Contents

Materials for a lecture about stuff that art students should know about!

• Internet Stores (e.g. Etsy)
• Self-Publishing Tools
• Print on Demand
• Laser Cutters
• 3D Printers
• Fabricate on Demand
• Open-Hardware Prototyping Boards (e.g. Arduino)
• Crowdfunding (e.g. Kickstarter)
• Electronic Freelancing (e.g. Mechanical Turk)
• Productivity Tools
• Places to Learn and Make
• More

 

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INTERNET STORES

• Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/how_selling_works.php
  An online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade. Connects buyers with independent creators and shop owners; typically, for handmade, vintage and supplies. Examples: Lightexture, Liane Tyrell aka Enhabiten.

 

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SELF-PUBLISHING TOOLS

Via the Internet:

• Blurb: blurb.com
  “All the tools you need to make your own photo book, whether you’re making a personalized wedding album, cookbook, baby book, travel photo book, or fundraising book.”
• Lulu: http://www.lulu.com/publish/
  “Tools and services to make publishing simple and the most options to sell your books.”
• CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/
  “Our free online publishing tools and community can help you complete and sell your DVD or CD.
  Distribute on Amazon.com, your own website, and other retailers without setup fees or inventory.”

In real space:

• The Espresso Book Machine (EBM) is a print on demand machine that prints, collates, covers, and binds a single book in a few minutes. The EBM is small enough to fit in a retail book store or small library room, and as such it is targeted at retail and library markets. The EBM can potentially allow readers to obtain any book title, even books that are out of print. The machine takes as input a PDF file and prints, binds, and trims the reader’s selection as a paperback book. The direct-to-consumer model of the EBM eliminates shipping, warehousing, returns and pulping of unsold books, and allows simultaneous global availability^[3] of millions of new and backlist titles. [map]

 

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PRINT-ON-DEMAND

The following sites provide print-on-demand services. You don’t have to maintain an inventory, and your products can be customized (within ranges you set — e.g. shirt size, color) for your customers.

• Zazzle: http://www.zazzle.com/
  Create a wide variety of custom objects such as apparel, mugs, and posters.
• CafePress: http://www.cafepress.com/
  Create custom apparel, stickers, and mugs
• Spreadshirt: http://www.spreadshirt.com/
  Create, buy and sell your own apparel with designs, photos or text.
• Qoop: http://www.qoop.com/
  Publish & sell photos & photo products.

• Ceramic glaze decals:
• Decalcraft: http://www.decalcraft.com/
• Beldecal: http://www.beldecal.com/custom.cfm
• Custom Printed Fabric:
• SpoonFlower: http://www.spoonflower.com
• FabricOnDemand: http://www.fabricondemand.com/
• Karmakraft: http://www.karmakraft.com/
• Postcards:
  
• 1800postcards: http://www.1800postcards.com/

 

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LASER CUTTERS

Laser cutting is a technology that uses a laser to cut flat materials, and is typically used for industrial manufacturing applications, but is also starting to be used by schools, small businesses, artists and hobbyists. Low-cost machines (under $5,000-50,000) can cut acrylic, cardboard, thin plywood, among other materials; industrial machines can cut sheet steel.

Laser cutters radically transform the economy of cutting things. With a laser cutter:

• It’s as easy to cut a complex curve as it is to cut a straight line.
• It’s possible to produce a large number of identical multiples.
• Holes can be precisely placed, for assembly with bolts and screws.
• Extreme precision makes it possible to construct 3D objects from interlocking forms.
• Solid forms can also be built up from thin layers of material.
• Etching and scoring are also possible.

[Google images of laser cut designs]

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3D PRINTERS

These are a wide range of devices that take a 3D model (from your favorite CAD system) and print out a physical object.

• There are devices which can print objects from plastic, ceramic, or metal. They usually work by building up thin layers of material.
• 3D printers can print hollow objects; interlocking objects (like chains); objects with trapped parts inside (like a rattle).
• Sometimes they have a second material for support (for overhangs, T shapes, etc.).
• Printed objects can then be used directly, or to create molds…

Industrial and commercial 3D printers can cost $20,000 or more. However, leaders in the open-hardware movement have begun to develop low-cost versions, generally under $2000:

• The Makerbot is a popular DIY open-hardware desktop 3D printer.
• There are others, too, like the RepRap, Ultimaker, or Printrbot.

The Makerbot folks have also created a sharing site called Thingiverse, where thousands of people have placed their 3D models for free downloading. (The models can be used with any 3D printer.)

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FABRICATE-ON-DEMAND

As with the print-on-demand companies described above, these companies will fabricate your 2D or 3D models out of a wide range of materials and finishes. They provide both lasercutting and 3D printing; just upload your file; your part arrives in a couple of days.

• Shapeways: http://www.shapeways.com/ [materials, material options]
• Ponoko: http://ponoko.com/ [materials]
• Quickparts: http://quickparts.com/

 

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OPEN-HARDWARE PROTOTYPING BOARDS

• Arduino: http://www.arduino.cc/
  The globally-standard, open-source electronics prototyping platform

There are many others; two systems to keep an eye on are:

• Raspberry Pi: http://www.raspberrypi.org/ [pic]
  A full Linux computer for $25, with HDMI video out
• BeagleBone: http://beagleboard.org/bone
  Low-cost, high-expansion prototyping board

Additionally, there are hundreds of components which extend the functionality of these boards:

• Adafruit’s Sensors: http://www.adafruit.com/category/35
• Adafruit’s Arduino Shields: http://www.adafruit.com/category/17_21
• Sparkfun’s Sensors: http://www.sparkfun.com/categories/23
• Sparkfun’s Arduino Shields

The creators and distributors have done a lot of work to make this easy to learn. For example:

• Massimo Banzi, co-creator of the Arduino, wrote a book: Getting Started with Arduino
• The Sparkfun Inventor’s Kit (ARDX) comes with this free Oomlout PDF
• Likewise, Adafruit’s similar ARDX Kit comes with a free Oomlout PDF, too

Arduino also comes in a wide range of physical formats, including the sewable Lilypad Arduino — ideal for building your own soft, interactive garments. There are many components in the Lilypad family.

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CROWDFUNDING

Crowd funding (sometimes called crowd financing, or crowdsourced capital) describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money together to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowdfunding occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen journalism to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns.

• Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com)
  “A new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.”  Upload text and a video introducing a project you need help funding and see if your readers like your project enough to donate. Here are some examples of successful Kickstarter campaigns:
• Punk Mathematics (a book about math)
• Cursed Pirate Girl (a comic book)
• Design for the First World (a design competition)
• Conflict Kitchen (a restaurant)
• Lasersaur (a design for an open-source lasercutter)
• Glif (a tripod stand for the iPhone4)
• Indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com)
  “A collaborative way to fund ideas.” Oriented towards indie films.
• The Point (http://www.thepoint.com/)
  “Easy and effective group action.” Oriented towards social causes.
• Givemeaning (http://www.givemeaning.com/)
  Give-or-take fundraising community. Oriented towards social causes.

 

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ELECTRONIC FREELANCING

Work at home, in your underwear. Or, harness thousands of people to help you with your project.

• Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
  “Artificial Artificial Intelligence”: Complete simple tasks like transcriptions, categorizations, and spell-checks to earn small amounts of money.
• Check out Aaron Koblin’s Sheep Market for an idea about how Turk can work for you.

There are many others:

• Freelancer: http://www.freelancer.com/
  “The world’s largest outsourcing marketplace”
• Guru: http://www.guru.com/pro/index.aspx
  “Find freelance jobs at the world’s largest online marketplace”
• Elance: http://www.elance.com/
  “A platform for flexible employment, Elance helps businesses hire and manage online instead of onsite.”
• Clickworker: http://www.clickworker.com/en/
  “Work independently, whenever and wherever. All you need is a computer, Internet access, and interest in writing, translating, researching, or data processing.”
• SwapASkill: http://www.swapaskill.com/
  “Swap what you can give or can do for what you need. Get what you want – do something you’re good at, or give something you don’t need.”
• oDesk: http://www.odesk.com/jobs/
  Freelancing site for small tasks.
• 99Designs: http://99designs.com/
  Competitive graphic design freelancing.
• Fiverr: http://www.fiverr.com/
  “The place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5”

 

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PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

Tools for Sharing and Storing…
You can make your workflow much more efficient with better tools to manage your data. You’ll also never lose your data again.

• Links: http://www.Delicious.com/
• Images: http://www.Flickr.com/
• Videos: http://www.Youtube.com/, http://Vimeo.com/
• Audio: http://Soundcloud.com/
• PDF Documents: http://www.Scribd.com/
• Slideshows: http://www.Slideshare.net
• Files: http://www.Dropbox.com/
• Casual Text: http://piratepad.net/ (and other Etherpad variants)

Tools for Other Activities:

• Making surveys: http://www.SurveyMonkey.com/
• Arranging meetings: http://www.Doodle.com/
• URL Shorteners: http://goo.gl/, http://j.mp/, http://is.gd/, http://bit.ly/
• More tools: a List of web 2.0 Services.

Staying informed informed with Twitter: http://Twitter.com/
Most of you have Facebook accounts, which embeds the “social graph” — the network of people you know (or used to know) in real life. Twitter, on the other hand, embeds the “interest graph” — the network of people interested in what you’re making, and the network of people and organizations that are doing things you find interesting. So here’s another argument for why you might find Twitter to be a good tool for keeping informed about the latest arts opportunities — and developing a (global) audience of people interested in your work, even though they may not know you personally. In the words of Naval Ravikant and Adam Rifkin, Twitter is:

• Built on one-way following rather than two-way friending
• Organized around shared interests, not personal relationships
• Public by default, not private by default
• Aspirational: not who you were in the past or even who you are, but who you want to be

 

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PLACES TO LEARN AND MAKE

Places to make things:

• http://www.techshop.ws/
• Your neighborhood hackerspace: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

Sites where people share instructions for doing and making things:

• Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/
• Make Projects: http://makeprojects.com/

Real-world places to take workshops in new skills:

• Machine Project (Los Angeles): http://machineproject.com/
• The Public School (Los Angeles): http://all.thepublicschool.org/
• Harvestworks (New York City): http://www.harvestworks.org/

Stay informed:

• Maker Faire

 

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…UNSORTED

• Processing, openFrameworks, PureData
• Github
• IFTT
• T-slot aluminum extruded aluminum 80/20
• Google Sketchup, in-browser CAD
• WordPress, indexhibit

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