By ION on Sep 9, 2009 in CULTURE
Jeff Hamada’s Dot Com Booooooom
Those familiar with the social media world know that the most successful bloggers are those who can encourage active participation from their followers. The founder of Booooooom.com, Jeff Hamada, noticed that this was lacking from many of the graphic design blogs he frequented—and in the year since its founding, his website has helped change that. “A lot of sites I would visit, there was no encouragement for comments or feedback. I wanted to get to know my readers and encourage people to work together to create something interesting.”
A graphic designer with strong ties to the streetwear market, Jeff’s artwork has appeared on everything from Endeavor snowboards to Converse shoes to 3Sixteen, a New York clothing company that he re-branded just after finishing his fine arts diploma at Langara and bachelors in media arts at Emily Carr. With years as a freelance designer under his belt, the success that he has found with Booooooom.com has allowed Jeff to be more selective about the design work he picks up. As a result, his body of work has become more cohesive as clients are beginning to ask for work that is reflective of his personal style.
Jeff never dreamed that his site would grow into what it is today. Originally a place to share found images and talk about his personal travels, in a little over a year it has blossomed into a vibrant network of artists, photographers and creative people from all over the world. “I like collecting things,” Jeff says, “I find it similar to digging for records, or people who are really into music—I like collecting visual work.” His impulse to collect and to share has informed the evolution of the site in a number of ways.
This collection crosses the boundary between highbrow and lowbrow—visit Booooooom.com on any given day and you’ll find everything from lomo photography to quirky illustration, from photorealism to caricature and abstraction. “There is definitely a gap between people who run art sites and craft sites” he says, “I wanted to make a website that didn’t really have that boundary, and was just stuff that I like.”
Balancing a well-curated visual collection with community-building activities is often a challenging task. Jeff has found this balance by providing ways for people to interact—the main venue being regular collaborative art projects, compiled into online galleries.
In the time since his first community project went online, he has noticed a significant jump in the number of participants, and has increased the complexity of the projects as more and more people get involved. He began with a simple task—take a photograph of a sunset—a project that had approximately 40 participants. His latest project, a series of reader-submitted postcards entitled Free Encouragement, had over 400 participants. “Hopefully it just keeps growing and growing,” Jeff says, “That’s the part that is most exciting for me. I like seeing the artwork that is submitted to the projects, reading the comments, meeting people around Vancouver who have submitted something, and right away having something to talk about.”
Looking forward, Jeff has been collecting numerous ideas for projects, all inspired by his goal to help like-minded people connect with each other. In addition to expanding the community section of his site, he hopes to add a curated online commercial gallery where visitors can buy original artwork from the artist. Jeff wants to also bring this sense of collaboration into the offline world, working with a local gallery or art school to produce a show that encourages inclusivity and includes a mix of established, emerging and student artists.
Other plans in the works include a film festival, a children’s book and a capsule collection of t-shirts that is still under wraps. “I’m an idea person more than a production person,” he says, “so anything that I do will take a team of collaborators to pull it off. It’s definitely been cool in the past five or six months to be meeting all of these people within Vancouver that are all doing really creative things, and think about the ways that we could work together.” His enthusiasm for the future is contagious, leaving many excited to get involved with Jeff’s next great idea.
Words: Shallom Johnson
