3x3 Call for Entries - Professional Show

We're now accepting entries for our annual 3x3 ProShow. This year we continue to streamline our entry process making it even easier to enter and pay online. And as always we've lined up an impressive international panel of judges. We're also awarding a cash prize for the Best of Show, plus cash value prizes for our gold medal winners. Just one more reason to enter what's becoming the best show of international illustration. Our deadline is March 4.

(We're also ready to accept student entries, please go to our website for details. Deadlne: March 25. We're still lining up our judges for the 3x3 Children's Show, deadline is April 22)

Eligibility
Open to all art directors, editors, designers and illustrators in all countries for commissioned and unpublished work produced in 2010.

Categories
Advertising, Animation, Books, Editorial, Editorial Spots, Fashion, Gallery, Institutional, Medical, Self-Promotion, Sequential, Three-Dimensional, Unpublished. And new categories: Sci-fi, Graphic Novels and Posters.

Judges
Jason Treat, Design Director, The Atlantic
Mark Reddy, Art Director, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, United Kingdom
Haika Hinze, Art Director, Die Zeit, Germany
DJ Stout, Graphic Designer, Pentagram
Andrew Bannecker 
Emiliano Ponzi, Italy
Oliver Weiss, Germany
Andrea Innocent, Australia

Why 3x3?
The 3x3 ProShow is the only truly international competition for illustration. No other show is as completely international as ours. While many shows showcase the work of their own country’s illustrators, 3x3 knows no boundaries.
¶ Each year we receive entries from all corners of the globe and we’re the only show where the judging panels are truly international.
¶ And we’re the only show that puts their exclusive illustration annual on the newsstand at a price that every art director can afford. And with our unique size we’re front and center on the shelf. Greater visibility for our winners. Greater visibility for illustration as a whole.
¶ Plus our winners will be invited to participate in our next 3x3 Illustration Directory which is mailed out free to a highly targeted list of 6,000+ art directors and art buyers in the US.

Deadline
Professional Show entries must be sent to us no later than March 4, 2011. Enter today.

Will print survive?

There are many questions about the value of printed matter, especially magazines. It was heartening to find out that while Wired topped the charts with it's digital version, it dropped off dramatically in subsequent months, other publications didn't even reach the highs of Wired and they too have dropped off significantly or remained at a very low level. The iPad was billed as the savior for the print media, I wonder what happened.

I bumped into an interesting article on T Magazine's blog from Alexander Olch, the tie designer and film director. He is fanatical about receiving catalogs, any kind of catalog be it office supply, hardware...pretty much any kind of catalog. In comparing getting the printed material to logging in and just buying what you're actually looking for—which is quite easy on the web—he says: "The point is to peruse, meander, glance over until every now and then something catches your eye. For, as a great professor, John R. Stilgoe, once told me, one of the most interesting things in life is to find what you weren't looking for." Perhaps print lives. To read more go here.

Should You Work For Free?

Check out this graph done by Jessica Hische about when and when not to do freebies. Truer words were never spoken.

For What It's Worth 26

First of all, Happy New Year! What's nice about this time of year for me is the week vacation I take at the end of the year—this year it was two weeks! I try to get out of New York and am lucky enough to find an inexpensive rental outside of Rhinebeck with a wonderful fireplace, great light and just close enough to town that the trip is not stressful.

I take all the reading material I've collected over the past six months and cull through it, read as much as I can—things that interest me and even things that don't. I sometimes learn more from reading subjects I was not originally interested in as in boning-up on subjects that have my interest.

With two weeks I was able to read quite a bit and make my way through a considerable amount of magazines and books. And some of what I read I would like to share with you as I think it applies to the freelance world of artists and designers. And these words, while not from artists or designers are from related fields that still make sense.

It wasn't all books, I highly recommend two documentaries one on Chuck Close and the other on Jean-Michel Basquiat. Click the links for the trailers.

I was thinking over the break about other artists and designers and whether when they look at their completed work do they always regret something.

As we passed by the Frank Gehry IAC building on the Westside Highway I wondered aloud did Frank really like the way his building turned out. I'd like to think he had some regrets as I think we all do, no matter how well-received our work is. It could always be better somehow. Did Frank's mockup look better than the real thing? Did it look better at night than in the daytime—I personally think so, but what does Frank think?

When I got up to our place I happened upon the January issue of Esquire, I do enjoy reading the What I've Learned section and this one was no exception, here are a few excerpts:

Robert DeNiro-

Those who say don't know. Those who know don't say. That holds up over time.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer-

A lesson taught with humor is a lesson retained.

Fred Willard-

There was ABC, CBS, and NBC when I was a kid. That was it. How difficult it must've been to be successful back then. Now I look up and notice I'm watching Channel 504. Everyone is a star of some show.

A great director is someone who makes you feel like you're moving forward.

It seems to me you're always retired in this business. You know, after your last job.

Albert Brooks-

In the beginning of any career, in every job, people are always forcing you to the middle.

Art and resistance are great together. That's what art's made for. Look at Vincent van Gogh: He didn't cut off his ear because he was selling well.

The biggest waste of brainpower is to want to change something that's not changeable.

I got so good at writing to a budget, my brain was restricting myself. I'd write, "It's a stormy night." Then I'd cross out stormy. I'd write: "It's a calm night." Then I'd cross out night. It's noon. Because you know how much night costs. You know how much rain costs. Nothing comes free in movies.

  

Danny Devito-

Yeah, I've been to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's a tower, and it's leaning. You look at it, but nothing happens, so then you look for someplace to get a sandwich.

  

James L. Brooks-

There's a reason there's a reason.

I always fight hard to push a movie to the point where it pulls me.

I have a rule in research: The third time you hear something, it's generally true.

Nothing is a matter of course when you get to do your own thing. It's always a gift that can stop giving and probably will.

Am I constantly surprised when things work out differently than I'd expect? Sometimes. Sometimes the surprise isn't pleasant and you want to blow your head off.

Ferran Adrià-

Risk is to do something that 99 percent of the time would be a failure.

One person's creative references won't necessarily be useful for another person. Each moment, each person, each situation is different and important. I am married, and very happily married, but we don't have children. If I had children, this interview would be different. I don't know how it would be different, but I know that it would be different.

Robert Redford-

Life is essentially sad. Happiness is sporadic. It comes in moments and that's it. Extract the blood from every moment.

Speak out for what you believe and what you feel. Or don't. You have to live with yourself.

Humor. Skill. Wit. Sex appeal. That order.

Herman Miller Looks at Our Studio

Herman Miller is as you may know an American manufacturer of office furniture located in Zeeland, Michigan. The company is famous for producing the mid-century work of Charles and Ray Eames, Gilbert Rhode, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Girard and a host of contemporary designers. And for those who don't know, Herman Miller's Aeron chair is the ubquitous chair of design studios and office environments.

This week's Herman Miller Lifework Blog features our live/work space in Brooklyn. For a peek inside and my interview with editor, Cerentha Harris, click here. Just a note, not all furniture you see in the feature is Herman Miller's, we also collect works by Mies van der Rohe, Warren Platner and Le Corbusier.

Top Art Blog of the Year Award

We got word from Jessica Wood, Publisher, Arts Media Contacts in the UK that our blog—yes the one you're reading now—was awarded one of the best art blogs of 2010. As Jessica says, "Number one in our judging criteria is that the blogger must have something to contribute to the debate on art. Secondly that they have carried out genuine and independent research on their subject. First-rate writing is not enough either, a good blog needs regular postings and an interactive community or readership too. We all love great design here at Arts Media Contacts, and good-looking blogs with interesting graphics and images score well in this pageant."

The 3x3 Blog was the only illustration blog receiving notice. To check out the other winners go to here.

Thank you Jessica. A very nice way to start off 2011.