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12/02/2005: "Revival of the Art Poster..." by Asbjorn Lonvig

The art poster is dead.
The director of the Hans Christian Andersen Festival Plays, said to me.
Too bad.
I am a poster designer.
It is a fact that the art poster is dead when it comes to advertising.
Only major cultural events still use posters for advertising.
Other media have ousted the poster as an advertising media.

Publishing posters traditionally is very complicated.
First you choose a relevant art work.
Then you prepare it for print.
Then you print it.
To decide edition sizes concerning posters is the hard part.
Then you distribute the poster.
Preparing, printing and distribution are costly.
Nearly nothing is left for the artist.

Print on demand is the answer.
You can work with print on demand in at least 3 ways.

1. Print on Demand at ArtWanted.com
ArtWanted is a .com that can handle ordering, online payment, quality print and shipment.
And as an interesting feature at ArtWanted the artist himself can decide the prices on the prints of his art works!!!!!
I have tested ArtWanted.com in Bountiful, Salt Lake City, Utah.
ArtWanted can handle sizes up to 30 x 40 inches, that is 76 x 101.6 cm.
I have submitted a number of art works in huge print files to ArtWanted.
See the print on demand introduction page.
This means that anybody in the world, who likes my style, can have a poster.
The prices are from US$ 1.95 to US$ 79.95 depending on size and surface.
Then you add some US$ for shipment depending on where you live.
ArtWanted.com informs you about the shipment costs before you pay.
This means that at the exact same moment I have finished an art work it is available for poster printing world wide.
Nice feeling.

2. Print on Demand at the customer's own computer.
This Monday I finished a job for a large financial institution in Denmark. I have placed the Word (.doc) files with the art works for print on the customer's computer.
And the customer prints on demand.
This means that any company, any organization, any person in numerous of situations can skip traditional printing.
They can relieve.
And skip the impossible task of deciding edition sizes.


3. Print on Demand at our Digital Art Laboratory.
All other Digital Art matters are taken care of by the Asbjorn Lonvig Digital Art Laboratory.
The staff is:
Ole Aaen, AD from 2A, Vejle, Denmark
Erik Adriansen, AD from 2A, Vejle, Denmark
Asbjorn Lonvig, Artist, Hedensted, Denmark
To the right you can see Ole Aaen and Erik Adriansen work with "1080 Haight Street" - a Victorian House from my San Francisco selection.
This laboratory uses the newest technology when it comes to
Mac computers, PCs,
Graphics Editing Equipment,
Small format printers,
Large format high quality printers,
Print surfaces,
Film, TV, Video Editing Equipment,
Projection Equipment and
Photo Equipment.
See more details on the Asbjorn Lonvig Digital Art Laboratory.

We can present art works in any size print in serigraph quality offering
state of the art color fastness.
We can print on paper, canvas etc.
We can offer posters and prints with printed signature.
As a point of departure editions are open.
However, we can do limited edition prints, numbered and signed, as well.
Or one of a kind signed prints.
Sizes are: Height is unlimited. Width is up to about 5 feet, depending on the surface.
To print a 1:1 print of one of my canvases size 79.2 x 54.8 inches, that is 201 x 139 cm on paper is a piece of cake. In this department we work with prices up to about US$ 2500.
One day we printed on canvas.
Amazing.
This means that anybody can create exactly the art work reproduction, that they like.
OK. I have to like it, too.

Technical remark:
The posters are drawn in Adobe Illustrator. That means that they are vectorized and scalable.
That's the reason that we can present pure, pure colors on all prints.
There are no photographing and scanning involved.
This week we will do some tests photographing my "sad days" paintings and Morten Lonvig's portrait paintings.
We are not satisfied until you can see every stroke of every hair in the brush. Or every stroke from my wooden block and filling knife, which I have used in some of them. Or that you clearly can see, that the paint has been thrown temperamentally in some of them.
A KODAK dcs pro 14ns digital camera will probably do the job, we'll see.
If we succeed you'll be presented to a series of brand new posters soon.


Thoughts:
If you use the Danish definition of poster, which is any kind of reproduction of art works, you sure can announce that computers and the internet have caused a "Revival of the Art Poster..." in the sense that they have made print on demand posters a major tool in future distribution of reproductions of art works world wide.


_


Try out ArtWanted.com in Salt Lake City
click on a poster











Smaller prints - coming soon as large prints:

Replies: 1 Comment

on Monday, December 5th, paul said

Asbjorn,there is talk often on here about publicity via posters or cards or prints,you talk here about making posters and how you made them,of course not everyone has the money to do this,especially larger than a3 size,when it does become costly,commercially at least,of course if one has access to the equipment then its a joy to use,as is reflected in the works above,
someone said on here a while ago now,that all the machinery for art,publicity,press releases,prints,are no good unless the art is behind it to back it up,or the art must be great,and one can say,that if a painting doesnt sell or appeal much,then a poster of it might not sell also,although I for one think paintings do look better printed up as cards or a poster,it must be all that white border round it that does the trick,also its kindve tidied up,whereas the painting in the flesh can often be disconcerting to the average veiwer who's been brought up on flat screen surfaces,and clean editing,whereas an artists studio is often a messy place at best,and paintings are surrounded by other paintings and general junk.