sonyamann
commented
6 years ago +1 to this idea — having more visual materials to promote the Foundation and its goals would be useful for my work in particular. We could repurpose the poster artwork for events, merch, etc. To that end it would be good to have the artists provide large-scale printable files, e.g. 24" x 36", 300dpi.
I like this aspect of the proposed plan: "To reduce artist commission fees, the artists will be free to also sell prints of their commissioned work on their own websites." It would also help seed the ecosystem, which is an explicit purpose of our grants program.
In terms of the legal arrangement, IMO it would make the most sense to have the artists do a work-for-hire. The Foundation would own the copyright, but then we would release the artworks under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, for use by the community.
Alternately, we could grant a commercial license to the individual artists in order to sell prints, but more broadly release the artworks under a _non_commercial license. However, that severely constrains what people can do with the IP.
A potential concern would be how, or whether, to coordinate this project with the Foundation's internal branding efforts.
hloo
tromer
Motivation and overview
Visual art can be an effective tool for conveying an idea or message. For-profit companies are adequately incentivized to create visual art (for example, print advertisements and video commercials) for marketing their goods and services, but they are not adequately incentivized to create visual art aimed at educating the public on matters related to the public good. Non-profits, like the Ad Council, often step in to fill the gap, helping to fund and develop visual art for "public service announcements." The non-profit Zcash Foundation can play a similar role, funding visual art to promote ideas and messages central to the Foundation's mission. (As part of its form 1023 submission to the Internal Revenue Service, the Foundation stated that it will "educate the public regarding cryptocurrency through a variety of potential means.")
The goal of this proposal is to develop a series of posters (similar to the World War II home front posters developed in many different countries during the 1940s) to educate the public about the importance of financial privacy and promote Zcash as an important tool for achieving financial privacy in the future.
The end product will be a series of posters, suitable for printing and framing, downloadable for free from the Foundation's website. The Foundation will be free to disseminate printed copies of the posters if it so chooses.
Technical/Logistical Approach
Artists will be contacted and selected based on evaluations of their prior work related to poster art. Commission fees will be negotiated, along with contractual terms that ensure that the Foundation will be free to disseminate the posters as the Foundation sees fit. To reduce artist commission fees, the artists will be free to also sell prints of their commissioned work on their own websites.
If applicable, permission to use the Zcash trademarks on the posters will be obtained from the Zcash Company.
The posters will be designed and published one poster at a time, so the Zcash community at large can give feedback and influence the design of later posters.
Team background and qualifications
The team will consist of one lead, Howard Loo (a software developer and attorney with no artistic skill, but with experience in collecting art, including vintage poster art), working in conjunction with one or more graphic artists that have proven backgrounds in poster art. Howard Loo will take no compensation for this project. All grant money will go towards commissioning the art, so all the grant money will go to the artists. Furthermore, any cost-overruns will be covered out of pocket by Howard Loo.
Evaluation Plan
Although artistic quality is in the eye of the holder, the goal is to create posters on par with the quality of the fantasy travel posters published by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (but not necessarily in the same style).
A potential metric of success is the number of times that the digital posters are download. Another potential metric of success is the number of printed posters disseminated.
Security Considerations
Not applicable.
Schedule
The first poster will be published no later than August 1, 2018, with the rest of the posters following one at a time. The last poster will be published no later than December 1, 2018.
Budget and justification
$2,500, which will cover several posters. As mentioned above, 100% of the funding will go to the artist commissions. Any left over funding will be donated back to the Foundation in full.
Direct contact
Howard Loo can be contacted via forum.z.cash (username: hloo) or chat.zcashcommunity.com (username: hloo).