“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” With that in mind, the theme of ICON8, The Illustration Conference, is Work+Play.

In a further riff on that notion, the organizers just announced Damial Kulash as one of the keynote speakers for the conference being held this summer.

Best known as the singer for the band OK Go, tagged “the first post-internet band,” Kulash is has taken a lead in an emerging class of independent creative entrepreneurs making art in both digital and physical spaces.

Having formed his own label after millions of views of his first YouTube videos failed to generate income for the band, he has become an independent producer of promotional videos made on the spot for appearances around the world.

See and hear how OK Go and its partners filmed a video using the Sony Xperia Z to capture the sound and atmosphere of the Northern Lights, here. More OK Go on YouTube.

This led to the band’s partnership with Chevrolet, which put a new slant on product placement as it netted awards at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, opening doors for continuing brand partnerships. Kulash has identified brand sponsors as preferred substitutes for industry music labels. This has allowed the band the independence it needed to act as its own media company for projects of its own making. Among the sponsors for OK Go projects to date are State Farm, Google Chrome, Saatchi & Saatchie and Sony.

In an interview for Fast Company, Kulash said, “We don’t recognize as clear a distinction as the rest of the world does between songwriting, video making, and dreaming up the live show, projects, apps, or games. There are a lot of creative entrepreneurial ideas in the overlap of all these things, and that’s what excites us the most.” 

ICON8 The Illustration Conference, takes place in Portland, OR July 9-12. Information. As of yesterday, only 5 tickets remain. 
Ellen Weinstein, President of ICON8, credits Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield, authors of the book, The Art of Doing: How to Be a Superachiever, for bringing Damian Kulash to her attention. Information.

This just in:  For No Good Reason, a film celebrating the art and life of illustrator Ralph Steadman, opens tomorrow at the Angelika Film Center, with a Q&A following. Information. The film, directed by Charlie Paul, is described as “a riot of stories and images that literally blast out of the screen as we take a trip through the wild and dark days of Steadman’s time and consignments with ‘Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas’ writer Hunter S. Thompson, the Rumble in the Jungle, gun fights with literary giant William S Burroughs and his fiercely heart-felt politics.”