SOxSO Welcomes #iTOMB

At 10am on Saturday, June 27th a discussion on the Healing Powers and Neuro-science of Poetry and Visual Arts will take place at South X South Orange, hosted by Seton Hall University and the Village of South Orange, NJ, with the South Orange Performing Arts Center – and #iThinkOutsideMyBox has been invited to provide a real world example by engaging the public in public art℠.

"For three groundbreaking days in late June (26th, 27th and 28th), South Orange Village comes alive with creative collisions of arts, ideas and music. From live drone demonstrations to coding concerts, compelling talks to live blues, rock and jazz, SOxSO has something for everyone."

Our info for the festival is below. Come join us in South Orange for both an academic and practical look at how creativity shapes our world in better ways.

#iThinkOutsideMyBox™ is a global community studio and gallery engaging the public in public art℠  by encouraging people to paint. #iTOMB was founded by David Everitt-Carlson in 2011 at Occupy Wall Street in New York and was featured in the Wall Street Journal that year. The project continues on the High Line at 22nd St., and other locations around New York.

In two and a half years over 20,000 intimate cardboard conversations between individuals and the world at large have been created, yet #iThinkOutsideMyBox™  is not a business – as none of the paintings will ever be sold. We are currently in application for 501(c)3 status as a non-profit foundation to gain wider access to arts grants and funding.

#iTOMB continues to be the world’s largest collection of publicly painted works and we would very much like to grow that experience outside of New York.  #iThinkOutsideMyBox™ is also available to schools, museums, non-profits, private events and corporate creative motivation programs.

David Everitt-Carlson has engaged in a creative career his entire life, first as an actor in his teens, then to director, singer, sign painter, newspaper editor, graphic designer, filmmaker, journalist, executive creative director, Vice President, entrepreneur, CEO, founder, professor, public speaker, mentor, motivator, consultant, author, activist and social organizer. 

All of which have made him an unusually effective creative leader. 

As a New York native with a degree in Corporate Communications, he was featured early in his career in the New York Art Directors Show for both writing and design and began a creatively ambidextrous path of award-winning work with agencies such as The Richards Group/Dallas, Bozell/Dallas, Earle Palmer Brown/Wash D.C. and Leo Burnett/Chicago.

His work for American Airlines ran on the Super Bowl and garnered four CLIOs shortlisted, followed by four more the following year for work on Marriott. 

Moving to Leo Burnett to produce award winning work for Miller Brewing, Nintendo, Sony & Kellogg’s, he was named VP/Creative Director in 92 and moved to Seoul, Korea in 95 as VP/Chief Creative Officer.

Following Burnett he founded Korea’s first 100% foreign invested advertising agency, CarlsonCreative, Inc, in Seoul in 1997. with clients, the Korean Ministry of Finance, Samsung, LG, Hyundai and British American Tobacco. The company was sold in 2003. 

Moving to Vietnam, David founded aSaigon/CreativeMorning, as a monthly speaker series bringing world-class creative thought leaders to Southeast Asia. Working also as a journalist he penned daily and monthly columns for The Morton Report and East & West Magazine. 

Returning to the US in 2011, saw the birth of the iThinkOutsideMyBox™ concept, a public studio and gallery that reimagines the idea of public art by engaging the public to make the art℠. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Huffington Post, New York Daily News, Gothamist, and hundreds of international blogs, TV and radio shows, #iThinkOutsideMyBox has since become a global phenomenon and the world’s largest collection of publicly painted work at over 20,000 paintings. 

Currently living in Manhattan and leading DEC Communications, David Everitt-Carlson  is available on a consulting basis for corporate communications work, including creative staff motivation and campaign direction, and regularly engages the iThinkOutsideMyBox™ project with schools, museums, universities and non-profits.

What's a Great Idea Worth?

"What a great idea!", is an exclamation I hear daily at #iThinkOutsideMyBox if not many times a day and I immediately return, "If you like this idea, please support us", because in America it's not a great idea unless it makes money. And I don't say that in jest. Because it's true.

Edison may have good ideas, and a lot of them, as he often advised, but he didn't make any money off the ideas themselves. He made money off the products they spawned. The phonograph, the lightbulb, et al. He produced and licensed applications of his ideas, under patent, which made him money. Walt Disney didn't make any money off Mickey Mouse nor Spielberg from E.T. They both made money from the production and distribution of those ideas in film form.

#iTOMB Alex "I Think Outside My Box" (Québec) 10.25.14

Let's take song writing, for instance. If you write a song there are two kinds of ideas at work. The musical notation and the lyrics. Both of these are covered by songwriting copyright but for a writer to be paid, they must have the song 'published' by a music label and sell the song. For each copy of that song, the writer will be paid $0.091 per copy. That's less than 1%. But if a ten song album album sells a million copies, that's $91,000 to the songwriter plus other royalties such as performance and other paid presentation fees if the song is popular.

Taylor Swift, 1989 – 2014

Taylor Swift reaped arguably $125,000 in profits from the sale of 500,000 copies of the song, "Welcome to New York", after expenses. That's a little better than 2%. But she does very well considering her string of hit songs and albums. 2% of that purse is worth a lot more than 10% of a much smaller one. Taylor Swift doesn't get paid more than other writers for her ideas, she just sells more of them.

Quirky Pivot Power

So let's look at a smaller purse. The invention company, Quirky, crowdsources ideas for primarily consumer products. One of their big hits is a flexible electric power strip that accommodates bulky power supply plugs. It's quirky. And its inventor has made roughly $700,000 off his idea in the last few years – but that comes from less than 10% of the profit from the device as the New York Times illustrates. "For its hard work, Quirky takes 90 cents of each dollar of product sales. The other 10 cents is distributed among the inventor community. The person who came up with the product idea typically pockets 4 cents of that. Lesser shares go for contributions like enhancing the idea, choosing the price or coming up with the name".

The iThinkOutsideMyBox gallery

So how much is #iThinkOutsideMyBox worth as an idea? Presents an interesting challenge doesn't it? The idea that anyone can paint and that painting becomes part of an ever evolving global social fabric borne of self expression. Fascinating. People love it at first sight. But what's the product? Experience? Sharing? Communication? Therapy? Architecture? Social Involvement? Or, all of the above – which I believe is probably the best answer. And why do people think it's a great idea, if it's not something that produces a product that can be monetized?

And what is that idea worth to them?

This always brings me to my own question of, "Can #iThinkOutsideMyBox support itself?" – and in turn support me, its creator? At $3,365 a month for an apartment (the average rental in NYC) and living cost beyond? A six-figure salary? COB? Is the idea worth that much? Or more?

Because those are the questions one must ask of oneself when they are told literally every day that they have a "Genius idea" – because, in America, you're not a genius, unless your idea, or other ideas you have, are paying the bills – and lots of them. And so 2015 has become the year we focus on the business of the project and strive to make this a viable, profitable, non-profit.

Currently our income streams are from primarily on-site donations, followed by Print Sales and Special Bookings. We're also seriously competing for Community and Arts Grants. Our job is to dramatically increase the ratio of income from these sources to guarantee our future.

Remember, any image you see on this site can be ordered as a fine art print, or go to our store for the Top 10. The prints are absolutely gorgeous. If you're involved in Entertainment, Non-profit, Education or Corporate Management work, do consider booking us for your event or program. We help solve your business problems creatively. Grant or press recommendations are also welcomed.

Again, I thank you all for the compliments every day, knowing all the while, that the highest compliment we can receive is your support. Because, remember, in America it's not a great idea unless it's profitable