Dave Tabler, Portfolio Manager, The iSpot.com joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable for some background and information on their popular illustrator portfolio site. Since 1996, The iSpot.com has held a place online for artists and illustrators to join forces and showcase their work for hire and stock. Formed to assist artist representatives to have a place for clients to locate and view a range of illustrations. Dave explains there are two areas The iSpot.com focuses on; one being portfolios and the other involves rights managed stock illustrations, not clipart.
Dave has worked closely with many artists, helping them properly identify and keyword tag their particular style so that art directors and creative shoppers can easily locate their work. The ability to properly tag and identify artist samples is critical in matching the right illustrator to the right project. Dave shares some insight on the work they’ve done to adjust and maintain popular tags. The iSpot.com has comprehensive tracking for each image viewed and will coach the artists on how to best showcase their most popular styles. Dave also explains their revenue model, and the costs associated in working with them. Althought the iSpot.com is one of the most renowned and popular websites dedicated to illustration, Dave explains that they continue to advertise and promote their services to ensure their artists get hired. They are a global site, representing artists from over 26 countries.
For more information on The iSpot.com visit their site at: http://www.theispot.com/
Design News of the Week with Jay Nelson
Jay Nelson joins us this week for an update on Adobe’s recent release of Creative Suite 4 addressing the pressing question - Should I upgrade? Jay explains that many times designers skip a version so Adobe may see more updates from CS2 to CS4 than from their current CS3 base. Gene explains that this jump might also require a significant hardware upgrade in order to take advantage of the new features. Jay shares some of his favorite new enhancements including a redesigned interface, better collaboration tools, new 3D effects, and keyboard shortcuts. For more information and details visit: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/
For more on Jay Nelson and his Design Tools topics visit: http://www.design-tools.com
Mark Dancey, Designer/Cartoonist/Illustrator, Illuminado joins Inside Digital Design for some information about his work and how he gains exposure and clients as a traditional illustrator. Mark’s work includes gallery exhibitions, album designs, cartoons and other organic media. Mark shares his experiences and insights on how he uses digital representations of his art on his website to promote to his clients but explains that although it provides instant access, maintaining the original artist intent from analog to digital can present compromises and challenges.
For more about his work visit: http://www.illuminado.com
Suzanne Norman, Director of Community Relations, and Jim Hitch, Agency Relations Manager for Emma Inc. join hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable for some tips and insights about using and designing e-mail marketing campaigns. Emma Inc. is a web-based email marketing comunications companywhose services are setup to eliminate the complexities of list management, implementing and executing a campaign, and also allow for full tracking and measurement to see the results.
Gene Gable & Scott Sheppard discuss design choices for this year’s Presidential Election Campaigns. Gene has been following and researching the campaign from a designer’s perspective and explains how typefaces, colors and other element choices can impact how voters perceive each candidate. For example, in analyzing their font selections, Republican John McCain chose the 
Gene also points out that the placement of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates in the imagery makes a statement about their views. In the McCain banners, John McCain and Sarah Palin’s name are of equal size and weight. In the Obama images, his name appears much larger than that of his running mate Biden. Republicans tend to use all capital letters where Democrats tend to use upper and lowercase lettering. Gene explains the history and background of the use of the elephant and the donkey. Traditionally campaign color choices involve red, white, and blue which of course can be “officially” selected based on the Pantone Matching System.
