Support AMV – A Motley Vision

AMV is now de-monetized

Back in March I quietly removed the Amazon.com link in the sidebar, and stopped linking books in individual posts to Amazon. I have also reduced the prices on the AMV t-shirts to zero commission (or in the case of the Minerva Red and the esoteric LDS — just the commission for the designers).

I am grateful for all of you who supported the blog by buying t-shirts or using the referral links. All told, I received about $160 over the three years that the blog was monetized, which helped support the web hosting needed to keep AMV, LDS Cinema Online and Wilderness Interface Zone up and running. Thank you for that.

Now I’m de-monetizing. In particular, I didn’t like feeling obligated to link to Amazon. And I want to make the shirts as affordable as possible. And I am using the web host to also host my own personal web presence. And I just didn’t like the hassle of dealing with the administrative stuff — it wasn’t any big deal, but it was one more thing to think about.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t still support AMV. Read, comment. Friend us on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Drop one or all of us a line every so often. And, heck, buy a t-shirt. I won’t get money for it anymore, but every t-shirt sold makes me happy because it means my crazy ideas are out there in the wild.

And this also doesn’t mean that we won’t still tell you when one of us has a book you can buy or a show you can go see. There will be shilling (have I mentioned Monsters & Mormons?). But this blog specifically — it’s on me. And again: many thanks to all of you who clicked on an Amazon link or bought a t-shirt. And thanks, but now, no thanks.

Back in March I quietly removed the Amazon.com link in the sidebar, and stopped linking books in individual posts to Amazon. I have also reduced the prices on the AMV t-shirts to a zero commission (or in the case of the Minerva Red and the esoteric LDS — just the commission for the designers).

This doesn’t mean that you can’t still support AMV. Read; comment. Friend us on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Drop one or all of us a line every so often. And, heck, . The blog won’t get money for it anymore (although, as I mentioned, the designers will get a bit), but every t-shirt sold makes me happy because it means my crazy ideas are out there in the wild.

Support AMV: Holiday 2009 edition

Many thanks to all of you who have supported AMV since we rolled out the t-shirts and the Amazon affiliates link late last year — it really does help, and we’ve almost covered all my web hosting costs for a full 12 month period. I’ve been getting some deals in my e-mail so I thought I’d go ahead and post them here — I’ll also add more deals as comments to this post as the come in throughout the holiday season. For now, here are the so-called Black Friday deals (although they aren’t confined to Friday this year because retailers are a bit desperate):

Amazon.com

Click here for Amazon.com deals (they start now and run through Sunday). If you use that link, AMV receives a small percentage of whatever you spend at Amazon.com during that session. Note that it doesn’t matter if you buy any of the Black Friday deals — you can go straight to searching for something you really want and our affiliate code should stick (but it doesn’t go across browser sessions or if you enter Amazon.com in any other way than by clicking on the above link — or the one at the top of the left column).

AMV T-shirts

Spreadshirt deals: Nov. 27-30 you can receive 25% off all orders over $40. Use the following coupon code during checkout. For the U.S. use CYBER29; For Canada use CADCYBER29.

From now until sometime in December you can receive free shipping on all orders over $50. Use the coupon code FREESHIP1. Canadians can receive $6.99 off of shipping with CADFREESHIP1.

Here are direct links to the three AMV t-shirts: A Motley Vision in Deseret Alphabet | Minerva Teichert Red | The Covertly Geeky “LDS” design

Thanks!

Minerva Teichert Red: New AMV t-shirt

Click here to view the Minerva Red T-shirts (in black or white with sizes for men, women and children)

Remember Anneke’s awesome post about Minerva Teichert’s use of a particular shade of red and how she and her friend wished it came as a crayon? Well I suggested that it’d make for a great t-shirt, and Anneke, who is a design goddess, came through with a pop-art Minerva Red crayon design. I really like it. I like how it both celebrates and subverts latter-day pop art cute by paying homage to a preeminent, beloved LDS artist and her love for the Savior.

Here’s the link to the AMV Spreadshirt Store where the Minerva Red t-shirts can be purchased. The design is available on either black or white shirts, including three different styles for women and, for the first time — children’s sizes. Proceeds from the sales of Minerva Red products will be split between supporting the hosting costs for A Motley Vision and helping Anneke pay for grad school. Continue reading “Minerva Teichert Red: New AMV t-shirt”

AMV weekend update

It’s summer. I’m feeling lazy. There’s been a drop in weekend comments. Therefore, Short Story Friday is going on hiatus until after labor day. BUT… when it comes back, it will have some new friends. It’s been a blast focusing on stories, but it’s time for our weekends to include a broader palette — the literati should not live on short fiction alone. So there will be an aforepromised analog to Short Story Friday focusing on poetry (no clever name for that yet — suggestions welcome). And I’m going to start a new series called Weekend (Re)Visitors, which will feature brief posts reflecting on and/or quoting from a novel, film or play. The revisiting will sometimes be one of us looking back at a work we’ve already written about and sometimes be a work that’s new to us, but has already been written about by others.

And while I’m doing administrative announcements: AMV’s webhost recently raised monthly hosting fees. It’s still the cheapest of the reliable webhosts, but that means an extra $10 per year. If you plan on doing any back to school shopping, please consider using our Amazon affiliate link (we get a small percentage of any sales that are made during the shopping session a consumer has after clicking through to Amazon with that link). My last t-shirt design generated a lot of traffic (more than 500 visitors in two days to the AMV Spreadshirt store), but no sales. It was perhaps a bit too geeky and esoteric. I’m going to roll out another design in August so if you want to support AMV, but don’t like the two designs we have so far, don’t buy a pity shirt — wait and see.

New t-shirt: The coolest, geekiest, most esoteric way to show you are LDS

View the LDS in Geek speak t-shirts in four different color combos (sizes/styles for men and women)

Direct links: white on blue | red on gray | green on black | black on white

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At long last, here is the second in the series of esoteric yet awesome Mormon-themed T-shirt designs that we’re creating to help support the hosting costs for AMV. I’m proud to announce:

LDS (lowercase) in Deseret Alphabet hexadecimal code

Bear with me here as I explain the utter coolness of this concept.

1. Take the letters LDS.

2. Transliterate them in to their Deseret Alphabet characters.

3. Represent those characters as their hexadecimal character in unicode and stack them top to bottom.

4. Choose the lowercase versions of the letters because those particular hex strings look cooler than the uppercase ones.

5. Use the awesome font Singularity by LDS designer, mobile UI guru and font enthusiast Jared Benson.

6. Create four killer color combos for the AMV Spreadshirt store: white on navy, black on white, AMV red* on grey and (my personal favorite) terminal green** on black. And offer both men’s and women’s versions, of course.

THE RESULT = the coolest, geekiest, most esoteric way to sort-of show off your LDS-ness ever (and support AMV at the same time). Convinced or just want to take a look? Click through to the AMV Spreadshirt Store. A few more details after the jump. Continue reading “New t-shirt: The coolest, geekiest, most esoteric way to show you are LDS”

A report on AMV t-shirts and Support AMV

My awesome parents sent me one of the AMV in Deseret Alphabet t-shirts for Christmas. I had asked for it, of course. But that did not diminish the excitement of opening the gift.

My first impressions:

1. The white on black looks really cool. And the size of the lettering is perfect.

2. The weight of the t-shirt is quite good and I wouldn’t go with a lighter weight t-shirt (at least not for white on black).

3. The printing job is also quality. It’s a bit hard to tell from the photo, but the lines are crisp. I don’t know that the plot printing technique is amazingly better out of the gate, but

Photo after the jump as well as an update on Support AMV.

Continue reading “A report on AMV t-shirts and Support AMV”

Announcing: Support AMV (killer t-shirts and more)

A Motley Vision will turn five this June 2009. Since AMV moved to its own domain in June 2006, I (by the way, this is William in admin mode) have paid for the hosting costs to the tune of $70 a year*. Not outrageous, but I’d like to distribute the costs if I can. Even more: I’d like to do it in ways that are fun and cool and experiment with some of the concepts we kick around here at AMV.

First up: Killer t-shirts

We’re launching a Spreadshirt store. The first offering is the traditional “advertise our blog t-shirt” — but with a twist. I’m not too keen on turning you all into walking billboards. In fact, I generally refuse to wear any item of clothing that prominently displays a logo. So here’s what I have come up with: the phrase A Motley Vision (which as you will recall is from an Orson F. Whitney poem) transliterated into the Deseret Alphabet. The t-shirts come in either white lettering on black t-shirts or black lettering on white t-shirts. The transliteration has been verified by AMV’s own Deseret Alphabet expert Katherine Morris and uses a true-type font created by Joshua Erickson. I don’t want you to advertise AMV: I want you to non-advertise it. And in so doing connect with the funky Mormon history we know and love. I personally love this concept. I have no idea how others are going to react. But for me, the idea of this alien set of characters on your chest that’s a phrase from the overwrought epic poem written by the godfather of Mormon literature and the name of the premiere Mormon arts blog totally cracks me up. And is also very, very cool.

Here’s what it looks like (click to view a larger size):

Continue reading “Announcing: Support AMV (killer t-shirts and more)”