While You Were Sleeping, The Senate Passed a Bill to Kill Art

FROM THE ILLUSTRATORS' PARTNERSHIP

Orphan Works Opposition: Plan B

SEPT 27 Yesterday, in a cynical move, the sponsors of the Senate Orphan Works Act passed their controversial bill by a controversial practice known as hotlining.

With lawmakers scrambling to raise 700 billion dollars to bail out businesses that are "too big to fail," the Senate passed a bill that would force small copyright holders to subsidize big internet interests such as Google, which has already said it plans to use millions of the images this bill will orphan.

With the meltdown on Wall Street, this is no time for Congress to concentrate our nation's copyright wealth in the hands of a few privately owned corporate databases. The contents of these databases would be more valuable than secure banking information. Yet this bill would compel creators to risk their own intellectual property to supply content to these corporate business models. That means it would be our assets at risk in the event of their failure or mismanagement.

As David Rhodes, President of the School of Visual Arts has said, the Orphan Works bill would socialize the expense of copyright protection while privatizing the profit of creative endeavors. Copyright owners neither want nor need this legislation. It will do great harm to small businesses. We already have a banking crisis. Congress should not lay the groundwork for a copyright crisis.

--Brad Holland and Cynthia Turner, for the Illustrators' Partnership

NOW FOR PLAN B

We MUST try to stop the House Judiciary Committee from folding their bill (HR5889) and adopting the Senate version.

PLEASE EMAIL CONGRESS TODAY.
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Thanks to all of you who heeded the call to action yesterday.

http://capwiz.com/illustratorspartnership/issues/alert/?alertid=11980321

Framing Revolution: The Future of Design?

I'm currently sitting at my desk looking at another piece I'm doing for work and I'm pounding my head over what to do. It has come to my attention that the year is now 2008, and the decade is, sadly, coming to an end. In this light, a new revolution in the world of art and graphic design is in order and I have decided to do something I rarely have been able to do in the past; start it.

Admittedly, for being a "non-conformist" and such, I have rarely not followed the trends in modern graphic design. The fact that the trends have leaned towards a more punk-influenced style in the past 2-3 years makes my job easier since I've been in that mindset my whole career, especially now. So now that the market has basically been flooded with this style, the want and demand will soon go down. A lot. For me, this is equivalent to a very possible extinction. Thus, the need to evolve and adapt has already grown in myself and, in turn, what I create and produce.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring for the art world. I can not guage trends, and I can not simply say that the revolution will be a simple one. My thoughts? This present form has been caused by the ravages of war tearing at the mindset of the population. Not only that, but the nostalgia of the 80's and it's style, high-gloss-meets-punk-and-pop, has returned full force. This started, as you may have guessed, 3 years ago and has grown largely since.

So what is the next evolutionary step?

Again, I don't have the answer. If I did, I doubt I would share them just yet. The trend seems to be odd to tell and hard to follow. I want to say a high-gloss approach will be it, but we're still in it. The "empty-white-room" is still a good trend that many follow... we've already hit abstraction and deconstruction, what's left?