Interview with Jark from deviantART.com

Team deviantART are the returning champions to the GUI Olympics. In 2002, deviantART's team won more medals than any other team. The lead man behind the scenes at deviantART is Scott Jarkoff aka "Jark". He took some time out of his schedule to answer some questions on skinning, the community, and what lies ahead. 

Q: deviantART is the returning champion to the GUI Olympics. In the last GUI Olympics, your skinners dominated many of the contests. With  a little over a month left before judging even gets started, what strategies do you imagine your team going for this time?

Jark: In reality, while deviantART does have a skinning team, we are not putting together any master plan. The main purpose of the deviantART team this time around is to allow for "representation" for artists that want to participate in the GUI Olympics and "represent" deviantART. So, with that in mind, our team is really just going about creating their own ideas and running with said ideas on their own rather than having central leadership directing how things be done.

Q: In the past 2 years, deviantART has seen its popularity soar. Today,  deviantART is likely the world's most popular independent art site.  What do you contribute your success to?

Jark: The success of deviantART is attributed to a number of factors with the main one being that deviantART fills a niche that no other site does. Along with that we offer a unique set of features not found on other sites within the community and have a very easy barrier to entry.

Q: Skinning and customization in general has continued to get more and  more popular. deviantART's own skin section has continued to thrive  with high quality submissions in all kinds of areas and seen its download counts grow. What do you think makes people want to customize their computers so much?

Jark: Computers, like every other item that people use on a daily basis, are personal. I firmly believe that people that customize their computers are much happier using their systems than those that do not, because they are capable of creating an atmosphere that is more enjoyable.

We "customize" our cars, our houses, our rooms and many other things in life. Customization of ones computer is merely a natural extension to that simple theory.

Q: What do you think will happen with customization in the next 2 years? Where do you see skinning going?

Jark: I see skinning becoming more mainstream in that there will be more and more companies embracing the idea behind the ability to have their software customized. With that I believe we will see a lot more artists getting "employed" by these companies to produce skins for their software and, generally, the masses will slowly begin to see that there is more to Windows than blue, olive and silver.

Q: What feature of deviantART are you most proud of?

Jark: This is a tough question because there are so many features to be proud of. deviantART, itself, is a work of art and as an artist I do not think I really like one particular feature better than any other. It is the sum of all features that makes deviantART an enjoyable experience.

Q: Because of how popular deviantART is, it must be incredibly  expensive to run. Some people argue that advertising is enough to pay  for it. But given how bandwidth intensive deviantART is, I imagine ads don't pay the bill. What keeps deviantART going?

Jark: The advertising model is not effective for a site as large as deviantART. In fact, it costs more for advertising companies like Doubleclick to run campaigns on deviantART than revenue would be generate by said campaigns.

We have created a number of revenue generation models that help keep deviantART going. Our most popular at deviantART are subscriptions, which offer a number of exciting features that free accounts do not have. On top of subscriptions we offer a printing service which allows people to purchase prints of the digital art that artists submit. Our last form of revenue generation is selling advertising space to companies that we believe our users are interested in.

Q: If you had to describe deviantART in a single sentence, what would it be?

Jark: deviantART is the single-most exciting and compelling online digital art community that one will ever encounter.

Q:  What do you have planned for deviantART going into the future?

Jark: We are focusing development on features that are exciting for all deviantART users as well as helping secure our future. While it is a difficult line to walk we have plans that include enhancements to both free accounts and our subscription service.

Q: deviantPrints seems like a wonderful idea. Can you tell us a little bit more about it and how it works? How can artists get their works sold on it? How do users purchase artwork from it?

Jark: Artists that desire to sell their digital art on deviantPrints subscribe to our prints program, which entitles them to submit higher quality imagery and have that sold in print sizes that range between 4x6 and 20x30. Prices are completely set by the artist and based on their own desires and preferences.

Users interested in purchasing art from deviantPrints merely need to surf to http://www.deviantprints.com/ and browse it as if they were browsing deviantART. We offer a full range of purchasing options that range from online check to credit cards to paypal, with more services planned for the future.

Q: What do you think is the key ingredient in having a good, healthy  internet community?

Jark: The key ingredient is good leadership. Without good leadership, as in any community, it can not thrive. One of our most important mantra's is "lead by example" and by not following that idea it is hard for any community to continue. Internet communities are not all that different that real life communities. There needs to be a good balance between the freedoms offered and the policing of those freedoms and this is where leadership comes in.

There really is no single key ingredient however as, like any good recipe, there are a number of ingredient that, as a sun, offer a great tasting meal - in this instance, a wonderfully exciting and compelling community.