Friday Favorites are my weekly wrap-up of the cool happenings going on around Imagekind over the past week. This week saw some very exciting things including the addition of one of the most prolific American turn-of-the-century cartoonists, Zim Zimmerman. Also, one of our member artists posted a great review about Imagekind on our blog that I have to share! Lastly, make sure to check out the latest updates to Imagekind.

Zim Zimmerman Cartoons on Imagekind

Eugene “Zim” Zimmerman was one of the most prolific turn-of-the-century American cartoonists. Who has, however, been since largely forgotten. Founder of what is known as the “grotesque” style of caricature for his use of overly exaggerated facial and bodily characteristics in his subjects.

A Truce, or How Two Wrongs Made A Right by ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

With over 40,000 illustrations published in his lifetime, Zim’s body of work were often political in nature, highlighting the “melting pot” of American culture and ethnic minorities in the early part of the century. Though many might appear as politically incorrect in our time, the cartoons provide a historical look and critique of American culture during his. Immigrating to the US from Switzerland in 1869 at the age of seven, you can imagine Zim was all too familiar with the struggles immigrants and minorities often faced at the turn of the century.

Good Poker Hands, or Fooling the Talent by ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Most prints were originally featured in the two top humor magazines of their day: Puck and Judge magazines. Now, in conjunction with Imagekind, ASIF-Hollywood Animation Archive has provided a collection of Zim’s cartoons for sale as high-quality framed art prints.

Presence of Mind by ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Imagekind Review

After ordering one of his prints one of our member artists, Rubens LP, provided a fantastic review of Imagekind on his blog. He even includes pictures! You can see the full review on his blog here. Rubens LP’s conclusion? “WOW!!! Nice surprise… Very impressive.”

Thanks Rubens! I am a total fan of his work so it was especially great to hear he is a fan of Imagekind!

Imagekind Review Print: Smoke by Rubens LP

We love hearing reviews about Imagekind. If you have one yourself on your own blog, send it along! It’s like my birthday when I hear how excited people are to receive their artwork.

More Updates

We’re always updating. This week brings two! First, we released an oft-requested feature: the ability to add images in forum posts. Second, we’ve included the “AddThis” button in Imagekind Storefronts to easily share images found in an artists Storefront with your community around the web. This way, visitors can share artwork for sale on Imagekind to sites like DIGG, Facebook, Twitter and more.  It’s an opt-in feature so you can control if you want your images shared or not.

You can read all the details on the updates in the forum, here.

Friday is here again! And on Fridays, I share some of my Friday Favorites. There have been some great things happening around the site including some very useful updates and a special Summer Sale! Also, several of our members’ artwork was featured in one of the leading photography blogs! Check out all the sweet happenings below!

Forum Improvements

Yesterday, we rolled out some improvements to the forums which now allow you to keep up with your watched and group discussions much easier. We’ve added two new tabs to make it easier for you to stay up to date with the conversations in the Community that matter to you most. Check out the forum, to see the new tabs in action!

More Updates to Storefronts

At the beginning of the week we released some more updates to the Imagekind Storefronts that make it even easier to customize. With the new updates, you don’t need to know any CSS to change the colors of your Storefront, simply select the color of your choice from the color options. There are tons of options available, so you can really make your Imagekind Storefront truly customized.

We’ve also made it easier for shoppers to find your Storefront through the drop down menu listed next to your screen name. You can read about these and other updates in the announcement post.

Imagekind Summer Sale!

Love the sun? Celebrate summer with 20% off custom framing at Imagekind! Simply use promo code IKSummer09 at checkout to automatically take 20% off the frame when you choose to custom frame it. But hurry, because the promotion expires Monday, July 20 at Midnight PST. You can find all the details about this promotion here.

If you’re an artist on Imagekind, be sure to pass the promotion along to your shoppers! You can easily copy and paste the image URL to your website, blog, or (better yet!) your Storefront! That way, your shoppers can take advantage of this special summer sale too. Also, don’t forget to share it with your followers on Twitter and Facebook!

Featured on DPS

Desperation by Josh Sommers

Like a braggart parent, I am always looking for ways to show of our amazing member artists around the web. This week Darren over at Digital Photography School, was cool enough to let me show off some of our incredible Photo Manipulation Artists. If you’ve never heard of the Digital Photography School, you definitely need to check it out. There are all kinds of tips and resources shared to help improve your digital photography techniques. Stay tuned though, as you might see more incredible Imagekind artists showing up there in the coming months!

With the release of Imagekind Storefronts, Portfolio Manager and more last week, we have seen some truly amazing customization from a variety of artists. It’s really cool to see how various artists customize and use features differently. We’ve noticed some artists go for limited customization, sticking close to the defaults, while others seem to change the look of the whole thing. Because we give artists the control of their Storefront, we are excited to see the different varieties. But, with our newest release…

Customization just got a lot easier

We have just released a new set of upgrades for the Imagekind Storefronts which are sure to make customization even easier. Now, even if you don’t know CSS, you can customize just about the entire look of your Storefront. Some of the features in this release include:

Customize Page Body & Surrounding Background

Don’t know CSS? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! Changing the CSS of your Imagekind Storefront can be daunting. That’s why we’ve made it easy to skip the technical stuff and get right to the customization. In this update, you can now customize both the page body and surrounding background of your Storefront. Just go to the Options tab in your Storefront admin.

Hide Header Text

If you’ve uploaded your own header image, we have now provided an option for you to disable the header text. This way, the text will not display on your Storefront behind the header image. If you want to hide the header text, simply go the Options tab and click the box next to “Hide store name” under the “Page Header” section. If you do choose to hide the header text, make sure you still fill out the information under the “Name your Storefront” section. This will help ensure you get found in search engines, which will help increase your sales!

Dual CSS Views

For those who do want to continue modifying the CSS of their Storefront, we have now made it much easier with dual CSS views. Now, when you choose to edit the CSS, we provide two screens. One shows your current CSS configuration. The other shows the current default CSS version. We have realized that new features and bug fixes will cause changes in the default CSS which will not be picked up by those who have saved a modified version of the CSS. To make it easier to deal with this future issue, we are now including within the CSS files, a clearly visible tag at the beginning of the file. We also mark every line change from version to version with a specific tag and will add new CSS properties in new, marked sections at the bottom of the CSS files. We have also added an experimental highlighting of line changes from the original launch version, which should make it easier to find lines with CSS changes, which might be different from the saved (edited) version.

Preview Improvements

To make it easier to modify your store without exposing your construction mess, you can now pause your storefront and the preview will still work. We have also fixed a number of issues with the previews including the ability to see modified CSS.

Artist Drop-Down

In addition to the various customization updates we’ve made, we are also releasing an easy-to-access link to any artists” Storefront, right from their drop-down list. You can access the “Shop My Store”  link by clicking on the artist’s screenname where available.

Various Bug Fixes

We have also taken care of most of the bug that typically accompany a release of this magnitude. If you encounter others that we are not aware of, please do let us know in the bug section of the forum. We will be sure to address it as quickly as we can.

Thank you to everyone for the great feedback and support as we continue to bring more options to our artist community of buying, selling, and creating art.

Announcing a host of new features for artists at Imagekind!

Empowering artists to sell their artwork, their way, online, has been our passion from day one. For the past three years, we’ve focused on building one  community for buying, selling and creating art. That’s why we are more than excited to announce today our newest features for artists selling their artwork through Imagekind.

Alright, here’s the low-down on all the amazing features just released:

1. We’ve removed the upload limitations and implemented unlimited uploads – no matter the account level.
2. Premium Members can now create their very own completely customizable Storefront.
3. That’s right, there’s more. We’re also unveiling our new Portfolio Manager to help batch-edit your galleries.

Need more details on the features? Keep reading!

Portfolio Manager & Image Upload Limits

• Unlimited uploads for all members
• Up to 3 galleries for free members
• Manage all your galleries and images in the new Portfolio Manger
• Select a single image, a gallery or any number of images and edit them all at once
• Use drag-and-drop to change the order of your images and galleries
• Move images easily from one gallery to another
• Add tags, subjects, genres, medium and décor across multiple images at a time
• Set default frame and canvas selections for multiple images at a time

Storefronts (For Premium Members Only)

• Your own customizable storefront, with an easy to remember URL
• Choose from a selection of themes, and personalize it to match your style
• Easy to manage and update – change your storefront as often as you like
• Add, remove and customize pages in your storefront
• Pick the galleries you want available in your storefront, and keep more available in the marketplace
• Edit the CSS of your storefront to make it look exactly the way you want
• Track visits to your storefront using Google Analytics
• Make money by selling ads with your own Google Adsense (or keep it clean and ad-free)
• Collect your shoppers’ email addresses with mailing list sign-ups

Changes to Member Benefits

• Unlimited uploads for everybody
• Up to 250 galleries for Platinum Members, 100 galleries for Pro Members and 3 galleries for Free Members
• Premium Members get fully customizable storefronts
• Framing Commissions: 15% for Platinum, 10 % for Pro and 5% for Free Member accounts

Best of all? We’re still not done… Rest assured this is just the begining of our continued mission of empowering artists to create, discuss, share and sell their artwork their way!

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Make sure to login to your Imagekind account and check out all the features. Including the new Portfolio Manager and Storefront. Want your own customizable Storefront? Upgrade your Imagekind membership!

Have you seen the new artwork page on Imagekind?

We’ve just released a newly updated version of the main artwork page that’s sure to make quite an impact on the overall Imagekind experience. Now it is easier, more intuitive and all around quicker to shop for the framed artwork you love!

Just some of the amazing features:

Single click shopping with shorter purchasing path for those who don’t need all the options!
Better product displays that show frame details right on the page!
Browse links to easily see the previous and next artwork in an artist’s gallery!
Choose your product (print, canvas or greeting card) on the same page!
Quicker load time to improve the overall page performance!
Shop similar art by color, genre, tags and more!

Additionally, we have also made changes to include both our satisfaction guarantee as well as easily displaying the savings you’ll receive when shopping at Imagekind.

We are all excited about these recent updates and think the new artwork page shows off Imagekind’s unique offering; being both an active and thriving artist community site, as well as a high end framed art retailer. We’ve essentially split the page down the middle to successfully incorporate both aspects.

We have several more plans for future improvements and features. Imagekind is dedicated to continue innovating the way you shop, sell and create art. You can stay updated on all of Imagekind’s future improvements by subscribing to our RSS feed, and joining the Imagekind newsletter.

Find all of the improvements in our official announcement to our community.

Now, stop reading and go check out the new page and shop for framed art!