Imagekind

Last updated
imagekind.com
Imagekind logo.png
Type of business S Corporation
Type of site
online market
Available in English
Headquarters
Portland, Oregon
,
USA
Key peopleAleks Davidovich (CEO)
Chris Keenan (CTO)
IndustryCustom products
Products Electronic commerce, Shopping mall
URL www.imagekind.com
RegistrationRequired to buy and sell

Imagekind is a commercial website that prints and sells images created by participating artists on-demand. It also includes a social networking and marketing site for artists and their customers. It was founded in Seattle, Washington in 2006 [1] by Adrian Hanauer, a Seattle, Washington co-owner of the Seattle Sounders professional soccer team, and Kelly Smith, a software & digital media specialist who formed Curious Office as an incubator of online companies. It is now owned by CafePress.

Contents

Website

Imagekind is an online art website where artists working in 2-dimensional art forms may upload digital files of their work. The work is then displayed on the website in "galleries" where customers may buy print-on-demand inkjet prints (giclée) of the work. After an order is submitted, the company custom prints the uploaded image. Artists set and keep their own markup from the sales of their artwork.

Images are printed on large variety of substrates (including canvas and paper) using Epson large format Ultra-Chrome inkjet printers. Currently, Imagekind has over 3 million images for sale and also offers framing services for purchased prints. Framing and matting is provided by Northwest Framing in Portland, Oregon [2]

The website encourages social interaction through its associated blog. Aside from member art, the website also offers a large selection of posters and prints with licensed images by artists ranging from Michelangelo to Dalí to Mapplethorpe. [3]

Imagekind formed a partnership with EBSQ, an online art association of self-representing artists [4] in October 2008, and were acquired by CafePress in July 2008.

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Mass media Media technologies that intend to communicate with a large audience

Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets.

Printmaking Process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper

Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph. Except in the case of monotyping, all printmaking processes have the capacity to produce identical multiples of the same artwork, which is called a print. Each print produced is considered an "original" work of art, and is correctly referred to as an "impression", not a "copy". However, impressions can vary considerably, whether intentionally or not. Master printmakers are technicians who are capable of printing identical "impressions" by hand. Historically, many printed images were created as a preparatory study, such as a drawing. A print that copies another work of art, especially a painting, is known as a "reproductive print".

Kodak American photographic and film company

The Eastman Kodak Company is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications, and professional services for businesses around the world. Its main business segments are Print Systems, Enterprise Inkjet Systems, Micro 3D Printing and Packaging, Software and Solutions, and Consumer and Film. It is best known for photographic film products.

Photographer Person who makes photographs

A photographer is a person who makes photographs.

Print on demand Printing business process

Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of single or small quantities. While other industries established the build to order business model, "print on demand" could only develop after the beginning of digital printing, because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technology such as letterpress and offset printing.

Giclée Fine art ink jet prints produced from digital files or artwork.

Giclée is a neologism coined in 1991 by printmaker Jack Duganne for fine art digital prints made on inkjet printers. The name was originally applied to fine art prints created on a modified Iris printer in a process invented in the late 1980s. It has since been used loosely to mean any fine-art printing, usually archival, printed by inkjet. It is often used by artists, galleries, and print shops to suggest high quality printing, but is an unregulated word with no associated warranty of quality.

Digital printing Method of printing

Digital printing is a method of printing from a digital-based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small-run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large-format and/or high-volume laser or inkjet printers.

CafePress Online retailer of stock and user-customized on-demand products

CafePress, Inc. is an American online retailer of stock and user-customized on demand products. The company was founded in San Mateo, California, but is now headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky along with its production facility. In 2001, CafePress.com won the People's Voice Webby Award in the Commerce category.

The Kodak Gallery was Kodak's consumer online digital photography web site. It featured online photo storage, sharing, viewing on a mobile phone, getting Kodak prints of digital pictures, and creating personalized photo gifts. The service was originally launched in 1999 as Ofoto, and was acquired by Kodak in 2001, renamed Kodak EasyShare Gallery in 2005, and shortly thereafter shortened to Kodak Gallery. At its peak in 2008, it served over 60 million users and billions of images. Subsequent to the bankruptcy of the parent Kodak, Shutterfly placed a stalking horse bid on Kodak Gallery on March 1, 2012, for $23.8 million. Kodak Gallery was shut down on July 2, 2012. Photos were transferred to Shutterfly.

Minilab Photographic film developing and printing system

A minilab is a small photographic developing and printing system or machine, as opposed to large centralized photo developing labs. Many retail stores use film or digital minilabs to provide on-site photo finishing services.

A photographic album or photo album, is a series of photographic prints collected by an individual person or family in the form of a book. Some book-form photo albums have compartments which the photos may be slipped into; other albums have heavy paper with an abrasive surface covered with clear plastic sheets, on which surface photos can be put. Older style albums often were simply books of heavy paper on which photos could be glued to or attached to with adhesive corners or pages.

Kodak EasyShare

Kodak EasyShare is a sub brand of Eastman Kodak Company products identifying a consumer photography system of digital cameras, snapshot thermal printers, snapshot thermal printer docks, all-in-one inkjet printers, accessories, camera docks, software, and online print services. The brand was introduced in 2001. The brand is no longer applied to all-in-one inkjet printers or online printing services. Thermal snapshot printers and printer docks product lines have been discontinued. In 2012, Kodak stopped manufacturing and selling all digital cameras and photo frames.

Threadless is an online community of artists and an e-commerce website based in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 2000 by Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart.

Web-to-print, also known as Web2Print, remote publishing or print e-commerce is commercial printing using web sites. Companies and software solutions that deal in web-to-print use standard e-commerce and online services like hosting, website design, and cross-media marketing.

Canvas print

A canvas print is the result of an image printed onto canvas which is often stretched, or gallery-wrapped, onto a frame and displayed. Canvas prints are used as the final output in an art piece, or as a way to reproduce other forms of art.

Beautiful Angle is a guerrilla arts poster project in Tacoma, Washington. Approximately once per month, graphic designer Lance Kagey and writer Tom Llewellyn create hand-crafted, letterpress posters and then distribute them around the city's downtown core via wheat paste and staples.

Inkd

Inkd is an online print and design sales service developed by Kelly Smith of Curious Office and the venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners in Seattle, Washington. Inkd calls itself the "World's First Market for Original Print Design". The company is a user-generated marketplace that provides the general public with a way to buy and sell print designs such as brochures, pamphlet, business cards, letterhead, postcards, menus and other common print form factors used in global business. Inkd is based in the old Pioneer Square, Seattle area.

Print design

Print design, a subset of graphic design, is a form of visual communication used to convey information to an audience through intentional aesthetic design printed on a tangible surface, designed to be printed on paper, as opposed to presented on a digital platform. A design can be considered print design if its final form was created through an imprint made by the impact of a stamp, seal, or dye on the surface of the paper.

Redbubble is a global online marketplace for print-on-demand products based on user-submitted artwork. The company was founded in 2006 in Melbourne, Australia, and also maintains offices in San Francisco and Berlin.

Ingrid Hermentin is an artist and pioneer of serial computer graphics.

References

  1. http://www.seattlepi.com/business/242482_curious28.html/
  2. The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Art site provides printing, mats, frames, shipping
  3. Posters and Prints Frames by Artists
  4. EBSQ: Art Meets Blog