Archives for category: Promotion

exhibition flyer.indd

Yesterday I had a meeting with the curator of my exhibition. It really hit me then that it is only a month away. I have to fill a room and 30 meters of wall space. What a luxury…

I spent today creating my promotional postcard. I love this image of Fairy Godmother and Devil. They look like they are sharing the town secret, and it didn’t take me long to decide they will become the pin-up couple for the exhibition.

ArtistatExit0 made a brillant comment on the blog yesterday. He suggested that if some of the puppets sell, maybe the new owners could contribute to the blog by sharing how their Dedes fare in their new home. I love the idea of having a real Dede community. I am not sure though if the blog is the best platform to accommodate such a community, or whether face book would be more suitable. (I am still not particularly familiar with face book). I will mull it over and hope to have something in place before I sell the first one. It would be exciting if the new owners of the Dedes  would be willing to participate every so often. And it certainly would make it easier for me to part with them.

I want to include parts of the blog into the exhibition. After all, I have 30 meters of wall space to fill. (The puppets will sit on plinths so visitors can walk around them). At the moment I am thinking of having two electronic frames side by side. One showing images used on the blog and the other one showing the matching text. I am not sure if it will work. That is something I dreamt up recently, but haven’t investigated further. And this certainly doesn’t fill 30 meters!

On the two Sundays during the exhibition I will have puppeteering workshops. It became clear in my conversation yesterday that when it comes to playing with puppets everybody just assumes it is for children. Personally, I enivsage the puppets sitting on grandmother’s bookshelf rather than in the kiddies’ toy box. I explained this to the curator. Today I got an email from her telling me about a conversation she subsequently had with some people from U3A (University of Third Age). They seem to be quite interested in the puppeteering idea. Oh, there is still so much to do. For now I am happy that I recovered my spirit from the bottom of the toy box!

monkey cup

There was a little bit of excitement last night when I came home. The Dedes were sitting around a parcel that had arrived while I was out. Two weeks back we ordered a cup and a few t-shirts from the new dededesign store. The parcel was too small to contain everything and it was obvious it could only be the cup. As a graphic designer I have very high standards when it comes the quality of printing. It is always a bit of a worry until you actually see the finished product. To check  whether everything turns out the the way I intended, I also ordered one t-shirt on dark apparel. This apparently takes a bit longer, as a white under colour – the canvas for the image – has to be applied first so the true colours come out.

Everyone stood around while I opened the parcel. I don’t want to plug it too much, but I have to say I am very impressed with the quality of the cup and the printing. It looks absolutely fabulous. And the puppets obviously thought the same. The cup was mine for as long as I held it in my hot little hands. Just long enough to admire it. The second I put it down, Monkey grabbed it an dissappeared with it up the scaffolding. I only hope he doesn’t drop it!

rob and bobby
On Friday I finished the pictures for the “Embrace Diversity” series and uploaded them, so I could finish the t-shirt series over the weekend. I have six different images, but then I realised I had forgotten the words dede puppets on the image. How could I? The originals are of course at work, so I won’t be able to continue until Monday.

While I was working on the images I thought they might be suitable for my exhibition in June, without the caption though. I have to start working a bit smarter and not reinvent the wheel every time I start a new thing. I feel just so much more comfortable creating than promoting. The Dedes have a valid point when they tell me I am hindering their growth.

I came across a problem with my zazzle store. When I look at it, the prices are in New Zealand Dollars as the domain is zazzle.co.nz. I don’t know what happens when a person from America clicks on the link at the bottom of my blog. Is the website intelligent enough to realise it should link to the zazzle.com domain? Or do Americans see New Zealand prices as well? If that is the case, I would think they will fall flat on their backs and I will never make a sale over there. Can somebody enlighten me how this works? I would appreciate this a lot.