Tasmania 2012 Calendar
by David Murphy @ RedBubble

The calendars are super easy to create and you control the order of your images and can create as many calendars as you like from the images you upload. It only takes a minute or two to create a new calendar.

We put a lot of thought into our calendar product around our core philosophy of honor the art. This means that we have obsessed about quality and presentation.

The (calendars) are designed to be a beautiful part of people's lives for a year. The paper, weight, image quality are all as good as we can possibly make them. They are not designed to compete with cheap calendars from your newsagent but with the other art you may have around your home!

And no they are not the cheapest calendar out there. They are a premium product at an affordable price.

See what people say about RedBubble calendars

Q: How do you go about promoting and selling calendars on RedBubble? (And what do I need to do to make my calendar a top seller?)

The calendars get a really big push at this time of year. They feature prominently on our shopping tab and we regularly remind our mail list of 400,000 people about them - offering discounts to encourage purchase.

The best way to make your calendar a top seller is to have great images.

And then it can really help if you use the different social tools at your disposal (Facebook, your blog, contacting other blogs) to promote it.

For example if you had a calendar of images of the Dandenong Ranges I would make sure that I was contacting the local blogs to tell them about it and show them some examples. This helps not only for direct sales but for the search engine benefit.

Q: Can I link my website to RedBubble and let you act as my shopfront? (Ie; Take orders and keep my valued customers happy as larry?)

Yes you can but because of the security issues they need to complete their transaction on RedBubble. We have lots of artists who connect to the "transaction" pages but promote their own site.

No Room For Squares by TheFrase
RedBubble 2012 calendar

Q: There's something your website that's likeable and reminds me of Melbourne's street cafes, (the Black Cat for example), with lots of creative art hanging around, groovy foods on the menu, funky sounds, with the locals adding 'flavour.' With that said, what do you seek out to do with RedBubble community? Do you let it just evolve itself (through what the artists want) or do you gently guide it towards a deeper purpose?

This is a great analogy. I think the key to a community is that you cannot influence it in other than an authentic way. RedBubble reflects our passions and our concerns (in the same way as the Black Cat does of its founders) but we also draw inspiration and nourishment from it.

We are part of the evolving ethos and values of RedBubble. We neither control it nor are outside of it. We invest into our activities on RedBubble the passion and values we have but we are also deeply affected by the evolution of the community itself. Any healthy website (or offline community) has to have this dynamic.

Q: How does the Buyer's Booth work? (There is currently 5688 photos of bubblers with the framed prints, mounted prints, greeting cards and t-shirts they've bought from RedBubble artists!) Is the Buyer's Booth a sort of visual testimonial to the quality of Red Bubbler's art?

Yes, anybody is free to upload an image of work that they have bought on RedBubble. The fact that 5688 people choose to do so I guess reflects how much they love what they have acquired. This, of course, is very pleasing to us and to the artists whose work gets featured.

Q: In the RedBubble shop you have a few thousand 2012 calendars (as well as stickers, cards, wall art, iPhone cases, t-shirts, etc) listed. Do the top selling calendars get listed first? And do you have a standard layout for the calendar month and the artist or photographer just add their images to it? How does that work?

Divine Appointments 2012 Calendar
by Phil Thomson @ RedBubble

The customer controls the order in which works is shown to them. We normally default to most popular first but they can then change this to see "recent", "featured", "most popular in last week" etc.

Yes we do have a standard layout for the calendar month but the buyer can choose what month they want to start at. Obviously the most common will be January 2012 at the moment but the calendars can sell all year round as the customer can choose a different start month as we get into 2012.

Q: In the near future do you think people are going to become even more creative than ever before? How do you think people will express this creativity?

I think that the Internet is enabling a democratisation of the artistic process. Previously it was felt that only a narrow group of professionals were entitled to be creative.

With the Internet we have seen that bloggers now compete with the mainstream media, musicians find avenues to market outside the big labels and artistic people find outlets that are not restricted by the wall space of galleries.

In a strange way it is almost pre-industrial in that the art people are interested and share is much more diverse and complex than is possible in the mass produced world that took shape in the 19th century. It is a return to a more bespoke and, I think, interesting form of creative expression.

Q: Apart from the fact that they're gorgeous, why would the RedBubble calendars make such great new year, holiday or Christmas gifts?

Because our calendars reflect what is meaningful and special to you rather than what somebody else has decided is worth printing a thousand or more of.

"At any single moment, something previously unimagined is waiting to be created"
~ RedBubble