An Interview about MyDrawings.com

Scott and I were contacted by a group of MBA students studying Marketing Management at MGSM. They were asked to prepare a short presentation about a web 2.0 company and chose to present on MyDrawings.com. I thought others would be interested in the response to their questions.

  • What instigated the creation of this site and how have you been able to create awareness of it?

    MyDrawings.com was created based on an idea that Scott Johnson came up
    with. Scott works as an artist, podcaster and designer and has a
    quite impressive portfolio including his web comic at MyExtraLife.com.
    Scott and I (Dennis Muhlestein, AllMyBrain.com) work together in
    various different ventures and he approached me with the idea of
    creating a virtual canvas for people to draw on. The idea is based on
    an experience Scott had during his art classes. The teacher provided
    a great big piece of butcher paper for the students to doodle on.
    They would draw their own sketches, then interconnect them with what
    others did. Scott said it would be cool if users could do that online
    and I said I could do it. Scott already owned the domain name
    MyDrawings.com which was a great fit with what we’d come up with.

    Scott originally posted links to MyDrawings.com on his blog at
    MyExtraLife.com. The original version didn’t require registration and
    we quickly had a canvas filled will all kinds of creative things.
    Somebody drew a giant picture of Mario which gained popularity on digg.com.

  • Did you have a marketing strategy and target audience in mind when you first launched?

    After the initial viral popularity, we haven’t really tried to market
    our product, but we have tried to make sure our keyword density for
    drawings terms was reasonable so that we can be easily found when
    searching for drawing or “online drawing”. We’ve not really tailored
    to any specific crowd although we have filtered inappropriate drawings
    so that younger or sensitive audiences wouldn’t be offended by
    material on the site.

  • Has it created a social platform for doodlers?

    Absolutely. We’ve seen this manifest in a number of ways. One of the
    earliest was a giant picture where the user didn’t have time to color
    in all the squares. He simply made a large X that was the appropriate
    color where he wanted. Other people began to help fill in the squares
    to complete the images.

    We also see themes in a lot of images. One user will create a road,
    and another will extend th road. A third comes along and draws the
    road going off a cliff. The process will continue and the result
    really has been quite entertaining.

    In terms of groups of people, a person can add a watch to an artist
    they like. As that artist continues to draw new images, they get
    emails informing them to come back and check out the new content.
    Users can comment on drawings and send messages. We plan on adding
    forums and additional communication tools as time allows in the
    future.

  • Do you have longer term objectives and a plan for the World Canvas?

    We plan on adding the ability to print in the near future. In
    addition to printing individual images, it would be nice to choose
    views from the World Canvas that could be printed as a poster or other
    size media.

  • Our group are completing their own doodles as I write and would love to see the world canvas displayed in a Museum of Modern Art.

    This would be fabulous. We haven’t yet figured out how to create
    something of that size but would be glad to work with someone in the
    future to publish some of the art that way.

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2 Responses to An Interview about MyDrawings.com

  1. PrancingJean says:

    I just discovered today that My Drawings .com has closed down and it’s sad as I did lose contact with some people on this web site.

    I would like to be able to re open it if possible as I believe it was very beneficial for many people world wide.

    I also was able to use it to try out a response to a possible painting and found it very useful, as I have created many paintings iniatially started on this web site.

    Pamela

  2. jaydub says:

    Wow, it’s been a long time gone, now. Forgive my tardiness, but I would like to say I loved that site, and thank you. It was a terrific concept. Seems a shame not to have found a gallery to sponsor a show, perhaps by printing each square 4 inches large and reproducing the World Canvas.

    Best wishes,
    jeff w.

Comments are closed.