Sure, Instagram is full of cappuccino pictures and “me and my friends at the bar” snapshots, but some of app’s most popular users take some truly gorgeous photos that would fit right in on the wall of an art gallery. And that’s just what CanvasPop, the company that provides custom canvas printing services for digital data like Instagram photos and Facebook pictures, is aiming to provide with its new Limited, or “LTD,” site.
LTD is a flash sales site for curated digital and Instagram art from select high-profile artists and celebrities. LTD, which launched today with work from Cole Rise (he designed Instagram’s logo, and the service’s “Rise” filter is his namesake), will feature each artist for a few days and sell his or her work on a numbered print. Each print is accompanied by a gallery card that’s digitally signed by the artist. Prices will start at $49 for a 12″ X 12″ print.
CanvasPop takes care of all the sales, printing, shipping, and handling from its 20,000 square foot facility outside of Las Vegas, and will split the profits from each sale 50/50 with each artist, CanvasPop co-founder Adrian Salamunovic told me in an interview. The design of LTD and the flash sales aspect is meant to give the site a similar feel to a gallery exhibit, where there is also time pressure to make a buying decision. But because of its structure and the fact that it’s on the web, artists can take a much better cut of the proceeds through LTD than they would in a traditional gallery.
“An artist can make thousands of dollars with LTD, which can be very empowering,” Salamunovic said. Next on deck to exhibit on LTD are Lauren Randolph (aka Lauren Lemon) and Richard “Koci” Hernandez.
I think it’s a nice fit into the growing trend of bringing all the beautiful things we love to look at on the web into the physical realm — Sincerely and Minted are just a couple startups that have had some success in doing this. And anything that helps make the actual world around you more beautiful, while giving a nice cut of money to the artist behind the work, seems to be to be a win/win.