Forever blowing bubbles

The extraordinary photography of Paul Vanzella is just one of many galleries to browse on Red Bubble [Photo: Copyright, Paul Vanzella/Red Bubble]   

Red Bubble is a new website that’s making artists worldwide incredibly excited - and it's only just begun.

From little acorns big trees grow. Red Bubble began inflating earlier this year from its small office in the artistic suburb of Fitzroy in Melbourne. News of the site has largely spread through word of mouth.

“We believe the artists who use the site to be the best marketers of their work,” says Red Bubble co-founder Peter Styles.

Red Bubble is an online gallery and creative community. The way it works is simple. Visual artists upload images of their work, as many as they like, for free. They decide if the artwork is for sale and if it is they can choose their own markup as a percentage. Anyone can browse the gallery, leave comments about artwork (if you’re a registered user), and buy images either as wall art or designer T-shirts. Delivery is worldwide.

In addition every artist gets their own homepage, which is the gateway to their gallery and online journal. Poets and writers have been attracted to the site by the opportunity of getting their words ‘out there’ while receiving constructive critiquing from their peers.

Peter believes the journals play a key role in connecting not only artists but also people browsing the site out of curiosity. “I think people who are interested in buying artwork really value a sense of connectedness with the artists,” he says, “So what we are trying to do is to empower and encourage artists to market their art and themselves both on and off the site.

“We can never hope to be as good or as passionate as them about their work,” he says.

According to Peter the site evolved from a desire to reduce the barriers that stop people from getting their creativity out beyond themselves.

“By making it easier for people to get their creativity out there we hope to see a much broader range of folks who try to express their creativity,” says Peter. “What does that mean for artistic expression more generally? Well, I’d like to hope that we could help a small section of people to make a living out of being professional artists.

“I also hope we can augment that small section with a much bigger section of folks who do make some money out of their creativity and in the process improve their self worth as artists,” he says.

Australian illustrator and graphic designer Ashlee Maegan says Red Bubble benefits artists by giving them an outlet to showcase their work in a more industry-based environment.

“With working designers, photographers, artists on the website, there’s opportunity for networking, constructive critiquing, and inspiration all with the fringe benefit of having your hard work pay off if you’ve made some sales!” she says.

It’s a good job the site is already red because the praise artists have heaped on Red Bubble is sufficiently gushing to make Jenna Jameson blush.

Community favourite Whirligig credits the website with re-igniting her artistic fire after a 10 year hiatus and journal entries with messages of thanks keep pouring in.

London-based photographer Adrian Rachele says, “Red Bubble encompasses all sides (especially with the new Forums opening) of the spectrum in online communities with the added bonus of having the sales and marketing of oneself added in. So much so it’s hard to keep up with the large amount of discussion and posting!”

Adrian believes one of the best things about Red Bubble is that its creators are open and integrated with the users. For example Red Bubble marketing guy, Xavier Russo, is always running new ideas by the site’s members.

Often innovations come from the community and are turned into site features by the programmers within a matter of days. Red Bubble has already run competitions and incorporated new features into the site based on user recommendations. One of the most popular forums is Wishlist Ideas for RB Elves, which is self-explanatory really.

Such a responsive website provides the artistic community with a whole new level of interactivity and sense of inclusiveness.

The only hardship is choosing which work to upload.

Ashlee says, “For me it’s all about my current work. I don’t necessarily upload images for the point of selling, but rather for the feedback from other quality artists and it seems that Red Bubble has an abundance of quality.”

For Adrian the process is pretty full on. “I go by what I like then apply a bit of self inflicted constructive criticism. This part is quite agonising. The more I learn about photography the harder it becomes,” he says.