Imagekind Blog | Buy, Sell, Create and Discuss Art

We are thrilled to announce a big day in the history of Imagekind. We have just launched a significant overhaul to the look and feel of the site. As some of you may have noticed we have been slowly rolling out landing pages with the new design over the last few weeks. Now, it’s time for our Homepage to shine.

The new look adds a greater level of sophistication and polish to our website and offers a much more immediate understanding of who we are and what we offer. As we continue to straddle web 2.0 and the retail space, we wanted our look to better reflect who we are as a brand, while offering our member artists greater exposure.

Our new homepage is much more visitor friendly:

• Clear large images change daily and make it easy for visitors to get a quick view of what our member artists have to offer
• Product section allows for an easy understanding of our assortment of product offerings
• Two different Member Artists are featured daily to allow greater exposure to our community

Along with the new look comes an easier navigation. Improvements include:

• A persistent left navigation (or A-column) allows customers and artists to better find their way around
• A new set of steps will help guide customers through the product selection and checkout path
• Product pages make it easier for visitors to get a good sense of all that Imagekind has to offer through better product merchandising

More changes will be happening over the next few weeks. We are thrilled about our new look and have incorporated many of the comments that we have heard from our community. We hope you like it too!

- Imagekind

Share This

First, thanks to all those who have provided excellent feedback on how we can continue to improve Imagekind together. We have just released version 1.1 of our updated search function which is now live on the site! There are several key advances included in this first phase update that are sure to improve the overall Imagekind experience.

The enhanced search features demonstrate a significant step forward in our pursuit to providing the best artist community for buying, selling and creating art. You can read about all of the great new features here, in the Imagekind newsletter sent out to all of our member artists.

We have also rolled out a new search results page with some amazing enhancements that include:

• Larger thumbnails that gives artists’ work the attention it deserves
• Separate search returns based on relevant artists’ names and artwork
• Pro and Platinum artists’ images are visually differentiated
• Images from Pro and Platinum artists get an increased bump in search results

In addition, to help make search even more relevant and robust, we are also introducing a new way to categorize member artists’ images: Taxonomy. With taxonomy, customers will be able to shop member artwork by Subject, Genre, and Medium; all based on the artists’ individual selections. The new taxonomy is in place to start populating information for more search improvements and navigation updates that are on their way. However, search returns don’t utilize this information just yet.

These are just a few of the amazing improvements we have made to our search function, though many more improvements are in the pipeline. Find additional information about Imagekind’s improved search release, by visiting the Imagekind newsletter sent out to all of our member artists.

Share This

Imagekind is happy to announce we’ve partnered with Flickr to add another great way for Flickr members to do stuff with their photos using the Flickr API.

Flickr photographers can now go to Imagekind and easily produce framed prints of their Flickr photos, and set up their own stores to sell their work to their adoring fans.

You might have seen our handiwork at Flickr’s recent birthday party, which gives you a good idea of the kind of quality and size we’re talking about!

Create Your Own Masterpiece

Flickr members can now easily create any Imagekind product, from framed fine art prints, to beautiful prints on canvas, and even our newest framed products (see below), from any image in their Flickr Photoset – without any re-uploading!

Sell Your Photos

Any Flickr member can easily set up an Imagekind account to start selling their work right away, and directly import their images from their Flickr photoset! These members will get the same great options and on-demand service as every Imagekind member:

* Great quality prints and framing – reliable on-demand service

* You control the pricing and markup, and you keep all of your profit

* Additional 15% commission on sales of mat and framing options with your art

* Joining a thriving marketplace that is redefining how people worldwide buy art online

Any existing Imagekind member can now also effortlessly import images from their Flickr photo sets directly into their Imagekind galleries – right from your Imagekind member admin.

In addition, we’ve been working hard to implement a few new product offerings, continuing to provide more and more options for anyone creating or buying art.

Launching New Products: Ready-Made & Multi-Opening Frames

More ways to show off your art! Don’t want to spend a fortune framing your prints? Ready-Made Frames to the rescue! Ready-made frames come in fixed standard dimensions, but you will still be able to choose your mat and frame style.

Plus, you can now you can even frame multiple images at one time! With our Multi-opening frames you can select the images, determine the number of openings, and choose how you want them arranged. To find out more about these new offerings, take a look at our Ready-made page.

One important note; these options are not currently available for work being purchased from an Imagekind gallery by the shopping public. We have a few kinks to work out regarding how to allow more pricing control for images going into these ready-made products, as we’re sure many of our artists would like to set different markups for their work when used in these frames.

However, any Imagekind member can create these items themselves for their own use or for resale, from any image in their Imagekind galleries or Flickr photosets, at our wholesale or “base” cost.

As always, we’d love your feedback on all of these new developments, so feel free to post away here, or join us on the Imagekind Forum. Our members and their original art are what make this endeavor really special – so thanks for all your support while we’ve been busy, and welcome to all our new Flickr friends!

Share This

At long last we have a real forum up and running to discuss all things Imagekind! We definitely needed a place for conversations based specifically around the Imagekind site and service to evolve, as well as format that is more conducive to these discussions.

We think this forum will be a wonderful compliment to the Imagekind Blog, and the Imagekind site itself. These supplemental areas help foster communication between members, buyers, and and our company, which is really vital to our common goals of making Imagekind the best place to buy, sell, and create art on the internet. We hope for this forum to become the perfect place to get help from our Team and our members (whether you are a buyer or seller), list a feature request or report a bug, and generally interact on a range of subjects that relate to our community. We’ll try to keep it useful and lively, and I’m sure you will too.

Right away you will likely notice a few differences between this forum and others you may have used, but we think this format will work out very well once members are used to it, and it is very flexible for us to work with in terms of adding or removing functionality when we want to.

Imagekind members should also not that you WILL need to sign up separately for this forum in addition to your Imagekind account. I encourage everyone to head on over to http://forum.imagekind.com and get the discussions going!

Share This

When we implemented our newly redesigned Member Admin recently, there was one feature that was sorely missed - the ability to reorder images within a gallery. Well, we made this function a priority to re-implement, and you can start celebrating, because reordering images is back!

Just login to your member admin, select one of your galleries to edit, then click and drag images into the order you want, and that’s how they’ll be presented to the shopping public! It’s as simple as that! You can also set the thumbnail image that represents your gallery right there on the same page. Just drag the image of your choice over to the “gallery icon” to the left of you gallery images.

This is one example of how our new Member Admin structure makes it easier for us to add in functionality quickly, so we’re very glad to have it in place. We are also glad to have this function back and see our members customizing their galleries once again!

Just remember to click that save button!

Share This

OK, so maybe we were so excited about all of the new stuff we are nearly finished developing here at Imagekind that we hastily rolled out Sunday’s idea - I don’t think the market is quite ready for that particular paradigm shift. But we’ll see what kind of semi-revolutionary changes we can make around here in the meantime. We have a lot to show you in the next few weeks, so we thought why not get it started Friday morning (Pacific Standard Time) with a brand new, redesigned, and re-thought Artist Member Admin!

When you login to your Imagekind account on Friday, you might be surprised to find the elves at Imagekind have been busy working away on the layout of your admin section of the website. Our hip new admin is designed with the artist in mind. Your user experience matters to us! Whether you are simply opening up a new gallery, managing multiple galleries, upgrading your account, or checking on your sales, we are sure that the new admin will make it a better process.

Some Key New Admin Features

• Reports page allows you to quickly see your most recent views, comments, and sales
• Internal message system allows you to easily communicate with other artists and customers
• Clean interface makes administration of your account a better user experience
• You can choose the image to represent your gallery, and change it at will
• Galleries now appear to the public in order of most recently updated
• Conveniently located tips and related content for each page on the sidebar

We are still working on re-launching the ability to arrange your images… but it will be available very soon! Take this opportunity to ensure that your images are in the order you want for the short future.

New Limits to HTML Code in Profiles and Descriptions

We’re adding some security precautions to the site. We will be limiting some of the HTML code that we allow in the member profile and descriptions. The change will go into effect with this new member admin launch, on Friday morning. Never fear, you still can use the following codes on your site:

br, big, b, small, strong, p, center, a, i, img.

If you happen to have any other than the ones listed above, keep your profile looking great by coming up with alternative HTML formatting before the change is made.

Lots more fun stuff to come as the days go on - hope you enjoy!

Share This

Wow! We told you there were some big new features and updates in the works - well we weren’t kidding! After months of hard work by our design, development, and production teams, artists on Imagekind can now offer prints and framing, on-demand, that truly excite the senses! That’s right - now every fine art paper, canvas, mat, frame, and glazing option is alternately available as a tasty and sturdy edible substrate (especially the glazing)!

To help you make the most of these gourmet new products we’ve added some administration features to ensure a buyer with a hunger for your style finds exactly what they are looking for. Along with the usual details you can configure for any image in your galleries, you’ll see a new field below your “Tags” called “Flavors”. This is where you set a bevy of lip smackin’ keywords to entice buyers. You can also set default edible mat and frame combinations, each with their own unique taste and aroma, which you can experiment with in our “Recipes” section.

When we were thinking about what new features and products to develop that would benefit both artists and buyers, we wanted to look far into the future of this space and stay on the edge of what print-on-demand technology can offer - truly archival and consumable giclee prints that look and taste amazing for years to come. Just another exclusive feature that will continue to make Imagekind the best place for artists and art lovers to buy, sell, or create something lasting and memorable, or rich and delicious!

Share This

Did you know that in your My Account area you can customize the design of your mat and frame? This not only makes your print presentation look better on-screen, but also helps promote sales of mats and frames for which you earn commission.

To help out further, we’ve recently added this new link that says “Buy as the artist intended” which just loads YOUR design right into the shopping cart. Shoppers often have a hard time knowing how to design a mat and frame combination, so your assistance can make all the difference in prompting that sale… and your commission.

Share This

One of the more popular questions we get asked is whether or not we’ll introduce any new kinds of products besides what we currently offer. In short the answer is yes. Very soon we’ll announce a few new things but they are still very much in the “wall art” space. After that we’ll be looking at a variety of other products that we think will fit into our brand without degrading our image. Any good ideas you’d like to share? What new products would you like to see? High end artist “portfolio books”? Something else?

Share This

What a day! That’s right! Our bulk upload tool is now available. This beta release should definitely make uploading a lot handier for those of you who want to send multiple images at a time into your galleries.

We’ve tested this thing pretty well, but since this is the first release, there certainly could still be a few bugs. If you run across any, please tell us! Report a bug or make a comment here.

Unfortunately, at this time the Imagekind Uploader isn’t for everyone. It is only available for Windows based Operating Systems (sorry Apple/Linux based members). We do also recommend you have a fair amount of RAM in your system as well (at least 512mb), as the program resizes very large images, and that can be intensive on your computer.

*Limitations: The Uploader currently only supports TIF, JPG, and PNG files, and cannot upload images larger than 8,000 by 8,000 pixels.

Download the Imagekind Uploader right here.

Share This