The Curator Company blog

Just got back from Melbourne

Steve for the Curator Company

Just got back from a whistle-stop tour of Melbourne for The Melbourne Design Market and this year’s market was incredible. It was amazing how so many people came through, and with all the squishing and bustling everyone was happy and having a great time. There was definitely an event buzz in the air!

This year we completely ran out of white mounts and were left with 5 black packs and 4 blue packs. Almost sold out (well we probably would have if our EFT machine hadn’t run out of batteries) … note to self, pack charger next time.

If you missed out on any white packs this year (usually we sell out of black!) then I still have a few packs of white back in the studio. There will be a delay of a few weeks on the other colours though as I need to replenish stocks.

Thanks Melbourne, the more I visit the more I want to stay!!! Although I’ll be back in a month for Life in Style

Magnolia Square 2010

See The Curator Company at Magnolia Square this weekend, June 4th/5th and 6th

For the first time I will be at Magnolia Square at the Oaks Lawn Marquee in Randwick Racecourse.

There are over 40 design retailers, come down and say hello. It is on from 10-5pm Friday, Saturday and Sunday.There is an $8 admission charge (parking is included in this charge).

SPECIAL OFFER

If you come and say hello and say that you read about it on this blog/facebook fan page then I will give you 25% off your purchase of photocurators (a saving of $5 per pack).

Hope to see you there!

National Stationery Show, NYC

Design week is in full swing in New York and the Curator Company is not missing out at one of the world’s biggest design weeks we are at booth #3048 at the Javits Centre in NYC: http://www.nationalstationeryshow.com/

Come along and say hello!

Stieglitz at the Art Gallery of NSW

Being stocked to accompany the new Stieglitz exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, photocurator will be launched at the AGNSW gift shop in the middle of June.

There will be Black, Blue, Red, Olive and White mounts for sale. So if you are in NSW come along and check out the exhibition and the gallery’s very good gift shop.

Black Frames

One look that I have been playing around with lately is the use of black frames on my photographs. This type of frame is available on Snapfish and probably a few others to.

One thing I would love to try is the use of coloured frames with contrasting coloured photocurator. For example in this movie on Flickr I used black frames with yellow photocurator – something I think works quite well. If anyone has any knowledge of where to get some blue, red, orange, yellow etc frames printed on your images please let me know in the comments.

Replacement Strips

Just added to the online store – replacement adhesive strips for sale at $5 a pack of 10 strips.

Packaging Redesign

A year in the planning the new photocurator clamshell packs are really starting to take shape.

The reason to go with a new packaging design was purely due to their ease of assembly. Working with the original design (I spent many days, evenings and nights putting together packs) I found that the major flaw in my design was ease of construction e.g. there was lots of folding and intricate inserting.

When I approached companies to assemble the packs for me their quotes for assembly were rather high ($4 a pack minimum)… so out of necessity the clamshell design emerged. I hope you like them, I will post a few more images on Flickr in the next few days showing some of the other design elements (such as the new back design and inner mounting card design).

Website Refresh

After 18 months, the old website was in need of a little spring cleaning. But rather than completely re-build the site from scratch I felt a small refresh might just do the trick (in the short term). Starting with the online shop I decided to go with big cartel as a shopping cart – which means when purchasing online you can choose multiple combinations of colour as well as replacement strips. Replacement strips have been a regular request and at last they’re now available in the shop, although I’m now working on the photography and packaging for the strips.

While tinkering around with this I also felt the home page was in need of a refresh to bring it into line with the last 12 months of change.

Over the last year the photocurator brand has evolved into more of a photography brand (a good direction, I think) through constant updates to packaging and marketing material and I now felt this needed to be brought into the site.

The next addition will be in about a week when video will be shot and added to the site to be used as a way to answer questions – it’s amazing how many times the same questions are asked and I thought the best way to answer them would be with video – both online and offline at design shows and markets.

Will be in touch again soon with more updates!

Huw

Back from the Bowerbird Bazaar

I recently got back from Adelaide after taking part in the second Bowerbird Bazaar market. Organised by Rebekah from One Small Room and Jane from InSync Design who I first met at the launch of the photocurator at Young Blood 08 and who has been a regular friendly face through out the last year and a half as I attended various design & trade shows around Australia.

The first bowerbird bazaar had been referred to by a few friends who attended last years as ‘one of the best they have done’ – which was saying something, as they had done a lot.

With this in mind, the potential of the event was playing up as a classic, one-of-a-kind market with large crowds and lots of new people who hadn’t been introduced to the photocurator before – and it didn’t disappoint. Although not as huge as Melbourne Federation Square Design Market (not much tops that one) or the madness of the Young Blood, the Bowerbird was a huge success with over 6000 coming through the doors and lots of sales leaving me with very little stock left to take back to Sydney.

There was a great selection of designers at the Bowerbird, such as Mattt, Lola & Bailey, Pigeonhole, Vinyl Wall Designs, Smug Designs, Printspace, Sarah Rothe, a skulk of foxes and many more… after the last year’s experience someone should do a book on these people!

Thanks to Jane and Rebekah for putting on such a great event – hope to be back in October!!

Life inStyle

Four days of trade show craziness has now come to an end, phew – how exhausting. Life in Style is a boutique bi-annual show held in Sydney and Melbourne and this was my first experience of the madness.

The show was buzzing with lots of buyers, distributors, magazine stylists and store owners from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and HK. So many people in such a large space (The Hordern Pavilion in Fox Studios).

Well what to say… I suppose ‘Thanks!’ would be a good start. Thanks to all the new retail outlets who have signed up the Curator Company to provide them with photocurator packs. Now as the list of outlets which sell the photocurator is growing I will be adding a ‘Stockists’ area to the menu so you can find us in a shop near you.

If you are a retailer who is interested in stocking the photocurator then please give me a call or email me and I can give you all the information you need. Don’t forget we are now represented in the USA and Canada so if you are interested in stocking the photocurator in your neighborhood then also drop me a line.

Well the last few days and the coming week are (and will be) madness. Filling the orders and following up with all the nice people who gave me their cards will make my days very long.

Well back to work… see you soon!