ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

ADAPT AND SELL MORE ART IN 2012

 

Lori McNee

 

 

“Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt. Only by being open to change will you have a true opportunity to get the most from your talent.”

—Nolan Ryan

 

Most likely if you are reading this article right now, you are interested in selling more art in 2012. There is no magic bullet or quick way to success; however, artists who are open to new ideas and have a willingness to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace will have a head start over their peers and competitors. It is time for you to take charge of your art career.

In this challenging economy, being a successful artist not only consists of creating great art, but is also about building a strong business. The small businesses that have succeeded over the past few years have been based on adaptability, trust, longevity and personal branding.

As an artist myself, I understand that artisans tend to be frugal. Nevertheless, it does take some money to make money. The good news is, many of the ideas listed below can be accomplished with little or no monetary investment other than good ol’ sweat equity. Implementing the following marketing tips into your art business plan will lead you toward more art sales.

 

Lori McNee is an internationally recognized professional artist and art-marketing expert, who writes about art and marketing tips on her blog finearttips.com. Lori is an exhibiting member of Oil Painters of America and ranks as one of the most influential artists and powerful women on Twitter. She was named a Twitter Powerhouse by The Huffington Post.

DETERMINE YOUR GOALS

Goal setting is important, because once you have your goals in place it is easier to achieve them. Goals are much like a road map with mile-markers along the way. They give you a clear plan that details where you are going and how you are going to get there.

To begin, you need to determine what you want. Identify your short-term and long-term goals. Goals do not have to be overwhelming. For instance, let’s say you are an amateur artist, but you dream of having your work represented by a top gallery in New York City. Most likely that goal would be unrealistic and difficult to achieve in one step. It is easier and more realistic to set your goal within workable units, like mile-markers.

1. A short-term and reachable goal would be to first start perfecting your craft.

2. The next goal would be to develop a cohesive and consistent body of work.

3. Then, progress into building your collector base by selling your photographs in a co-op gallery or coffee shop, or from your studio.

4. The next goal would be to enter a juried exhibition, arts and crafts show, or local gallery for representation.

5. A fifth goal might be attained once you have consistently sold your art, gained the respect of your fellow art peers, been solicited by galleries, and had your art published in national magazines.

6. The long-term goal would be to approach that top New York gallery for representation.

Visualize where you would like to see yourself and your art career in one year, then in five years. Do you understand your potential market? Where does your work belong? Your potential market might include commercial galleries, university galleries, art fairs, art salons, juried exhibitions, public art projects, co-op galleries, museums, and more. Write them down and tack a list of goals next to your computer or bathroom mirror. Think big, but start small. Small decisions are important for your long-term success. Be patient and reward yourself when you meet each goal or mile-marker along the way.

Garnering a feature in a national magazine helps build exposure, credibility and respect amongst your peers.

SELL YOURSELF

Years ago, while working in retail, I learned this valuable lesson: The number one ingredient to successful sales in any business is to know how to sell yourself. If you can sell yourself, you can sell anything.

BUILD YOUR BRAND

A great way to begin “selling yourself” is to build your brand identity. A strong brand is invaluable and serves to communicate credibility to your prospective customers and colleagues.

This is equally important for all fine artists, designers, crafters, photographers, illustrators and freelance artists and more. You want your brand to reside in the hearts and minds of your clients, collectors, prospective customers and competitors.

For example, famous artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson, Claude Monet and Frida Kahlo’s distinctive “brands” are forever etched in our minds. Your brand identity will help set you apart from the pack.

Start a Facebook fan page for your art business. With a fan page you can promote your art and products and share your portfolio and videos. This is a great way to build your fan and collector base. Use the other social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to build your brand and to promote yourself and your art business. (See “Secrets to Social Media Success” later in this section.)

Be sure to personalize your online image and brand with your picture or avatar. Using the same recognizable image on all your online sites will further promote your brand.

Deliver what you promise. Primary motivators of brand loyalty are trust and a consistent experience. If you say you’re going to have the proofs ready by Friday, make sure they are ready. A reputation takes a lifetime to build and an instant to destroy. Protect your brand.

Think of your profile picture as your personal logo. A great profile picture immediately states who and what you are. Your picture should be friendly and it is best to make eye contact with the camera. I chose to wear red because it is a “power color” and grabs attention, but the blue apron helps to calm it down. Blue builds trust and confidence. This attention to detail will enhance your brand.

UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE AND START A BLOG

Most likely you have a website with information about your art and pricing, bio and résumé, and maybe a cool video or two. You might be wondering why no one is visiting your website.

The easiest way for people to discover your website is to start a blog.

On your blog, write about things your fans, artists and collectors care about. Encourage feedback on your blog and be sure to personally answer all incoming comments and questions. Customers will enjoy the extra information and personal touch. Potential collectors will have reasons to choose you.

Technology is increasing in importance in your client’s life, so you need to stay current. There are many free business-marketing tools that can be used to promote your site.

A good blog is easy to navigate and has a variety of content and interesting illustrations to grab the attention of the reader. You can see that I have made my social media buttons and newsletter subscription link easily accessible.

For example, you can easily embed video, audio podcasts or images in your posts. Be sure to integrate widgets and your social media channels, including Facebook “like” buttons, Tweet This and Share, to drive traffic to your site and make it easy for your readers to share your interesting content.

Blogs are far more versatile than traditional websites and are one of the best ways for small businesses to gain exposure, especially if you are an artist, photographer or crafter.

FOCUS ON CUSTOMER COMMITMENT AND RELATIONSHIPS

With the onslaught of social media, customer intimacy is easy to provide and is expected more than ever. It is not uncommon for customers, collectors and potential clients to engage with each other on sites such as Facebook and Twitter before they engage with you.

The Internet has changed the way we do business. Everything happens so quickly and the competition is increasing. A client’s continuing patronage is no longer guaranteed. Artists must encourage their customer’s loyalty and advocacy through word of mouth. As a result, artists have to find a way to quickly respond to their customer’s wants and needs because consumer loyalty is a thing of the past.

If you do not react quickly, your client will find another artist who will. Stop thinking of your potential clients as dollar bills and understand them as real people whose lives are positively affected by what you can do and provide for them.

Provide top-drawer service, and do not neglect repeat customers. It takes five times the effort to acquire new clients than to repeat a sale to an existing customer. Keep the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule in mind: 20 percent of your collectors will produce 80 percent of your sales.

DIRECT MARKETING

Direct marketing is being revolutionized by commingling old-world direct marketing techniques and mediums with current methods of the new digital marketing tools. This new “hybrid marketing” is a blend of online and offline methods. Direct marketing now consists of the Internet, mobile and direct mail.

The experts say you will find your marketing power double by simply diverting your traditional advertising dollars into direct marketing, and that will drive better return on investment for your art brand and business. This is good news considering many artists have drastically reduced their marketing budgets. Nevertheless, competition increases during a recession, which generates new talent and innovation. It is not a time for you to lay low.

Return to the marketplace

Marketing began hundreds of years ago by literally going to a marketplace to sell a good or service. Artisans and craftsmen would engage buyers face to face. Today, people still want to buy from those they know, like and trust—gallery receptions, arts and crafts shows, social media and blogging helps make this possible. It is important to think of your product as an extension of yourself.

Get online

Consider art registries and websites like deviantART, Flickr, Etsy and eBay. Many of these sites allow individuals to sell arts and crafts without having to operate a storefront business of their own. Market your art business and product via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and remember to start a blog.

Business cards

Be prepared. It’s a good idea to have a professional stack of business cards on hand. In this day and age, be sure to include your name, e-mail address, website/blog URL address as well as any social media handles, and your cell phone number. Add a logo or an image of your art to further your brand identity. *Tip: Print up bookmarks with the same information and leave a stack at your local bookstore and coffee shop!

Business relationships

Don’t forget to nurture your existing relationships with your galleries and their employees. Reach out to interior decorators, real estate agents, house stagers, restaurant owners, corporate art buyers and private art dealers, and let them bring the clients.

Similar to social media, the French marketplace is a vibrant community. Without the middleman, vendors and buyers communicate directly on a one-on-one basis in order to buy or sell goods.

Artists have a tendency to concentrate on personal excellence, career achievement and individual sales. However, there are wonderful rewards to be made from building alliances amongst your peers. These mutually beneficial friendships help to facilitate an environment filled with inspiration and abundance, rather than an environment of isolation and competition.

Create a simple system to manage your new friends and contacts. There is software available to help you with these tasks and to record new contacts in a database, phone book, or whatever works best for you. After you exchange cards with a new friend or prospective client, jot down where you met, what you discussed and how and when you should follow up as a reminder.

With the increased use of social media by artists, trust and open communication is needed more than ever between the gallery owner and the creative. In the picture above, Kneeland Gallery owner Diane Kneeland and I share a laugh at my recent exhibition.

Send out a newsletter

Once you have your blog up and running, be sure to send out a newsletter. Dollar for dollar, newsletters are one of the most effective ways to reach your targeted market. Creating newsletters can be hard work. Decide on the number of newsletters you will be able to produce each year and stick to it.

Use your newsletter to further build your credibility, brand and professionalism. The newsletter will inform your subscribers and prospective collectors of special announcements, offers and coming events. Make sure it is unique and reflects your brand.

Of course you want to sell your product, but you can’t ask subscribers to “buy” all at once. If you spam your readers, they will unsubscribe to your newsletter. Instead, try including just one call to action in each individual newsletter. Focus on just one promotion and your customers will likely pay better attention.

Note: E-mail is not for everyone. Although most people prefer e-mail, there are those who still prefer getting their mail the old-fashioned way. Consider sending a postcard or paper newsletter from time to time.

MOBILE MARKETING

Mobile marketing describes marketing with a mobile device, such as a cell phone. This has exploded with Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android operating system, the iPad and smart phones. In fact, as of 2011, over 50 percent of all U.S. homes owned at least one smart phone.

Mobile devices are redefining the shopping habits of customers. Smart phones and other mobile devices act as research and shopping tools.

Today, more and more artists, galleries and museums are using smart phones for marketing. For instance, imagine a slide show of your photographs, a video demo, or your website being instantly delivered to a potential collector’s smart phone. By using a tag you can make that vision a reality.

A tag is a barcode that can be placed in magazines, on business cards, brochures or postcards, or can even hang next to your photographs in a gallery. After the tag reader application is downloaded onto a smart phone, the phone’s camera becomes a “scanner.” The lens will detect the code that will trigger the information to be displayed on your client’s phone. Keep in mind, to be successful, the mobile activity must be engaging and relevant, and there must be a call to action. Tag readers have helped to revive the print marketing industry!

SOCIAL MEDIA

Over the years, “social media” has become a buzzword. Wikipedia’s definition of social media is “a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value driven content.” The “co-creation of content” means that social media is about we, not about me.

Social media is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. Artists should embrace the free marketing power of social media. Millions of people could possibly become customers. This is not possible in the off-line world.

Build your brand

Social media is the quickest way to build brand recognition for you and your art business. A strong brand is invaluable and serves to communicate credibility to your prospective customers and business associates.

Marketing

Social media is already changing the rules of the marketplace across the globe. We now have access to literally millions of potential customers. These prospective buyers feel more comfortable about a brand if they can interact with it via social media. Use social media channels to send out videos, images of your photographs and links to your latest blog post, and to share interesting content. You can easily drive huge amounts of traffic to your website or blog using social media. Utilize social media to get the word out about your art business in a way that promotes conversation and leads to sales.

Networking

Being an artist can be a solitary occupation, but with social networking, you’re not alone! Use social media to get instant feedback on your latest painting or blog post, or ask for a critique on your work. You will learn from other artists and business leaders, gain inspiration from others and build lasting relationships.

Keep your finger on the pulse

Remember, creatives are the movers and shakers of the world. We need to stay informed and on the cutting edge. Artists should be aware of new trends in design, decorating, fashion and technology and how it influences art and sales.

TAKE CALCULATED RISKS

People like to stay with what is familiar and safe. But, if we eliminate calculated risks, we remove the opportunity for growth in business and in our craft. As a small business entrepreneur, if you try something new and it doesn’t work, you can easily change your strategy. But, you need to be accountable for the inherent risks and the outcome.

Networking with other artists and building a good working relationship between you and your gallery are keys to success and will eventually lead to more sales. This synergy also builds a sense of community, trust and propriety.

Go where the action is. Visit gallery receptions and rub elbows with successful artists and gallery owners. Attend lectures, symposiums and events held in museums and art centers. Enter juried exhibitions, art fairs, local art contests and competitions.

Send press releases to local newspapers. Call the editor of the art magazines within your niche and request an interview. Contact a popular art blog and submit a guest article. Network outside your circle. Think creatively. Talk to your banker, accountant, dentist, florist and doorman. Ask them for business referrals and do a favor for them in return.

During these uncertain times of economic challenges it is tempting to escape into a creative safe haven in your studio and withdraw from extra challenges. But remember Neil Simon’s words of wisdom, “If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”

DON’T BE AFRAID TO FAIL

There is no real secret to success. In order to succeed, you must challenge yourself, be passionate about your craft, perfect your skill as a artist, and learn from your mistakes along the way.

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure and an inability to adapt to change. Some of the ideas listed in this article might seem unconventional and intimidating. But, if you adapt just a few of these new ideas into your art marketing strategy, you will begin to see favorable results, which will lead to more sales in 2012. Good luck and I hope to see you on Twitter!

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

SECRETS TO SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS

Twitter, Facebook and YouTube

 

by Lori McNee

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By now, most artists probably use social media in one form or another. On a daily basis I meet creatives with a natural liking for social media and its networking capabilities. However, many of these talented individuals still do not understand how to harness the power of social media to their advantage.

Social media offers large-scale reach for little cost other than your time. The successes you reap from social media will directly depend upon the amount of time you are willing to devote to this free marketing medium. There has never been another era in business when an individual could reach out to hundreds or even thousands of customers in one day. Social marketing eliminates the middleman and provides artists with the unique opportunity to have a direct relationship with their customers.

For me, the main purpose of social media is to drive traffic back to my blogs, lorimcnee.com and finearttips.com. Social media has put my name on the map, has given me international recognition, and been the lifeblood to my blogs and art business. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are the fastest ways to build brand recognition for you and your art business. I use all three of these social media channels quite differently.

Twitter is possibly the most intimidating social platform because everything happens so quickly. Once you jump in and start engaging, you will see that Twitter also has the broadest reach. Twitter updates reach like-minded people quickly and can effectively market a person or a service. Twitter offers an immediate response and is very addictive once you get the hang of it.

 

Lori McNee is an internationally recognized professional artist and art-marketing expert, who writes about art and marketing tips on her blog finearttips.com. Lori is an exhibiting member of Oil Painters of America and ranks as one of the most influential artists and powerful women on Twitter. She was named a Twitter Powerhouse by The Huffington Post.

Twitter is much like a cocktail party where you can quickly meet and exchange information. But, the social etiquette rules still apply. Would you just walk up to someone and say, “Hey, please buy my art.” No, that is just rude. You need to connect and build a relationship first.

Facebook on the other hand, is more like a dinner party, where you build upon conversations and further develop your relationships. Facebook is about connecting with people and prospective customers you have already met. Facebook is a bit easier to market tangible products, such as paintings.

Facebook’s platform appeals to the social butterfly and can also be very addictive because it allows people to connect with old and new friends. In fact, Facebook has replaced e-mail, chat and photo sharing for many users.

YouTube is like inviting the person into your home movie theater to learn more about you, your product or service, and what you do. Currently, YouTube is the favorite site when searching for online video.

Remember this: Nearly every single person who uses social media wants to sell you something, whether it is art, real estate, travel, information or a service. This is the trick—how do you learn to market and brand yourself correctly on social media?

Brand identity differentiates you from the rest of the pack. We have all heard the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But, on social media sites, your cover or profile is judged and very quickly.

Below are my secrets to your social media success:

TWITTER TIPS

Name

Your name is the first thing that people will see on Twitter. Use the name you want to represent your art brand. For example, when I first started tweeting I used @lorimcnee, but quickly changed my Twitter handle to @lorimcneeartist and rapidly gained loyal followers. Why? Because it is easier for people to instantly associate me as an artist this way. Also, when people do a Twitter search for “artist,” my name appears.

Avatar

On Twitter it is important to make your profile picture friendly. Recent studies have found that your profile picture or avatar is more than just a pretty face. In fact, one’s avatar affects how a message is received, and also how individuals interpret it. The higher the friendliness of the avatar, the more intimate people are willing to be with strangers. It is not a rule, but I suggest using an image of yourself rather than a business logo or a painting as your avatar.

At first glance, the famous Twitter logo might look like child’s play. But don’t let this little bluebird fool you—there is a lot of power in a tweet!

To further your brand identity, it is a good idea to use the same avatar on all your social media sites. You can change your photo, but, be forewarned, this will confuse some of your followers. It is best to wait until you have a loyal following before you make any major changes.

Profile/bio

On any social media channel, the profile or bio is your big branding opportunity to make your unique mark. This is your virtual personality. Sound interesting, witty, or clever, but, whatever you do, choose your profile words wisely. These few words will say a lot to the world about who and what you are. Make sure to include the link to your blog or website. If you don’t have a website, link to your Facebook page.

Custom landing page

Consider creating a custom Twitter landing page by using a site such as TwitBacks or Free Twitter Designer. A custom page is another branding opportunity. Potential followers and customers will immediately understand who and what you are just by your custom page. I made a collage of my artwork, together with some images of me painting in the field—at once, this states, “artist.”

Get followers

Once you have an informative and engaging profile page, you will automatically start attracting new followers. You have already begun to build your brand.

Interestingly, I have found that most creatives use Twitter as a way to connect with other creatives. True, this is a great networking opportunity, but they are missing an important marketing opportunity to reach out to prospective customers.

Be a good follower

Decide if you want to actively engage with your followers, or if you want to follow everyone back. Do what works best for you. It is nice to reach out to your friends and followers. Do not forget the little guy as your following grows. They helped you get to where you are now, and they are loyal. I do my best to thank my followers because I truly appreciate them.

Twitter is all about making friendly connections in order to build a strong social networking community through your following.

It is good to reach out to some of the bigger Twitter names. These tweeters have a lot of experience and if they retweet (RT) you, it helps with your own Twitter influence.

What to tweet

To gain new followers, be sure to pass along good content. Your followers are looking for tweets with value. If they do not find it, they will either delete you or forget you.

Engage with your followers and don’t focus on selling. Focus on giving. Learn to speak with your audience, not at them. You are here to build valuable, real relationships. By engaging your market, you are creating a community around your brand. This will lead to trust and eventually sales. About 80 percent of my tweets and retweets share useful information and resources, including links to my blog. The remaining 20 percent of the tweets are reaching out to my following, small talk, inquiries and relationship building.

Share photos of your latest painting using Twitpic or yfrog, ask for feedback from your followers and get instant replies, or share inspiring quotes. Link to your YouTube or Vimeo videos as a great way to engage your following in conversation and strengthen your brand. Learn how to abbreviate your tweets. You can use URL shorteners such as bit.ly or TinyURL. Manage your Twitter following with helpful applications such as TweetDeck or HootSuite. To be effective, plan to tweet at least once a day. Ten to fifteen minutes of tweeting is enough to keep a consistent presence on Twitter.

Share links to your latest blog posts, and recycle your blog’s old content. Make sure your Twitter stream is interesting and vary the content and cadence of your tweets. Be consistent with quality. You can tweet a lot or just a few times a day—this is a personal and business choice.

Make sure your last tweet counts. At the end of each Twitter session, leave a valuable tweet. Your potential followers will judge whether or not to follow you by your last Twitter update.

Reach beyond your niche on Twitter

When I first started Twitter back in 2009, my target niche was artists and art collectors. To my surprise, my tweets and blog posts began to capture the attention of a much broader audience.

Why? My Twitter updates have an appeal that reaches beyond my own art niche. How? I am able to reach beyond my art readers by understanding that most people have broad interests. I tweet about art, and share my other interests that include blogging, social media, nature, quotes, photography and outdoors. Not only can I attract my own niche readers, but I can also appeal to multiple profiles while staying true to my target audience.

Twitter asks, “What’s happening?” above the update box. This is where you share your “tweet.” Here, I typed the title and then the link to one of my blog posts. I added the hashtags #art and #marketing to get more views. After I click the “Tweet” button, this update will be seen by thousands, if not millions of Twitter friends—amazing!

FACEBOOK TIPS

Facebook is the largest online social networking site. It allows people to interact and to share photos, videos, links, and more. Facebook is an invaluable tool for small businesses for its networking and marketing capabilities.

Facebook offers three ways to build your brand, and there are a few major differences between each: profiles are for people, fan pages are for businesses and groups are for special discussions and events. Each of these entities provide for different networking and marketing opportunities. However, you must have a personal profile before you can add or create a page or a group. Many artists incorrectly use their personal profiles instead of fan pages for their art businesses. For branding, both the profile and the fan page are necessary. As an artist you need a profile to network and promote your personal brand while using a fan page to promote your art business.

Facebook profile page

Your profile gives you visibility as a real person. Be sure to set up your profile with your real name. It is against the Facebook terms to use a profile for your business. Profiles limit Facebook users to 5,000 friends. I like to use my profile to connect with my family and art friends. However, I can still connect with friends on a business level via my profile. Nowadays, people want to connect with the person behind the brand; this is a good way to interact with them.

In order get the best return on investment (ROI) out of your Facebook experience, update your Facebook profile status and keep it active. Once a day, or a few times a week at minimum, is enough. Share interesting thoughts, links, and videos or informative content.

Facebook fan page

The purpose of a fan page is to link to your website or blog. Fan pages are set up to target your customers with bigger viral marketing potential. Pages are public and can be linked to externally. Fan pages are an important part of your search engine optimization (SEO), while profiles are not. Fan pages allow you an unlimited number of “fans.” Facebook has been touting the pages as the strongest marketing vehicle.

The pages allow you to customize a welcome page, add your company’s newsletter signup box, embed widgets and other social media buttons, and add on applications.

Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith’s elaborate fan page is a great example of a welcome page that invites more followers and provides a sneak preview of her service.

Facebook also allows you to have multiple fan pages. This is important for people who want to promote more than one business. Using a fan page allows you and your art business to connect with current or prospective customers. Your followers and customers can easily receive any offers, special announcements and promotions. The pages allow for extra applications to be added. Pages are generally better for long-term relationships with your fans, readers and customers. In order to simplify my life, I manage just one fan page. My fan page, Fine Art Tips, is named after my art blog.

Facebook group

The main advantage of a group is that it offers the ability to message all the members via Facebook e-mail, and these messages will show up in their personal e-mail inboxes. A Facebook group is set up around a special group of people rather than your art business or brand. Unlike fan pages, groups allow you to send out bulk invites that easily invite all your friends to join. These people become members and can also send out invites. Groups are generally better for hosting quick, active discussions that attract attention for a specific purpose. For instance, I set up the PowerArtists Club group. This group consists of the artists who I have interviewed on my blog for their excellence in the arts and social media.

Mari Smith is one of the world’s foremost experts on using Facebook as a marketing channel. Her friendly welcome page immediately explains what you can expect to receive when you “like” her fan page.

YOUTUBE TIPS

Artists should discover the value of video marketing. The basic marketing idea behind video is to drive traffic back to your website or blog. Video marketing will help your website ranking and page results on Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines.

Since 2008, YouTube has been recognized as the number two search engine, after Google. YouTube has continued to dominate as a specialist social network for video content. This means millions of people choose to use YouTube as a general search engine for researching and gathering information. Approximately 65 percent of all people are visual learners. Once your video is uploaded it is immediately available to the rest of the world. YouTube’s compelling statistics cannot be ignored.

YouTube stats

Here are YouTube’s impressive statistics at the time of printing:

• YouTube exceeds 2 billion views per day.

• The average person spends 15 minutes each day on YouTube.

• More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the major U.S. networks created in 60 years.

• 24 hours of video is uploaded every minute.

• 70 percent of YouTube’s traffic comes from outside the U.S.

You don’t have to be the next James Cameron to create an entertaining video that generates views and increases traffic to your site. Keep reading for tips on making video marketing work for you.

Make videos geared toward your audience

There are many topics you may want to cover in your videos:

• demonstrations

• how-to

• product reviews

• interviews

• portfolio presentations

• gallery tours

• upload relevant and entertaining video

Create a video title that stands out

Use keywords within the title of your video. For SEO purposes, use keywords that are applicable to your product, service or brand.

Video length

The most popular videos on YouTube average about 3 minutes in length. People’s attention span begins to wander after only 8 seconds—keep the video short so you do not lose them. The optimum video length is 2 to 4 minutes long.

Copyright laws

Intellectual property law protects digital music and other recorded music, just like it protects the rights of visual artists. Just because you have bought a CD or can download music for free does not mean you can use the music without paying a royalty for it. The use of copyrighted works for nonprofit documentaries or educational purposes may be considered, but ask permission of the artist. Consider purchasing a legal music license from royalty-free music websites such as Premiumbeat.com. You can choose from thousands of sound tracks by paying a one-time affordable fee. YouTube will take down your video if it violates copyright law.

Tag and categorize for video SEO

Use description words or tags that users most likely will be searching for on the Web. Add as many keywords as you can, and try and match to the existing content—this will help your video become “recommended” in the sidebar. Video optimization is becoming more important as a mainstream aspect of SEO.

Include your URL

When you post a video, make sure to add the URL to your website or blog at the top of the descriptive text. This way, when the “more info” is collapsed, the user will still see your link and can click it.

Create a channel

Creating a YouTube channel is your first step towards becoming a video creator. A channel gives you the opportunity to create a profile for yourself and your content with links back to your website and blog. To be successful on YouTube, you should consider adding video consistently. This will help build your brand and help people find you, and, as a result, it will drive more traffic to your site.

A custom YouTube channel is a great way to brand yourself as a professional in your niche. Create a variety of short, interesting, entertaining and informative videos to keep your viewers happy.

Promote your video

Use your social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook to virally market your -video.

See, there really is a method to this social media madness: When used properly, the various platforms work together to give value to your audience, and then social media drives the traffic back to you! This in turn grows your brand and your business, which is the purpose of a successful social media strategy. Be sure to pull in your audience through engagement and relationship building, rather than pushing and forcing your message upon them.

Any new small business venture takes a while to build before you see your ROI. Measure your ROI and influence with social media measuring tools such as Klout, TweetReach and Twitter Grader. Be patient and do not expect it all at once. Just like with your art or craft, it takes time to develop your skill.

Remember, compensation comes in many forms. Yes, I have sold artwork via Twitter and Facebook, but, more importantly, social media has provided me with unique business opportunities and relationships that would never have happened without this new marketing medium. In fact, I wrote this article because of my social media relationships.

 

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”

—Seth Godin

 

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

POCKET-SIZED PROMOTION

Perfectly Portable Solutions

 

by Maggie Price

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If you’re like many artists, you have a portfolio and other resources such as a website at the ready for the promotion of your work. But what do you do when someone says, “I’d like to see your work,” and you don’t have your bulky portfolio or a computer handy? The answer could be tucked neatly inside your pocket or purse. Learn how some artists are capitalizing on low-cost, portable solutions that make sharing your work a breeze.

Practical solutions on paper

About seven years ago, artist Liz Haywood-Sullivan was getting ready for the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) convention and considering ways of making samples of her work accessible to people who might be interested. “I knew that carrying a slide sheet and asking people to look at the slides wasn’t practical,” she says. “I didn’t want to carry a big portfolio because I might not even have an opportunity or need to show it. I wanted something I could carry in my purse or pocket that was easy to pull out, something beyond just a business card.”

Her solution came in the form of a 9×6½-inch sketchbook made by Holbein. “I wanted the look of a handmade book as opposed to a photo album,” says Haywood-Sullivan. She printed images of her paintings on glossy photo paper with her inkjet printer and affixed them to the pages of her sketchbook with double-stick tape.

 

Maggie Price (www.maggiepriceart.com) is the president of IAPS and a co-founder of The Pastel Journal.

Excerpted from the June 2010 issue of The Pastel Journal. Used with the kind permission of The Pastel Journal, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.artistsnetwork.com/magazines to subscribe.

Then, to create a handcrafted effect, she hand-lettered titles and dimensions on each page, sometimes drawing a black line around the painting and sometimes forgoing the frame. “The book was very easy to put together,” she says. “I decided to include somewhere between twelve and twenty images because I felt that if there were less than twelve, the viewer wouldn’t get a true sense of my work, but that more than twenty would be too many. I knew people wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of time to look at them.”

The book came in handy at IAPS, she says, and led to the purchase of a painting and invitations to teach workshops. Since then, Haywood-Sullivan has updated and created new books as needed. Her most recent production is smaller than the original version at about 7×5 inches. “I carry it whenever I go to show openings, meetings and conferences,” she says. “Other artists may have business cards, and of course I have those too, but I carry my books as well. If an appropriate occasion arises, I pull one out of my bag and share.”

Mary Ann Pals uses a variation on Haywood-Sullivan’s books with pocket-sized portfolios that are little works of art themselves. She starts with a journal from India, a Lokta pocket journal available in gift stores and online, which contains handmade papers.

Artist Liz Haywood-Sullivan shares samples of her homemade portable portfolios, which she carries with her to shows.

She then prints images of her paintings on high-quality matte finish photo paper to size, and glues them into the journal with a glue stick. “I’ve always collected quotes from famous artists,” says Pals. “I coordinate a quote with every piece of art and write the title, medium and dimensions of the painting under each image.” The artist, who’s currently carrying her third promotional creation, says the journals have opened many doors for her. “I always have them with me in my purse inside a plastic sandwich bag to protect the covers,” she says.

Mary Ann Pals carries both a pocket journal and a digital photo frame to shows and exhibitions to showcase her work.

Going digital

Pals also uses a small digital device made for displaying photos to showcase her work. “About a year ago, I started looking at digital photo frames advertised as gifts, and wondered how I could use them to promote my art,” she says. “I was planning to go to IAPS in May, and thought about what I’d do if I ran into people who wanted to see samples of my work. I had pocket journals but thought the digital approach might appeal more to business people.”

After some initial research, Pals settled on a reasonably priced Hewlett-Packard device with a 3½-inch screen. “It doesn’t have internal memory, but uses a SD card, which is what my camera uses. I can put the card in the frame and navigate from one image to another, or set it to run a slide show,” she says. “It also comes in handy when I’m doing an outdoor (or even indoor) art fair because it doesn’t require electricity. I can put as many photos on it as the card can hold—I generally use a 1-gigabyte card, which holds a lot of images, but the 2-gigabyte card also works— and the picture quality is excellent.”

Pals looked online for guidance in learning how to move her paintings from her computer to the digital display. She downloads the images from her computer to her camera with the connection configured to treat the SD card in her camera as a disk drive. Once the images are loaded onto the card, she simply takes it out of the camera and puts it in the digital frame.

Maggie Price is able to scroll through her paintings with ease on her iPhone.

iPortfolio

I found the solution to my own portable portfolio problem right in my pocket: my iPhone. As a device with which I’m already familiar, it proved easy to use and I always have it with me, which means I always have my portfolio on hand. In my iPhoto program on my computer, I made a folder for my recent paintings. I sized the images to 400 pixels wide at 72 dpi, and put them in the folder. Then I connected my iPhone to my computer, and simply copied the folder onto it.

When I want to change images it’s as simple as adding or deleting them on my computer, and reloading them on my iPhone the next time I sync my data. The images are amazingly sharp, and people seem to enjoy scrolling through them. If I’m talking to a prospective buyer, I can actually e-mail the image while we’re talking—and save that e-mail address and other contact information at the same time. It’s quick, easy and always available.

No matter which system you choose, think about keeping a version of your promotional material in your pocket. Developing a pocket-sized system to show your work will enable you to answer professionally whenever opportunity comes knocking.

Hiking the La Luz Trail (11×14) by Maggie Price is shown here as displayed on Price’s iPhone. The image of the painting isn’t cropped or distorted; although the screen is 3×2 inches, the image is shown proportionately at 2¾ inches wide.

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

NEED AN ONLINE PRESENCE FAST?

We’ll Show You How to Build an Art Blog in an Hour

 

by Grace Dobush and Tim Langlitz

 

You can spend lots of money and time on building a fancy, valuable and effective website. But let’s assume you’re not Jeff Koons, with a huge bank account and assistants galore. Maybe you need a website but have no programming skills or cash to spend on it. It’s totally possible to build a professional, quality website for very little money—we’ll even bet you that you can get one started in under an hour.

Now, how are you supposed to build a website in only one hour? We have two answers, both of which are easy. First, you could find a kid on the street, pay him fifty dollars and get a half-built website that half works. Or you can sign up for a free blog account yourself and, using the tips that follow, build a website that’s professional and stable, and gives you a great start on an online presence in 60 minutes or less.

Blogs have come a long way since the first platforms sprouted online, and several sophisticated systems can be wonderful baselines for a full website. It’s a snap to post your recent work and to create static pages where you can boast your art credentials. Unless you want to get really fancy, you don’t even have to know HTML—this is the essence of pushbutton publishing.

 

Grace Dobush is the executive editor for HOW Interactive Design (www.howinteractivedesign.com) and the author of Crafty Superstar (North Light Books, 2009) and The Crafty Superstar Survival Guide (North Light Books, 2012). www.gracedobush.com

Tim Langlitz is marketing director at the American Quilter’s Society.

Excerpted from the January/February 2010 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. Used with the kind permission of The Artist’s Magazine, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.artistsnetwork.com/magazines to subscribe.

Set it up

Setting up an account is super easy—all you need is an e-mail address. After you sign up, you’ll get the option to pick the URL (Web address) for your blog. Use something straightforward, like your own name (janedoe.blogspot.com), or if that’s not available, add art or artist (janedoeart.blogspot.com). Don’t use puns, misspelled words, cutesy names or long strings of numbers that are hard to remember.

Follow the steps here to see how to get set up on two of the most popular and easy-to-use blogging platforms.

Once you have the site set up, you can tweak it to fit your needs. Blogging platforms offer lots of themes and templates. It’s in your best interest to pick something classic and uncluttered—the center of attention should be your art, not the blog’s kooky background.

You may be tempted to pick a black or dark-colored background. It makes sense, in a way, because your art will stand out against it. But white text on a dark background is inherently hard to read. There’s no shame in going with a plain white background.

Because you can post content with the click of a button—and without lots of HTML know-how—blogs are easy to keep up-to-date. Along with posting recent images of works-in-progress or finished pieces, you should post announcements about shows that you’re participating in, galleries that feature your work, and even competitions that you enter.

We also recommend creating a static page on your blog (one without a date, and that’s prominent in your navigation) about yourself. (On WordPress, these are called pages; on Blogger the equivalent is your public profile.) You should at least post a brief description of your art training and background. Bonus points if you post a picture of yourself, your résumé and an artist’s statement. Explaining your process and describing what makes your art unique lets visitors feel a connection with you. And that helps with sales—more on that later.

Also make sure your contact information is easy to find—how else will potential customers get in touch with you? You need to list at least a phone number. If you don’t want to put your personal phone number online, use an “anonymized” Google number (www.google.com/voice). Posting your home address isn’t a good idea unless your home or studio is open to the public anyway, but listing a P.O. Box is an acceptable substitute.

Now that you’re set up, you’re ready to make a first post. Select a straightforward title for the post, such as a painting’s name and medium. Don’t just call it “New painting”—that doesn’t do your work justice. Then add content to the body of the post. You can upload an image by clicking on the picture icon. Then add some text, at least the dimensions and materials used. Type a little more about why you painted the piece or what inspired you. You can add the post to a category (this is a good way to sort your posts, so people can see all your acrylic works or landscapes at once) and add descriptive tags. Descriptive tags help people who are searching for work like yours. To create tags, just type in all the descriptors that are applicable, such as oil, landscape, art, painting, artist, green, brown, alla prima, countryside, California. Then click Post. Voilà! Now your blog is getting somewhere.

WordPress

1. Sign up for a WordPress account and select the Gimme a Blog option. Select your desired domain name and blog title.

2. Select a theme for your blog’s appearance— you can change it later or add more widgets and features.

3. Add a new post by clicking on the button in the top navigation bar. Adding Post Tags and Categories to a post will help more people find your website.

Blogger

1. Sign in with your Google account, or create a new one. Then click the Create a Blog button, which takes you to this page, where you select a name and address for your blog.

2. Pick a template—this is how your blog will look. Note: You can change your mind later.

3. Add your first post! Introduce yourself and include some of your art by clicking the Add Image button and uploading a file from your computer.

When you search for a domain name to buy from a registrar such as GoDaddy.com, you’ll have many options, but a .com URL is the gold standard.

To redirect your URL to your blog, go to the Domain Manager and select Forwarding. Then type in the URL of your blog.

Trick it out

Now we’ll take a few minutes to optimize your blog, making it a reputable portal where people can buy your art.

If you’re planning on selling your work through the blog, post prices clearly and tell visitors how to buy your work. Offering an easy way to contact you about purchasing an item, whether it’s via e-mail or by phone, is a good way to increase sales. If you already sell your work on a site such as Etsy (www.etsy.com) or eBay (www.ebay.com), link to it from your blog. (PayPal, Yahoo and Google also offer great tools for foolproof selling online.) You can also use widgets to show images from the store of work for sale. A widget generator creates code that you copy and paste into your blog.

Down the side of a blog is usually a list of links known as a blogroll. You can add links to other artist friends, helpful art websites, schools you’ve attended, and so on. Also make sure to put up links to any social networks you’re a member of, such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Linkedln.

Widget generators

Widgets are code-based tools that automatically update little boxes with Web content. You can create one for your store so images of your newest items show up.

Etsy: www.etsy.com/mini_generator.php; eBay: togo.ebay.com

If you’re feeling ambitious and haven’t yet hit the hour mark, you can go the extra mile and set up a dot-com domain for yourself. If you intend to include your URL on business cards, www.janedoeart.com looks better than janedoeart.blogger.com.

The first thing you need to do is register the domain name. You buy it from an accredited registrar—you can see a list at www.icann.org/en/registrars/accredited-list.html. One popular site is GoDaddy.com, where you can get a dot-com domain for about ten dollars a year. (Other domains, such as .net or .biz might be cheaper, but .com is the gold standard.)

An accredited registrar will let you search for the domain names you want before entering your info, and it will tell you if the names you want are free. If www.janedoe.com isn’t available, try www.janedoeart.com or www.janedoefineart.com.

You don’t want to get too specific—if you register www.cuddlyschnauzerpainter.com and then decide to start painting Weimaraners, too, you’d have to get a new domain name! Another hint: If you have a frequently misspelled name, buy the misspelled URL, too. You can direct both to your blog and avoid losing business.

When you’ve bought the domain name, you can set up a redirect to send people who type in the URL to your blog. It sometimes takes a few minutes or an hour for a redirect to be processed and become active. So take a break and pat yourself on the back—you’ve successfully created a place for yourself in cyberspace.

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

SELLING ART THE WAY YOUR CUSTOMER BUYS

 

by Karen Leland

 

One client is a cautious type who craves facts and figures about whom you’ve studied with, where you went to art school and how many gallery exhibitions you’ve had. Another potential patron thrives on hearing about your challenges as an artist and the way you dip into your deep well of inspiration for creative ideas. Still another just wants to chat about the beauty of your art all day long.

 

Fine-tune your communication skills and sales pitch for success in today’s competitive marketplace.

 

Successful artists know that to sell their work they must adjust to the ways individual customers buy. In my work as a marketing consultant for creative professionals, I’ve observed four core customer styles you’re likely to encounter as you negotiate your way through gallery shows, art festivals and even online sales. The small shifts you make in your presentation to accommodate your customers’ styles can help you land bigger, better and easier sales.

 

Karen Leland is coauthor of the book Customer Service in an Instant: 60 Ways to Win Customers and Keep Them Coming Back (Career Press, 2008). She is president of Karen Leland Communications, which helps authors, artists and entrepreneurs promote their businesses. She can be reached at www.karenleland.com and on Twitter at twitter.com/prforlittleguy.

Excerpted from the July/August 2010 issue of The Artist’s Magazine. Used with the kind permission of The Artist’s Magazine, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.artistsnetwork.com/magazines to subscribe.

The Power Purchaser

Customers with this buying style have their eyes on the prize and know exactly how they’re going to succeed. Results oriented, they like to win and can be formidable negotiators when it comes to working out the details on purchasing a piece of artwork. You can easily identify these Donald Trump-like patrons by their

• direct eye contact

• bottom line language—“I’d like to buy this piece, but it’s more than I can afford.”

• quick decision making—“If it works with the color of my couch, I’ll take it.”

• somewhat abrupt tone—“How much is this?”

While Power Purchasers hate small talk, they love speedy results. To get them in your corner, step into their style by being clear, specific and brief in your conversation; not over-explaining or rambling about your artwork or process; getting down to business quickly; and focusing on getting the deal done. Try asking,

• “Do you have any questions I can answer?”

• “Are you interested in a particular painting?”

• “What do I need to do to close the deal on that piece you’re interested in?”

The Amiable Acquirer

Customers with this buying style are responsive and friendly, but not usually forceful or direct. They like to feel that they’re in partnership with you, as the artist, in the purchase of the piece. You can easily identify these Katie Couric-like patrons by their

• friendly facial expressions

• supportive and encouraging language—“You really have a great eye for color.”

• preference for asking questions rather than making statements—“How do you think these two pictures go together?”

• Discussion about feelings the artwork brings out—“This piece reminds me of home.”

Above all, the Amiable Acquirer is a good listener who wants to engage with you in a conversation about your work. In the end, these folks like to buy art—from artists they like. To engage their interest, avoid putting excessive pressure on them to make a decision; ask for their opinions and ideas; and share your personal story and process as an artist. Try asking,

• “What do you especially like about this piece?”

• “Would you like to hear what my inspiration for this painting was?”

• “May I tell you an interesting story about this piece of art?”

The Questioning Customer

Customers with this buying style like to step back and make rational, rather than emotional, choices when it comes to buying artwork. They evaluate the purchase of a piece objectively and gather a lot of data before making a decision. You can easily identify these Bill Gates types of buyers by their

• tendency toward monotone

• precise language and focus on details—“What was the process by which you were able to achieve this multidimensional image?”

• more serious facial expression and tone of voice

• logical approach to buying art—“I need a piece that will fit in the 5×6-foot space above my fireplace.”

Questioning Customers are risk adverse and, as such, are willing to take the time to examine all the details of a purchase in order to come to a logical conclusion. They believe in doing things right the first time. You can help them come to a decision by openly discussing the pros and cons of a purchase with them; avoiding overenthusiastic descriptions of your work or process; and keeping your answers to their questions focused on facts, not feelings or abstract ideas. Try asking,

• “Is there some specific information I could provide for you?”

• “Do you have any questions about the process I use to produce the work?”

• “Would you like to take this home on a trial basis?”

The Persuade-Me Patron

Customers with this buying style like to feel passionate about their purchases. They bring their enthusiasm for your artwork to the table and expect you to do the same. Leading fast-paced lives, they’re quick to make a decision based on intuition. You can easily identify these Oprah types of customers by their

• flowing, dramatic language—“I absolutely love the way the vibrant flowers in this piece pick up the stunning shape of the moon.”

• abundant energy and rapid hand movements

• strong and passionate opinions—“This is an absolutely perfect piece for my den.”

• enthusiasm to converse about the inspiration behind your artwork

Persuade-Me Patrons love pizzazz but are turned off by too much detail. They want to have fun with whatever they’re doing and like it when others show excitement about their ideas and opinions. You can help them channel their enthusiasm toward buying a piece of your work by asking for their intuitive feeling about a piece; keeping the conversation casual and fun, and responding to their questions and comments with energy. Try asking,

• “How do you think this would fit in your home?”

• “What do you like the most about that piece?”

• “What do you look for in a piece of artwork?”

Remember, regardless of your personal style, you have the ability to access all the customer styles to some degree. Practicing small shifts in your presentation to accommodate the way each customer buys gives you a chance not only to connect better with your clients, but to exercise and emphasize these aspects within yourself.

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT

4 Strategies for Generating Referrals

 

by Peleg Top

 

Your marketing toolbox probably includes your blog, e-newsletters, social media, face-to-face networking—all the usual suspects. But to really grow your business, developing a steady stream of qualified, intentional referrals should be the tool at the top of the box. Of all your marketing initiatives, generating referrals takes the least amount of time, costs almost nothing and yields the greatest results.

 

If you want to attract new business by having your current clients spread the word, you need to help them recommend you.

 

When a close friend tells you about a new restaurant, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll take the recommendation seriously and give the place a try, right? Now turn that power of referrals from “trusted others” into a marketing force that works for your design business. Your most satisfied, enthusiastic clients are your biggest fans, and each of them also is a trusted other for an untapped network of potential clients who are just waiting to hear about you from their friends.

 

Peleg Top is a business development coach and professional mentor to creative entrepreneurs. He specializes in helping creative agency owners improve their business and marketing skills and become better leaders. www.pelegtop.com

Excerpted from the September 2010 issue of HOW magazine. Used with the kind permission of HOW magazine, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.howdesign.com to subscribe.

 

If you don’t pay attention to who’s talking about you and what they’re saying, you may attract the wrong prospects—or none at all.

 

Good word of mouth can transform a business. But, if you don’t pay attention to who’s talking about you and what they’re saying, you may attract the wrong prospects—or none at all. Your goal in generating referrals is to control the process. And for that to happen, you need a system—one that produces qualified referrals from your best clients on an ongoing basis.

People are willing to make referrals not because they want you to make more money or grow your business, but because they want to help their friends. Your clients will think about recommending you when they encounter someone else who needs design services. Harness this natural human drive by making it easier for your best clients to be your representatives in the world because they believe that what you do serves others and they want to be part of that helping cause.

A referral system will be most effective if it supplements an existing marketing machine for your business. So, for the sake of this article, I’m going to assume that you have a marketing infrastructure in place that supports your expertise and showcases your talent. What you say about your business will support what other people say about you. Furthermore, your own marketing will encourage referrals through the effect of what I like to call “The Three Rs”—when people see your marketing they react, remember and recommend.

Step 1: Serve

When you truly serve your clients and help them transform their businesses and experience success, they will naturally want to tell others. Serving your clients well and doing exceptional work is the foundation to cultivating good referrals. As simple as it sounds, holding yourself to the highest standards and providing the best work possible to every one of your clients is step No. 1 in the process. Clients won’t refer you based on a merely good experience; they refer based on an exceptional experience. Ask yourself: “Are my clients astonished by my work?” If you strive to wow people with the work you create, you’ll naturally put the wheels of referrals in motion.

Step 2: Ask

Many creative professionals are either afraid to ask their clients to refer them or don’t ask properly. They worry that they might come across as desperate, so they don’t ask at all. Or they ask in such a general way (“Would you mind handing my business card out to people you know?”) that the client doesn’t know what to do with the request.

You can get over these feelings if you re-frame the intent of your request. Feelings of desperation come from thinking that you’re asking the client to help you. Instead, frame the “ask” as an offer to be a resource for helping your client help somebody else. Then, further help your client by being specific about exactly the kinds of services that you can provide to the people they might refer you to.

Come from a place of true service to others. Share with your clients the joy and satisfaction you get when you see their business thrive through the work you do for them. Then ask them if they can think of anyone else that could benefit from a similar experience. That’s a powerful question. It’s not about you. You’re asking them if they want to help someone else.

In your request, help the other person understand what kind of people and companies you serve best. Be specific. Instead of saying, “Do you know anyone in the nonprofit industry that could use our help?” try: “Our best work happens when we work directly with marketing managers in small to mid-size nonprofits who are looking to grow their donor base and promote fund-raising events. Is there anyone you know that could use help with this type of challenge?”

Finally, ask your client to make the introduction for you. You want them to call their contact and share their experience of working with you. A personal phone call is far more powerful than an e-mail.

Step 3: Thank

When you finish a major project, promptly and effusively thank your client for their business, and use that as an opportunity to open the door to referrals. With the thank you, ask them if they’d be open to passing along some information about your agency (most would be delighted) and give them the tools to do so. Send them brochures, business cards or any other promotional items that would help them make a connection on your behalf. Remember, your raving fans become your marketing agents. Help them help you.

The thanks don’t stop with you. When you land that new client based on a referral, ask them to call the person who recommended them to you to say thanks, as well. That contact shows the person who referred you the great impact they had on someone’s life. And the double thanks feels double great.

Step 4: Inform

This part of the referral process is the one most creative professionals overlook, and yet they still somehow hope that others will think about them. How would anyone who refers you know the truly great impact of your work if you don’t tell them about it?

Make it a point to contact the people who recommend you on an ongoing basis and inform them of the progress of your work with their friend. That relationship building and goodwill leads to more referrals.

The easiest, cheapest, most effective tool in your marketing toolbox is waiting to be used. You’re likely sitting on a database of raving fans who would be happy to refer you to others if you reminded them that you’re interested and available. You’re already providing great service, right? Ask your best clients to connect you with someone else who needs your help, and thank them when they do. Finally, when you’ve started work with that new customer, get back to the old client with regular information on how it’s going. You’ll be keeping the wheels of referrals in motion.

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

WORKSHOPS IOI

Tips From Today’s Top Instructors

 

by Jessica Canterbury

 

Painting workshops aren’t inexpensive—a two-day session will cost about $175 to $200, and a weeklong workshop typically starts in the $500 range, not including food and lodging—but they’re an investment in your fine art future. To really get your money’s worth, it only makes sense to prepare as much as possible. We asked four popular watercolor workshop instructors—Mary Alice Braukman, Eric Wiegardt, Birgit O’Connor and Ratindra Das—for their take on how students should enter into a session. According to them, a little pre-planning goes a long way.

Ratindra Das demonstrates his loose watercolor style for the Southwestern Watercolor Society. Workshops provide good opportunities to challenge yourself; Das advises attendees to “be prepared to enjoy the struggle and frustration that come with creativity.”

Photo courtesy of Ratindra Das

Selecting an instructor

Is it best to study with an artist whose painting style is similar to your own, or is an opposites-attract approach more helpful when selecting an instructor? Wiegardt sees both options as beneficial: the former for “reinforcement and fine tuning,” and the latter for breaking out of a rut.

 

Jessica Canterbury is managing editor of Watercolor Artist magazine.

Excerpted from the April 2010 issue of Watercolor Artist. Used with the kind permission of Watercolor Artist, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.artistsnetwork.com/magazines to subscribe.

Many artists enjoy on-location workshops, says Das, either to draw inspiration from subjects or just for plein air painting.

Photo courtesy of Ratindra Das

Braukman advises prospective attendees to look in all directions. “Students should be looking at various instructors’ work that they like—from exhibition catalogs, juried shows, books, videos and even Google,” she says. “This includes work similar to their own, as well as work different from theirs that makes them think and want more. If the class focuses on a technique that you definitely don’t like, then don’t take that class. Choose one that will open you up and make you grow.”

Often artists will study with the same instructor, says O’Connor. “Sometimes there’s one instructor and style that resonates with you and studying with them helps to reinforce what you’ve already learned,” she says. That certainly was the case with Wiegardt in his student days. “I studied under Irving Shapiro for two years, daily at the American Academy of Art, before I felt I had a grasp of what he was conferring upon us,” he says.

The search for a workshop instructor starts within, according to Das. “A potential student should make an honest assessment of his or her painting level (beginner/intermediate/advanced) and check the compatibility of the instructor’s personal philosophy,” he says. “A bit of research about the artist’s credentials will help; most instructors have a website, and published articles, blogs and books can also provide insight. Above all, word of mouth is the most helpful way to get an idea about an instructor.”

Das suggests workshop attendees be open to incorporating new ideas and philosophies into their works, as he did here in Undulation (watercolor on paper, 22×30).

Photo courtesy of Ratindra Das

O’Connor agrees on the value of peer recommendations. She advocates getting fellow artist friends’ reactions from workshops, reading testimonials or getting information from art organizations.

Once you’ve selected an instructor, start checking out their workshop schedules. Note: Schedules are typically made two to three years in advance, with registration opening six months to one year prior, so looking at least one year out will give you a good start.

What to bring

Aside from items on your materials list, which O’Connor advises buying at least three or four weeks before the workshop to allow for delivery time, there are some other items you might want to bring with you. Old or unfinished paintings are useful in Braukman’s workshops, as they can be recycled in the form of a collage or simply painted over. Braukman also advises bringing a familiarity with basic design rules—“because we will be breaking many of them,” she says.

Birgit O’Connor’s workshop students typically work on the same composition, but each artist is welcome to paint whatever she chooses.

Photo courtesy of Birgit O’Connor

It’s a good idea to experiment and familiarize yourself with the recommended materials. This will save lots of painting time in the session. And don’t be afraid to contact instructors if you can’t find an item or if you’re confused by something on their list; in many cases, they’ll have items available for purchase. O’Connor, for example, offers large sable/synthetic blend and natural brushes that are hard to find in stores. “I’ve seen too many students go to the art store, spend too much money on the wrong products, and then ultimately return them,” she says.

That said, she doesn’t recommend skimping on supplies either. “If you’re going to invest in a workshop it’s a good idea to have as many of the suggested high-grade materials as possible,” O’Connor says. “The right kind of paper, paint and brushes make all the difference in the world for a successful experience.”

Das and Wiegardt recommend bringing a portable easel for painting on location, and Das adds a backpack, for convenient transportation of materials. Also recommended: a notebook; a camera, for your own photo references and images of the instructor’s demonstration; and possibly even a video camera, if permitted by the instructor (although most have their own videos available for purchase, so they may not allow video recording).

To an instructor, the right mind-set is the most essential thing an attendee can bring. “Attitude is all I care about; I can help a student at any skill level,” Wiegardt says. Das agrees. “And be prepared to meet fellow artists whose goals aren’t necessarily the same,” he says. “A workshop is not the place for competition or making a masterpiece.”

O’Connor takes her students through her painting process step by step.

Photo courtesy of Birgit O’Connor

Breaking design rules is part of the agenda in Mary Alice Braukman’s workshops and her own work, such as What’s So Great About Reds (watermedia collage on board, 10×10).

Photo courtesy of Mary Alice Braukman

Floral subjects, as seen in Journey (watercolor on paper, 40×60), are a favorite of O’Connor, but she says workshop attendees need not seek out instructors with the same style as theirs.

Photo courtesy of Birgit O’Connor

How to act

Common sense and rules of etiquette apply: arrive on time (10 to 20 minutes early, if possible); turn off mobile phones; don’t talk over the instructor; and don’t hog the instructor’s time. Be ready to work, challenge yourself and handle constructive criticism.

During a demonstration, you want to soak in as much as possible. O’Connor and Das recommend taking notes; Braukman and Wiegardt advise just relaxing, absorbing information and asking questions—but only those pertinent to the demo.

The issue of individual attention is always tricky. “Paying attention to everyone with an equal amount of time isn’t always possible, however desirable it may be,” says Das. “Overall, my class can expect about half a day for general guidance. Demos and lectures take up the other half.” Wiegardt feels the same. “A student who expects hand-holding is hard on me and the rest of the students,” he adds.

If you’re convinced that working extra hard each night after the session will help you get ahead, think again. Instructors recommend taking it easy. “Read about an artist or simply unwind,” says Das. The most you want to do, perhaps, is prepare your supplies for the next day.

Braukman simply advises students to study their own work at night. “Placing the work in a different setting will give new insights into necessary changes,” she says. Wiegardt’s workshop nights are homework-free. “We’re all too tired from a full day; relaxation is needed for the next day. Painting demands a fresh mind, not a tired one,” he says.

Critiques are a significant part of the workshop experience, and rightfully so, but that also means voicing your thoughts on others’ work—and hearing comments about your own. Fear not, says O’Connor. “The critique is to show you what’s working and what isn’t, and when it’s done in front of a group it can be very supportive.” It’s all part of broadening the learning experience, according to Wiegardt. Das concurs. “It’s not meant to salvage a piece or shower a student with praises. It’s how to take the next step forward,” he says. Self-assuredness is key to Braukman, who adds, “It helps when the student whose work is being critiqued doesn’t take anything personally and holds onto his or her confidence. Constructive criticism is good for everyone and is needed.”

Keep it up

When the workshop’s over, the real work begins. But paint on, say the instructors. “It takes time to assimilate the information given during a workshop,” Das says. “Just dive in and use the information to paint instead of waiting for weeks and months. Allow yourself sufficient time in your studio to work at your pace.” Wiegardt warns about a post-workshop slump. “Students should be prepared for what appears to be a drop in quality in their paintings,” he says. “This usually follows a breakthrough in painting as the new ideas are getting sorted out. Continue to paint and don’t demand too much of yourself. With continued effort, the paintings will work themselves out.”

Keeping at it and giving yourself space are paramount during this time. “Continue to push and experiment,” says Braukman. “Study other artists’ work, go to galleries, museums, art centers. Put past paintings up and compare them to what you’re doing now. Have they changed, and do you like what you see?” O’Connor advocates carving out windows of work time. “If it can’t be every day or a few times a week, make an appointment with yourself when you can have at least three hours of uninterrupted painting time. The more time you have to practice, the better painter you’ll be.”

Mirrors placed strategically in the room in a workshop in Venice, Florida, help students see what Mary Alice Braukman’s doing at her demo table and help her keep tabs on their progress.

Photo courtesy of Mary Alice Braukman

Get as close as you can to the instructor to really soak in her painting demonstration.

Photo courtesy of Mary Alice Braukman

As for when to take the next workshop, the consensus is clear: Give yourself some time in-between sessions. O’Connor says most students like to take one big workshop each year, and Das recommends waiting at least six months before taking the next one. “Before I was teaching,” Braukman says, “I took three workshops a year and spread these out during that time. I believe you need space between sessions to apply what you’ve learned. If you see yourself repeating or are in a rut, this may tell you it’s time to take a class. Don’t stagnate, create! And stay excited about art.”

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

HANDLING PROBLEMS THE CREATIVE WAY

 

by Holly DeWolf

 

 

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”

—George Lois

 

No matter what you do in your career, there will be many bumps along the way. Call them hiccups or Hindenburgs. Either way, these disruptions can leave many of us scrambling for a solution. Don’t panic. You are not alone. No one is handed a magic wand for all the little disruptions that can come with this business. Time to get problem solving fast!

What doesn’t break you and knock you down can only make you creatively stronger. Resilience is being able to rebound from a difficult situation. How well you return to your normal creative self after rejection, illness and adversity says a lot about your creative nature. The good news is that falling down half a dozen times will help you handle anything this career throws your way. Don’t get rattled. Instead, try another approach.

 

Holly DeWolf is an illustrator, mentor, DYI’er, blogger and author of the book Breaking Into Freelance Illustration: The Guide for Artists, Designers and Illustrators. She currently lives in New Brunswick, Canada, living the creative freelancer’s dream.

Excerpted from Breaking Into Freelance Illustration © 2009 by Holly DeWolf. Used with the kind permission HOW Books, an imprint of F+W Media, Inc. Visit MyDesignShop.com or call (800)258-0929 to obtain a copy.

 

“See problems as holes in the ground. You can dig deeper, or you can break new ground.”

—Anonymous

 

Von R. Glitschka turned around a potentially bad situation in February 2002 after he got fired.

“I went into work about an hour early to catch up on stuff, and my boxes were packed, and they handed me a check. Getting the boot wasn’t fun, mainly because I [had] a wife and kids that depended on me and a mortgage to pay. But in hindsight it was the best career move for me. Forced me to leave a comfort zone that frankly was holding me back and has equipped me to pursue many things I otherwise would never have been able to do if I was working for someone else. My personality and drive [are] perfect for the flexibility of being my own boss, so it’s worked out great, and I get to spend more time with my family, too.

“The first six months were hard. I actually went on two interviews, but both stated, ‘You’re overqualified.’ My wife suggested I start my own business, and that proved to be the best advice anyone gave me. At the end of the first year, I was floored when we did our tax return, and I saw for the first time in a very pragmatic way how well I had done. Every year since, my business has grown, and new creative opportunities have presented themselves, and for that I am really thankful.”

You will have lots of practice with frustrating moments. The illustration road can be bumpy, just like any other small business. The way you handle it makes all the difference. Don’t question yourself. Most importantly, make sure you get back up after you’ve been knocked down.

Burnout

Burnout can strike at the worst possible time when we aren’t feeling our best; it’s a progression that can leave you uninspired, bored and completely drained of any useful energy. Burnout is a red alert. It is your mind and body telling you to stop. When you’re too stressed, too tired and done with the same old, all bets are off.

 

“It’s like, ‘Whoa, what the hell happened there? I am retreating within myself.’”

—Mitch Hedberg

 

Bad signs are a lack of interest to create and a lack of care whether you create or not. This could have disastrous effects if you forge ahead even though you know better. Missed deadlines and upset clients, mixed with much frustration, cannot be good for any illustration career. This will add to that awful feeling that something is wrong and that you do not feel like your normal self.

 

“My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night.”

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

If every little thing is stressing you out, you have to know something is off. Being easily angered and feeling lost are signs of a larger problem that needs to be addressed stat! What should you do? Do something different. Do something out of character. Do something for yourself. Burnout often is a signal that a holiday is badly needed.

Vacations should be the ultimate getaway, but oftentimes we take work along for the ride. We book vacations that may be too labor-intensive. The result can be coming home even more tired than you were before you left. Do your research. Make sure your vacation interests you. Better yet, if your brain is completely drained of any useful function, book a vacation to do nothing.

If you can’t take that much time off, for whatever reason, try a mini vacation. Good sources for this are a visit to an art gallery, concert or day course; attending a get-together; going on a day trip; reading a good book or spending a lazy couple hours at your favorite coffee shop. Do what works. Do something that’s going to distract you for an hour, a day or even a whole weekend. Imagine the possibilities! Having only a limited amount of time has a funny way of making us get creative with the clock.

Need a nudge? Throw on your iPod. Or go outside, close your eyes and just listen. Try to reinvent what you’re hearing. Here’s a goofy thought: If you catch part of a conversation, try to imagine the parts you missed. Fill in the blanks and create a new scenario. It’s sort of like creative commentary to everyday normal things—like watching an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Want a true escape? Try a mental holiday at home and do nothing. Sounds kind of Zenlike, but it works and can be a new spin on a short bout of boredom. Daydreaming and drifting off are art forms unto themselves. There’s a real importance to just shutting off. Think of it as a type of mental refocusing—it allows you to imagine anything and everything. You’re giving your constantly busy brain permission to stop. Empty time works well without any sensory stimulation and can become a great creative asset with practice.

From time to time, our brains need to go into a pattern of thought called “the default network.” Unconscious thought falls into this category when we’re reading, doing the dishes or driving. These tasks become automatic even when we tune out. This internal brain soup helps you discover new ideas. Connections are made to things you might have overlooked. Unrelated thoughts can mingle nicely to create new relationships. It’s a win-win creative tune-out.

A big philosophy I live by is this: The good stuff happens during silence. Believe it or not, but silence is good for you. There’s silence. and then there’s effective silence. This basically means you’re actively being quiet to gain something or open yourself up to new ideas, solutions and creative tinkering. I believe this quote from C. Krosky sums it up well: “Most of us know how to say nothing; few of us know when to let our silence speak louder.”

Procrastination

Procrastination is generally that missing link between productivity and being in a coma. It is completely-slacking-off time. You know you have work to do. You know you have a deadline coming. But your mind wanders off somewhere else. Everything becomes a distraction. All of a sudden an unorganized sock drawer ends up being the most important thing in the world. Next to come is the TV, and then you end up zoned out for three hours. If there’s one definite thing we all have in common, it’s procrastination.

 

“We will not know unless we begin.”

—Peter Nivio Zarlenga

 

Procrastination comes from the Latin word pro, which means “forward,” and crastinus, which means “tomorrow.” It basically leads to leaving action and tasks for another time. Some see procrastination as a coping skill against the stress and anxiety of starting or finishing a job or making an important decision. This loss of productivity often creates a huge amount of guilt associated with avoiding responsibility.

Fear can be a trigger. Who doesn’t get cold feet when dealing with the unknown? As you know, we usually avoid the things we fear. Feeling unorganized or unprepared can bring on this uneasy feeling. Sometimes the wires get crossed when we’re dealing with differences between urgency and priority. The next wrong move can be a distraction that takes you away from what needs to be done right now. As in the case of writer’s block, lack of inspiration or creativity can be the culprit. After that, you could start avoiding the project due to lack of interest because you’re spending so much time overthinking it.

Lumping everything together and wanting it all done now is a form of perfectionism. We often want things to go just right. It’s hard not to want to control every aspect of a project. Let go! This release can open the mind and allow it to be easy and free. I think we can all agree that in order to kick creative block in the butt, we must find some sort of release.

A useful strategy is what I call “chunking,” or breaking the task into small, manageable steps. This could be a really good time to throw in some “free” creative thought to mix things up. Another approach can be stopping for the day and returning tomorrow with fresh eyes and a fresh brain. Lastly, try visualizing the final outcome.

The good news? Creative blocks can mean a change in direction and a fresh beginning toward something new and exciting. What you started out with might be the opposite of where you thought you needed to be. You never know—you might like the results.

Rejection

Rejection is one of the biggest momentum killers I can think of. Let’s face it, it feels rotten but is one of the unfortunate bumps along the illustration path. You can pretty much count on rejection (like bills or aging). No matter how many times you hear the phrase “Your work does not suit our needs right now,” rejection can make even the most positive person wonder what they’re doing wrong.

 

“Pick yourself up, dust yourself off. Start all over again.”

—Peggy Lee

 

Most often you aren’t doing anything wrong. You may be targeting a market that doesn’t need your particular talents at this time. It could also mean they don’t fully understand what you do. Or maybe they’re looking for a particular style of illustration that isn’t yours.

A great site that lets you submit rejected work is The Designers Recovery Magazine (floggedmagazine.com). Their motto is, “We celebrate good designs that have been flogged in a monthly magazine.”

 

“You’re like some kind of superhero that can ward off success at every turn.”

—The Drew Carey Show

 

Too often we question our work, our marketing style and worst of all our personalities! Keep in mind that even the best of the best get rejected. We can get too down on ourselves when we’re kicked to the creative curb. We are talented. How could they not want what we do? How is it they don’t see what we see in our work? Why don’t they realize how hard we’ve worked to get to this point?

We ask all sorts of “why” questions when we feel dejected and bummed out. So, what are they really saying when they throw your efforts a curveball? Number one, they are not rejecting you, they are rejecting the services or the style you provide. Sometimes they are rejecting all illustration services because they don’t need work at the time or it isn’t in the budget. Remember that this industry is based on many factors, and rejection need not be forever. Ask them to put you on file. Ask them for a critique. Ask for a little advice to see what they need from a potential illustrator. And, lastly, ask them if you can follow up in the future.

 

“I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

—MythBusters

 

Reject your rejection. Don’t let it take away your creative power. Find another way. Find another audience. Stay true to your style, your creative voice and your goals.

Dealing with the inner critic

I often think we’re all born with a little critic deep inside each of us. We don’t need this critic’s opinions, negativity and nagging little voice. You can always count on it to rear its head when your work gets rejected or when you get tired and frustrated. The little critic can rule your creative brain if you let it.

 

“You’re like a pop-up book from hell!”

—Gilmore Girls

 

I asked Jeff Andrews to describe how he handles that little critic inside. “I’m easily my own worst critic. Too often I agonize over the most insignificant little things in regard to a current project. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘We [become] what we think about all day long.’ If my clients knew the amount of work I actually put into a job, they’d be amazed. I tend to become a bit obsessed during the early stages of the creative process. A favorite catchphrase of mine is ‘Eat. Sleep. Design.’ The way I usually get around this, however, is by taking a systematic approach to the job, exploring and working through the task at hand in an almost militaristic fashion. And I like to bounce stuff off of my family and colleagues for critique as well. Feedback can be invaluable.”

 

“Experience is the toughest teacher because she gives the test first, and then the lesson.”

— Unknown

 

When that “voice” strikes, do you know how to talk over it to silence it? How much of it do you believe? The inner critic is basically a really bad dialogue within yourself. It can come from anywhere—from naysayers from the past, from mistakes and from past misunderstandings. Try to remind yourself that this voice is a completely separate entity from yourself. It comes from you, but it isn’t the true you.

 

“That’s it, mister! You just lost your brain privileges!”

—Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants

 

Try to reprogram this inner chatter in the most creative ways you can. I often challenge my inner critic with silly rebuttals. It sounds odd, but I refuse to let negative script get to me. There is a time to create and a time to evaluate. There is also a time to look for real perspective. Others can never verify self-worth; you can only do that for yourself.

Perfectly imperfect

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, The saying above is “Practice makes perfect” I have always preferred things to be great over perfect. The word great just sounds wide open to possibilities. As an artist, you can do a lot of creative things that can lead to many great things down the road.

 

“Practice makes great!”

—Holly DeWolf

 

Mistakes can also find their way into that great category, too. Mistakes aren’t as bad as we think. We focus on errors and blunders so intensely that we lose sight of all the good things mistakes can teach us. Mistakes allow you to reinvent the idea from a different angle. As I am well seasoned in the mistake category, I am willing to admit my goofs and bone-headed moments. My philosophy is if I can laugh at it, I can live with it and learn from it. I try to use that energy for good. Sounds like superhero thinking, but it’s better to use mistakes than to waste time wallowing in them.

Perfection is an illusion—it’s only an idea, not a human truth. Illustrators are in the business to solve creative problems in a visual way. Trying to be perfect only creates more problems on top of what we have time to fix.

Perfection is also a surefire route to Crazy Town. It can only lead to stress and unhappiness. A happy illustrator is a creative and productive illustrator. Why waste time on negative energy when you can be doing what’s really important? Perfectionism means only one option, too many rules and inflexible thinking; this leads to hair pulling—mainly your own. Basically, perfectionism is all-or-nothing thinking. Perfectionists believe it is best or worst and black and white.

I like to go the route that says, “Mistakes happen. Have fun anyway!” The level of creativity you require as an illustrator is pretty big. There are endless possibilities, decisions, mistakes and experimentations. Perfectionism requires too much energy that can otherwise be better spent on the fun part of your life and illustration work. When you’re worrying about things being “just right,” you lose that element of surprise many illustrators require in order to come up with new ideas. The wrong energy spent on the wrong things can lead to missed opportunities, and these missed moments could increase that unrealistic need to get things “just right” the next time—or else.

As illustrators, we are in a constant state of reinvention, and reinvention pretty much cancels out any concept of perfectionism. At some point you will have to break your own rules. No sense being rigid as a stick. Remember that your illustration career “ideal” is only a creative guidepost to work toward. It also helps to add some flexibility because there will always be deviations from your original career path. Focus on the benefits that led you to this career in the first place.

The antiperfection checklist

• Step away: Leave an idea or an illustration you may be feeling critical about. Instead, look for inspiration. Something unrelated that can distract you long enough to refresh your brain. Fresh eyes add a new perspective. It’s also wise to avoid looking at other illustrators’ work at this time because this can halt your productivity even more.

• Shelve it: If it’s the wrong time or the wrong kind of energy or it just feels wrong all around, shelve it. Sit back and relax. You know where it is and that you can revisit it later. If you’re going to exert that much energy on a project, make sure you’re enjoying it. This simple act can let you love that idea again.

• Get organized: It’s definitely beneficial to create some sort of order for yourself if deadlines are looming. Order can add a sense of control at those moments when you feel like you’re going to pop your disordered head. Mess has this funny way of agitating people. Mess can also be very distracting.

• Define what’s really important right now: What’s the No. 1 thing you need to focus on? Making yourself do things on a regular basis even though you aren’t into it isn’t a good push in the right creative direction. Nagging yourself to do it all, do it right and do it exactly as planned can work against you.

• Practice letting go: Do you really need to control every little thing, idea and illustration project? Sometimes the uncontrollable and unchangeable career issues can be quite liberating. I find these moments to be surprisingly refreshing.

• Make a deliberate mistake: Do something imperfect, messy and really out of character. Create blindly without a plan, blueprint or notes. Break the rules (but make sure you break your own rules).

• Distraction: Set up diversions for yourself. Distraction can be a wonderful thing, especially when it’s something really different, interesting or a bit odd. Moments like this help your brain wrap itself around things.

• Embrace the concept of “good enough”: Accept that you need to be done. If you’re tired of looking at something, it’s a sure sign to call it finished. The project can be good enough right now. Down the road you can revisit it, change it or realize you love it.

• Reward yourself: Hard work in creative thinking and illustrating needs to be appreciated from time to time. Take moments when it isn’t so busy to do something good for your creative ego. Do what you need to do. Need what you need. Want what you want.

• Joke: Nothing stimulates my mind quicker than humorous banter. Humor—especially self-deprecating humor—works really well. If the person you’re talking to or watching can laugh at her mishaps and oddities, you can too. Humor is a great fix and in many cases it’s free. It’s cheap medicine!

Essentially, you’re letting go of the over-responsibility role that can be numbing your illustrious mind. We can exert too much of that all-important energy to perform great things in exacting specifications. Not only does this make life harder, it can also alienate important people such as friends, family and clients. Being seen as someone who does not creatively play well with others isn’t going to help your career. Allowing yourself to be less obligated for your work to be done “exactly as planned at this very moment” kicks perfectionism to the curb. All that’s required of you is to admit the truth that you’re a creative illustrator, and perfectionism has no business poking around your business.

Wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy of aesthetics based on the transient nature of things, focuses on three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. This philosophy has a very nice simplicity to it and I think sums up life in a very down-to-earth, common-sense way. Wabi-sabi focuses on the concepts of being imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. When we stop forcing things to be something they aren’t, we develop new eyes and a much simpler way to live life. I believe that only when we let go of those things holding us back do we actually become our true, authentic creative self. It is then that your illustration career really benefits. It is then that you take your illustration career to the next level.

Relocation

Moving always has a fine way of turning your work life upside down—it’s a stressful and tiring thing to dismantle your work space. There are so many things to sort through, organize and box up. And you either need to finish up projects or put them on temporary hold. Moving leaves your business basically up in the air and in the back of a moving van.

 

“I’m taking down the office now!”

—Grosse Point Blank

 

Just showing your house can be a pain, especially if you work at home, and the realtor requires you to leave. You have to stop working on whatever you’re supposed to be doing, tidy up and vacate the premises. Depending on how many people are looking at your home in a week, you could be leaving a lot. It’s frustrating and tiring.

I haven’t stopped moving since 1988; it has been approximately fourteen times total so far. I’d like to say that I will be staying put for a while, but life sometimes has other plans. Being in home-and-office limbo can really put your life up in the air. There’s a lot of waiting that goes on, such as waiting to get your house sold, waiting before you move out, waiting for Internet and phone hookup and waiting to set up your space again.

I asked Roz Fulcher about her many moves across the country and if it altered her career at all. “With our frequent moves, I have found freelancing ideal. The beauty is I can take my job with me. The main difficulty, though, is switching e-mail accounts and contact information for each location. This has been a little easier now that I have an agent.”

What helped me in past moves was having a type of office on wheels. I have a large plastic storage cabinet I can move from room to room and place my mess into in a hurry. It fits nicely under a table so it doesn’t have to stick out like a bull’s-eye. A laptop computer helps so I can actually leave or go outside and still be able to do work.

Not having access to all your much-needed technology is one of the largest pains to deal with. It’s really hard to pack up the computer, which is your networking lifeline and promotion-controlling machine. My advice: Let all your clients know you’re moving beforehand. Have an alternate e-mail account you can access at a friend’s house. Your cell phone will have to be your much-needed lifeline. If you have a blog and participate in online sites, post something that announces you’re in the process of moving and gives an estimated time when you’ll be gracing the Web once again.

When you’re about to set up shop in your new digs, send mailers of your new address. This keeps you motivated, plus it’s a nice distraction while you’re in office limbo. This also makes a great excuse to send out a new promotional series.

Lori Joy Smith just recently moved from the west coast of Canada to Prince Edward Island. “Moving to PEI has changed my life in every way. We have a house and a yard, as opposed to all being cooped up in a tiny apartment. The lower cost of living here allows us to afford full-time day care for my daughter, giving me more time to work. It is generally much less hectic and stressful in Charlottetown than at the corner of Main Street and Broadway in Vancouver. Life feels much simpler.

“I spent a great deal of time in Vancouver doing custom paintings and selling paintings to stores. It was never my intention to get into this market; it just sort of happened. It was nice to have a way to make money in between illustration jobs, but there was always a little voice in the back of my head telling me that it was taking me away from what I really should be doing. I found it hard to turn down a job—how often do you have people willing to pay you money to paint? Moving to PEI has pretty much stopped all of my custom work; I am finding myself with much more time to concentrate on all the big projects I have been dreaming about for so long. I wouldn’t say I have lost any opportunities, they have just shifted.”

Susan Mitchell took a longer trip from Scotland to where she now calls home in Quebec. “Because of the Internet, I don’t think where you live restricts your illustration opportunities anymore. For example, most of my clients are in the United States, and nearly all of the communication and sketching is done via e-mail. The final artwork is couriered to the company, and it usually works very smoothly. In an ideal world, it would be lovely to meet with clients face-to-face to go over ideas, but I have had quite a few chats over the phone trying to fine-tune projects, and that can work just as well.”

One other thing to consider when you’re about to leave your old space for a new one is the possibility of damages. This could involve hard drives, monitors and other very vital office equipment. Things get bumped, dropped and roughed up in the moving van. Your best bet is to get moving insurance. I highly recommend it. Often when you move these things in your own vehicle, some insurance companies won’t cover you. Another thing to consider could be renovations. Your office and home may not be quite ready for you yet. Lastly, rest up because you will be doing some serious unpacking.

After that you can spend time getting used to a new working space and getting back into the swing of things.

Those unthinkable events

A month before I moved back to Nova Scotia, I was attacked by my neighbor’s dog. As I fought to remove my right hand from his teeth, my illustration career literally flashed before my eyes. I thought to myself, That’s it, folks. My illustration career is officially over. I then went to the emergency room, bloody and bruised, and was immediately moved to the front of the line. Apparently, dog bites are very serious business at hospitals. I was cleaned up and bandaged and told that a public-health official would be stopping by my house to get more information. That was it, or so I thought.

 

“Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.”

—Jean de La Fontaine

 

That very bad day ended up becoming six months of recovery, physiotherapy and missed work. I couldn’t even hold a pencil. During this ten-second bite, the dog had nearly ripped off my right index finger. On top of that, the dog had shaken my finger and wrist out of joint a half dozen times while trying to pull me over the fence. Needless to say, this had not been a warning bite. He’d wanted me for lunch!

What became very apparent was that the index finger is very important for even the simplest of tasks. Basic things like changing my daughter’s diapers or doing the dishes were extremely difficult. I will admit I’d taken that wee little finger for granted. Not anymore.

Kathy Weller is no stranger to overcoming an injury. “Early in my professional career, I started experiencing hand and wrist issues. I was scared. At one point, my problems were so severe that I actually was looking into pursuing other career paths. This was completely depressing—I couldn’t bear the thought of giving up my art career! As a last-ditch effort, I went to see an independent ‘alternative’ physical therapist. This person’s work was not covered by my health insurance, but I was willing to try anything. Seeing him was a smart and lucky move—the treatments not only helped me gain back mobility and strength but I learned that regular physical conditioning is integral to overcoming these types of ongoing, chronic injuries. He introduced me to a set of unique exercises that my orthopedic surgeon had never even touched upon. These exercises and the overall knowledge I gleaned from this person helped me eventually gain back control over my art career and my life.”

In the course of a day, how often do you think about your hands, eyesight, hearing and your overall health? We are often so busy with our lives, illustration assignments and promoting ourselves we focus on everything else but our health. Remember: Without those amazing hands, eyes, ears and overall healthy selves, we do not have an illustration career.

My hand is about 90 percent better. There are scars as a reminder. It feels tight when cool weather kicks in. All very minor things, considering it could have been much worse. I’m just glad I can bend my finger and that it’s still part of my very important hand. As a side note, I am a huge lover of dogs, and this did not sway my belief that dogs make awesome companions. To me, this was a random, isolated incident. My only fault was getting in the way of his very large mouth. Needless to say, it could have happened to anyone.

Go to plan B

Everyone should have some sort of backup plan. Call it plan B or a disaster plan—just make sure you have one. Getting munched on by a dog helped me devise a blueprint for disaster. What I learned from my hand injury was that I needed to reevaluate the importance of what I do and how I do it. I’d never given much thought to the concept of a game plan before that. Worst-case scenarios often have a funny way of forcing your hand, so to speak.

 

“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.”

—Roger Crawford

 

The first thing I looked into was insurance. I’d had no idea there was such a thing as dismemberment insurance for artists. Who knew? It only makes sense, if you really think about it. The concept of dismemberment is pretty gruesome, and it doesn’t just happen to zombies in movies. I have come to expect the unexpected because, as it turns out, life is funny like that.

We tend to have insurance for our computers, cars and houses. These three things can be replaced if they happen to blow up or fall apart. Fingers, hands, legs and eyes do not grow back. The reality is we can have accidents and can run into man-eating dogs from time to time. Protect your assets.

So, say you get sidelined. Can you find some sort of additional income? What other creative assets do you have on the table? If you don’t know, you’d better get thinking. If you do, start coming up with plans. Breaking Into Freelance Illustration came about after that lovely pooch bit me. It was a concept I had shelved five years ago. I’d had to think fast to find some kind of income while my hand healed, so I took a chance, and the rest is history as they say. The funny thing is I have not ever classified myself as a writer. I mostly went with “idea generator.” Either way, this was a good move in the right direction.

A good plan is to make sure you have some backup funds set aside for any temporary setback in your assignments. And don’t go it alone. Set up a support system of friends, family and a really good babysitter.

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

CREATIVITY IN PRACTICE

 

by Peleg Top

 

Creative business owners get into the profession because they love design. We all come to this work from the creative side. And many of us, whether we’ve been in the industry for less than a year or more than a decade, at last come to a sighing admission: “I’m not really good at the business stuff.” It’s the design we love, not the numbers and the administration and the marketing. We wanted to do creative work and then discovered that the business stuff is unavoidable.

 

If running your business is a struggle, why not use the same creative thinking you apply to your design work?

 

But business work is creative work, and can be just as fun, exciting and fulfilling. You can approach the business work in the same way, using the same set of talents and insights you use on the creative side.

You just have to make your business development a creative project. Whether you’re about to begin work on an advertising layout or a year-long marketing plan, ask yourself how you’d apply the same principles and the same thought process, approach and execution to the business project that you would to the creative project. Here’s how:

 

Peleg Top is a creative business mentor with more than twenty years of experience running his own agency. He specializes in helping creative entrepreneurs improve their business and marketing skills, become better leaders and live spiritually fulfilling lives. www.pelegtop.com

Excerpted from the May 2010 issue of HOW magazine. Used with the kind permission of HOW magazine, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.howdesign.com to subscribe.

Be yourself. Your creative work is a reflection of who you are. When you start a creative project, you bring your true self to the task. The outcome wouldn’t be authentic if you didn’t show up fully. Don’t try to be someone you’re not. If you’re a solopreneur, don’t be afraid to say it. Don’t try to seem more corporate than you really are. Stay true to yourself and your brand and ultimately you’ll attract the right clients. “As a solopreneur I’ve found that embracing my small yet creative business is far better than trying to make it seem larger and more corporate,” says Kimberly Dow of Frederick, Maryland-based Kalico Design. “I’m able to get more personal with my clients because they deal directly with me as the creative guru and business owner; they feel more comfortable because they actually get to know me and respect my advice because I can relate to their small-business needs, fears and triumphs.”

Do your homework. If a client asked you to create a brand for a new product, you wouldn’t start the design work before doing your research. Sometimes that’s the most fun part of the project. In business development, that’s your market research phase. This discovery work should be scheduled, documented and well-organized. Reserve the time on your calendar, decide which research tools you’re going to use (from information-gathering phone calls to networking to competitive reviews) and have a good database program to track your leads. Sufficient time spent on investigation and analysis will reveal new marketing opportunities for your business—just the way research sparks new ideas for your creative projects.

Get out of your comfort zone. It may feel safe to create the same work again and again, but it’s only when we push ourselves that we see new ideas emerge. Remember the times when you took a risk with creative projects for your clients and saw your design rise to a whole new level. Do the same with your marketing activities: Begin writing a blog, for example, or contact a publication in your niche and offer to be a source for an article. That will force you to break from your routine promotional plan and step into a new territory where growth can happen.

Principal Rochelle Seltzer of Seltzer Design Intelligence in Boston hosts quarterly breakfast forums for her clients and prospects as part of her marketing activities. Public speaking wasn’t natural or easy for her, but by committing to these events on a regular basis she’s reaping the positive results of presenting herself and her firm as experts in a way that people remember. “I had done some speaking before, but not as routinely as I have been as part of these breakfast forums,” Seltzer says. “They’ve been getting easier and more comfortable for me as we do them.”

Pursue many options. You know how fired up you get when you’re working on a project and you present more ideas than your client asked for? You hope that among all of those ideas lies the perfect solution. The best design option is different for every one of your clients, and you won’t rest until you explore each one. Similarly, your marketing materials can be as abundant as your ideas. Using different methods to touch different prospects is key. The greater the variety of tools, the bigger the chances that your prospects will think about your agency at their time of need. Using the same method you use to decide how many ideas to show your client for a design project, decide on how many marketing tools you can manage and stick to them. And don’t be afraid to try them all.

 

You can apply the same skills and passion that got you into this profession in the first place to growing your business.

 

Create an experience. When I was designing CD packages and showed cover concepts to my clients, I noticed that when I presented the cover inside a plastic jewel case, the artwork was approved about 50 percent more often than when I had just shown it printed and mounted on a board. Holding the box in their hands helped my clients connect to the experience of holding the real thing and thus generated an experience-based decision, not merely a visual one. Create an experience so your prospects can feel what you’re all about and you’re halfway to winning their business. From leading workshops to public speaking, give your prospects the opportunity to experience you and your genius work.

Present with style. You’ve worked hard to get your ideas together; you’re about to pitch them to your client and get the approval so you can execute. You wouldn’t want to show anything less than work that will wow them, right? Present yourself to your clients at the same high level as your creative work. Many creative agencies neglect their own branding and position themselves poorly using outdated materials. Your identity and brand speak volumes about what a new client can expect in working with you. If you do incredible work, show it off. Put the time and energy into keeping your brand and presentation at a stellar stage consistently.

You can apply the same skills and passion that got you into this profession in the first place to growing your business. And when you do, your studio will develop as naturally as your concepts do, and you’ll own a creative company you can be proud of.

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

MANAGING YOUR CLIENTS

Two Skills That Will Put You Back in the Driver’s Seat in Your Client Relationships

 

by Ilise Benun

 

You run your own freelance business so you can make a living doing something you love with people who won’t make your life miserable. Right?

Even if that’s not your current reality, it could be—if you decide to be the boss. That means taking charge of the way you run your business, rather than letting your clients boss you around.

Isn’t the customer always right? To an extent.

 

If you want more control over your time, you must train your clients to work on your schedule.

 

Two skills can help you retain control of your work, your schedule and your sanity: No. 1, choosing the right clients and No. 2, managing their expectations. You need both of those capabilities, because if you choose the wrong clients, all your excellent client-management skills will have little effect. And if you manage the right clients poorly, you’ll create avoidable problems for yourself and for them.

 

Ilise Benun is an author, consultant and national speaker, the founder of Marketing-Mentor.com and the co-producer of the Creative Freelancer Conference. Her books include The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing (HOW Books), Stop Pushing Me Around: A Workplace Guide for the Timid, Shy and Less Assertive (Career Press) and The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money (HOW Books 2011). Sign up for her tips at www.marketing-mentortips.com.

Excerpted from the November 2010 issue of HOW magazine. Used with the kind permission of HOW magazine, a publication of F+W Media, Inc. Visit www.howdesign.com to subscribe.

Skill No. 1: choosing the right clients

Start by accepting the fact that not every client who comes your way is a good fit.

Who is a good fit? That’s up to you to decide, and the definition changes over time. But we can say that clients who respect and value your work and are willing—and able—to pay for it in a timely manner are most likely to be your ideal customers.

Often, it’s easier to spot those prospects who aren’t right for you than it is to identify those who are. These red flags seem obvious, but if you’re feeling desperate or unsure about where the next job is coming from, you’ll probably ignore them.

Watch for these warning signs:

• Their first question is, “How much does it cost?”

• They want it yesterday.

• They don’t answer your questions completely—or at all.

• They don’t know what they want or keep changing their mind.

• They don’t want to pay your rates, or they keep trying to renegotiate the project fee.

Being the boss of your business means you stop ignoring those ominous signals and politely decline the clients who don’t fit, so you can find clients who do and then get busy managing them.

Skill No. 2: Managing expectations

Although you can’t control your clients, you can manage their expectations. But you have to train them first—which you’re actually already doing, whether you’re aware of it or not. With every action, you set precedents, which are very hard to change once they’re in place. Respond to their first e-mail right away, and your client will think that’s normal for you and come to expect it. Turn a project around in a day because you happen to have the time, and from now on they’ll assume that’s your style.

If you want more control over your time, you must train your clients to work on your schedule. Veteran Los Angeles-area solopreneur Luke Mysse suggests dedicating one day per week to focus on your business, with no client work or contact. “This may seem impossible at first,” he acknowledges. “How will they wait a whole day when they can barely stand to wait an hour for you to return their call?

“They will,” Mysse affirms. “If you set aside one day a week, or even one morning a week to start, they will eventually get used to your new schedule, especially if you give them some warning so they can prepare.”

What else can you do to manage your clients’ expectations? Here are several strategies:

Put absolutely everything in writing, in detail. That’s what Kristin Maija Peterson of Grand Ciel Design in St. Paul, Minnesota, does. “In our first meeting, I outline the process so they know what to expect,” she says. “Once they sign off on a proposal, I back up my verbal process with written phases of the project and timeline. I include what needs to happen at the end of each phase. I adjust my level of communication to accommodate their style and schedule—they know I’m there for them. In return, they’re equally respectful of my time and schedule.”

Recap key information verbally. Sometimes, putting it in writing isn’t enough, because clients often don’t read a detailed agreement. So Heather Parlato, of Parlato Design Studio in Los Angeles, has learned to preempt potential problems by verbally highlighting certain details. “I’ve learned to tell clients everything up front,” Parlato says. “I tell them what my process involves, what a typical timeline will look like for the project in question and the limitations. I’ll say, ‘We do two rounds of revisions to refine the content, and that is included in the price. But if there are additional revisions that cannot be avoided, those will be extra, so anything we can do to revise as completely as possible in those two rounds is best.’”

Most important, address the questions your clients may not know to ask. Parlato outlines the points in her contract that are most often misunderstood, especially regarding payments, usage rights and ownership. “Clients don’t read the fine print, and they react much better to what’s in the contract when it’s explained verbally,” she says.

Make sure their expectations are realistic. Parlato also asks up front about the client’s expected results for the project. “Often, my clients don’t have a firm success metric they’re looking for, so I define what I think we can achieve,” she says. “I make sure clients know that the final piece alone won’t double their sales. Discussing this also helps me know if a client’s expectations are putting too much pressure on the outcome of this one project.”

Copywriter Deidre Rienzo, of Connect with Copy in Tappan, New York, also makes a point of determining the client’s goals at the outset. “If they start out with expectations that aren’t realistic, or that I’m not capable of meeting, then these expectations will be nearly impossible to manage,” she says. “So I start by talking frankly about their goals. I want to make sure I’m equipped to give them what they want. If clients expect magic, I don’t work with them (unless I can make magic for them).”

Keep them in the loop. Constant communication is a key to managing expectations. You can’t read your clients’ minds and they can’t read yours. That’s why keeping clients in the loop is worth the extra effort and attention. Sometimes all it takes is a quick phone call or an e-mail update. Rienzo sends a lot of messages saying, “Your bio is 75 percent ready. I’m putting on the finishing touches and will send it over for your review on Friday.”

Parlato also sends little reminders or check-ins about a project’s progress, especially if a problem crops up, as often happens. “I contact them as soon as I know I might have to reschedule something,” she says. “That way, even if a milestone isn’t on the exact date we’d planned, they know I care about their work and won’t leave them with any surprises.”

Being the boss with your clients isn’t about being a bully or getting your own way. “To me, it boils down to being a professional,” Mysse says. “Take control and lead others to greater prosperity and understanding. A bully sticks around and tries to force his way, no matter how bad the fit. Be a professional and know when things don’t fit. A pro knows when he’s a bad match and when to bow out.”

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

TOM DAVIE

Hand-Made Design

 

by Tamera Lenz Muente

 

Situated on the top floor of Tom Davie’s home is a white-walled room filled with light from three dormer windows. Small paintings arranged in grids line the walls. The canvases are painted with numbers and symbols, some embellished with glitter, others encircled with bold colors. Nearby stand boxes of old books, stacks of vintage record albums, jars of paint, spools of thread, sculpted paper letters and antique soda crates. In one corner, new boxes are stamped with Davie’s studio moniker, studiotwentysix2.

 

You might assume a graphic designer’s studio consists mostly of a computer. Tom Davie likes to work with his hands.

 

“I named my business when I was training for a marathon,” says the Cincinnati-based designer. A marathon is 26.2 miles long, and Davie has run three so far. His studio name captures some of his working methods, as well. His recent line of posters, prints and note cards are products of his marathon-like process—he lets ideas simmer for weeks, even months, before deciding on the best way to execute them.

 

Tamera Lenz Muente is assistant curator at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. She regularly contributes articles on the visual arts to Cincinnati CityBeat, as well as The Artist’s Magazine, The Pastel Journal and Watercolor Artist.

Davie worked full-time at two different graphic design studios, one in Dayton, Ohio, and one in San Diego, until enrolling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to complete his master of fine arts degree in visual communication. He has been an independent designer, artist and educator since 2004. “I love having control over how I spend my time and creative energy,” he says. “Being a freelance designer affords me the ability to work with my own clients, assist other design firms, and produce my own print, poster and mixed-media series—work that I know would never get created if I was employed full-time at a studio.” However, he believes that freelancing is not for everyone. “Do you understand the entire design process, including production and printing? Are you comfortable dealing directly with clients, presenting work and seeking out new work? If not, being independent might not be the best choice.”

Blackletter(2010) features a three-dimensional sculpture overlaid with an original graphite line drawing.

While Davie’s work ranges widely from graphic design to illustration to paintings, his interest in typography is the vein running through it all. “The process that I use for most work is the same: brainstorming, concept generation, sketches, studies and research,” he says. “Almost all of my work has a digital base, but the commercial work tends to stay digital while the fine art work typically is hand-drawn, painted or constructed in its final form.” His versatility allows him to move fluidly between client-based work and his own. “In most client work, I am trying to solve their problem. In fine art work, I am trying to solve mine.” While solving his own problems, he delves into his deep fascination with typography and its history, incorporating many influences outside design.

Visual wordplay

In Davie’s recent work, letters and words become both object and subject. Rather than creating images that serve the text, he gives text the main focus. “I think that words are what makes graphic design, graphic design,” he asserts. “The amount of text and its organization separates it from the other arts. I embrace text and, if anything, make the text my imagery. I’m trying to elevate it from something that supports an image into the primary visual element.”

A cut and modified found book photographed in natural light comprises Paragraph Indentation (2010).

Davie’s series of typographic posters and note cards explore the history of type, incorporating puns and witty commentary often taken from conversations he’s had or interactions with students. His idea for the poster titled Blackletter began when a student called the classic style ugly and stupid. “It was like a personal challenge for me,” says Davie. “I thought, how silly to say that something that’s been around since the fourteenth century is worthless.” He began the project by making thirty graphite drawings based on the blackletter style, integrating eighteenth- and nineteenth-century flourishes along with elements from an earlier series of portraits. “I did a lot of trial drawings to get comfortable with various materials, using ink, pencil and other media.” He scanned and printed the final drawing on heavy paper that he cut and constructed into a three-dimensional letter b. He photographed the sculpture in natural light and worked up the final design in Adobe^® Photoshop^®.

Davie addresses all kinds of design elements in his type series, visualizing typographical design problems in elegant ways. On one level, the images can simply be appreciated for their aesthetic appeal. On another, someone with design knowledge can pick up on their conceptual subtleties. “I’m trying to do something that is both beautiful but clever and witty at the same time,” he says. “It’s hard to impress designers with design. Many of the people buying these are designers, and they can make their own so why do they need me? You’re preaching to the choir, so you have to give them something more, something they can relate to so they can appreciate it.”

Davie designed the tongue-in-cheek Neue Helvetica (2011) to comment on the frequent use of the popular font, suggesting that helvetica is “the cure-all for your design problems.”

In his work Paragraph Indentation, Davie cut out the editor’s mark for a paragraph into the pages of an actual book, once again incorporating sculpture, photography and design. In another, he built the words Justified Column out of children’s wooden letter blocks. And in the tongue-in-cheek Neue Helvetica, he superimposed a medicine bottle with a transparent red cross to suggest that the Helvetica typeface is a cure-all for design problems. In all the works of this series, Davie takes nondescript objects and turns them into thought-provoking, monumental images.

In the paintings of his 2007 Parishioner Series, Davie incorporated portraits from a 1974 church directory from his hometown of Sandusky, Ohio.

Design-inspired art

Davie has completed a few painting series inspired in part by typography and printed material. In 2007, the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio, featured his Parishioner Series, a collection of abstracted portraits mined from the pages of a 1974 directory from the church, where he served as an altar boy. He layered the parishioners’ faces on top of one another, emphasizing the printed dot patterns through a tedious drawing and painting process.

A couple years later, he explored his fascination with codes in his Cipher Series. On small canvases, he painted letters, numbers and typographical symbols inside colorful circles. Arranged on the wall in a grid, they mimic moveable type and can be hung in any order. While the patterns of the ciphers themselves create visual interest, Davie incorporated a personal code—each work carried a secret message of which viewers were mostly unaware, raising questions about language and communication. He then moved the code off of canvases and onto objects such as baseball cards, vintage record albums and thrift-shop art.

Davie mounted seventy-five athletic trading cards from his childhood collection to five secured wooden circles as the foundation for Cipher {348} (2008). The use of found objects reflects his fascination with the history of printed materials.

Davie’s incorporation of found books and other printed matter stems from a deep appreciation for design history. “I’ve always really liked printed material, and I like reading, so it’s only natural I gravitate towards using old books,” he says. “I like the natural decay that happens to paper. You can’t fake that, and I don’t want to try to create that with a computer.” He’s also enamored by old printing methods and hand-drawn typography. “Technology has advanced—printing used to be chunky, with a lower-resolution line screen in the 1950s and ’60s. Printers now want the line screen—the number of lines per inch—to be invisible. I also like things that aren’t just computer generated.” Referring to his collection of old issues of the influential 1970s art and design publication Avant Garde and 1930s typography books, he remarks, “Somebody hand drew all this. So many people rely on digital media now; it’s amazing that all this was done by hand back then. It’s really beautiful stuff. I like to make sure that I have this history for myself and refer back to it, and as a professor refer my students back to it. I hope that someday it doesn’t go away.”

Davie is also continuing work on an ongoing series of tombstone photographs. Once again, enamored by the typefaces of bygone eras, he visits nineteenth-century cemeteries to capture the words hand-carved in stone.

A hometown client

While Davie can take the time to conceptualize the perfect execution of his own work, commercial design typically doesn’t allow for that luxury. “I don’t incorporate hand-made aspects into client-based work because of the time constraints. For example, one recent job required me to come up with four concepts over seven different product lines, and I had just 72 to 90 hours to do it. I could barely sleep let alone take the time to concept and draw. They prefer having several ideas rather than one highly conceived idea. Emphasis is usually put on quantity, so the client can select what works best for them. I can remember only one time when I presented just one idea, and the client loved it.”

Davie designed a versatile, typographic based logo for the Sandusky Cultural Center as a way to give back to his hometown.

That one time was a project Davie completed for a community arts center in his hometown of Sandusky, Ohio. He admired the Sandusky Cultural Center’s mission statement, but felt their logo wasn’t keeping with the mission. So, he proposed a new logo as a way to contribute back to the community where he grew up. “I called them, and said I thought I could find a way to represent their image with a new logo. I found out the director had designed the logo thirty years earlier, so it was time for a new one.” Davie doesn’t do a lot of pro bono work for non-profits since he relies on his freelance work for a substantial part of his income, but he did the Sandusky Cultural Center logo for 100 dollars in pizza. “I created a typography based logo that has a lot of flexibility,” he says. “I wanted to make the letters in the word cultural all connect to suggest ideas coming together. They presented the single design to their board of directors, and they voted unanimously to approve it.”

Davie’s other recent commercial clients include the Southern California-based Ven-ueGurus, for which he designed the logo and overall website look. “I partnered with three others on this website that features area event venues and practical information like parking, nearby attractions, restaurants and lodging. There’s a message board where people can comment, share advice and rate each venue. After a couple years of work, it’s now live and eventually will be national.”

The art of marketing

Davie has done an impeccable job marketing himself. “Aside from designing and art making, the second most time-consuming aspect of running studiotwentysix2 is marketing and self-promotion,” he says. “I would guess that over the course of a year, I spend about one-quarter of my time dealing with that part of my business.”

He has built relationships with magazines and online resources he respects. Davie explains, “I send individual e-mails explaining why I am contacting them, what I like about their magazine or site and also provide a description of my work. In some cases, I will mail out free products or partner with established companies to offer giveaways of my work.”

He cites his website as the best investment he’s ever made. “It gives me a global reach and allows me to update content at will. Every dollar that goes towards domain and server costs, I consider money well spent.” Studiotwentysix2.com has been picked up by several design bloggers, which generates plenty of traffic to the website. “This can be both a blessing and a curse,” says Davie. “Soon after I got my website up and running, a German design blog wrote about it. I got about 7,500 hits in just a couple of days, but I didn’t have my work up for sale yet. It was a lost opportunity.”

He sells directly through his own website, and has also linked to several other sites. For example, Society6.com offers a selection of print-on-demand merchandise. “I can offer new products through them without having to keep a large inventory or fulfill the orders myself. I earn less on each item, but it allows me to sell a larger variety of products.” Davie offers small through extra-large prints, stretched canvases and phone skins.

Other websites are by invitation only. Davie’s work is sold through Supermarket. com, a curated design goods store. Feltand-wire.com, run by Mohawk Paper, also selected his products for their online shop. “They saw my note cards and found out I used their paper,” Davie explains. Other websites that carry his work, like svpply.com, comprise a community of designers and aficionados who share links to their favorite products with each other. “All these online resources allow me to go beyond my normal client base,” says Davie. Having a strong presence on the web can lead to other opportunities as well. IDN, a design magazine published in Hong Kong, selected Davie’s note cards as one of their subscription bonus gifts. He’ll also appear in the magazine in late 2011 or 2012.

The typographic poster Begin at the Beginning (2011) features a quote from Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland.

In the works

Davie has several new projects cooking in his studio. He’s started a series of literary illustrations based entirely on typography. Rather than creating an image, he isolates interesting quotations from the story. He’s already completed a set of five posters from Alice in Wonderland, and plans to move on to other classic literature, hand-lettering and photographing the type. Also forthcoming is a collection of hobo signs. “These are depression-era symbols that hobos chalked onto surfaces to communicate with each other,” he says. Continuing his interest in codes, visual communication and typography, the work revives historical graphic forms unfamiliar to most people.

One thing is for certain: Tom Davie is never short on ideas. A life-long obsession with the graphic arts that began at age eight with winning a fifty-dollar savings bond in a local convenience store’s drawing contest has resulted in a fruitful career that combines commercial work with fine art. “And to this day,” says Davie, “I still have that savings bond.”

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

MIKE MAYDAK

Find Your Tribe

 

by Tamera Lenz Muente

 

Like many American boys, Mike Maydak grew up reading comic books. When he was very young, he even invented his own illustrated narratives. “I created these fuzzy circles with tails, eyes and teeth and called them Tigerheads,” he says. “I made up a whole story about how pirates captured and sold them.” Maydak, who was born and raised in Northern Kentucky and is still based there, has turned his childhood attraction to the world of comics into a successful career as an independent artist.

 

Mike Maydak has discovered a niche for his comic book inspired paintings.

 

Beginnings

Maydak began college as a journalism major. “I didn’t always want to be an artist. I actually wanted to be a writer when I was eighteen or nineteen,” says the twenty-nine-year-old artist. “Looking back, I wasn’t a very good writer, but I could draw a little bit. Comics created a bridge for me between writing and pictures.” He had gained valuable experience writing and illustrating an original weekly comic strip called Slimbone, which ran for two years in the student newspaper at Northern Kentucky University, where he studied. After completing his bachelor of fine arts in drawing in 2004, Maydak plunged into the world of comic book publishing.

 

Tamera Lenz Muente is assistant curator at the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. She regularly contributes articles on the visual arts to Cincinnati CityBeat, as well as The Artist’s Magazine, The Pastel Journal and Watercolor Artist.

He illustrated the series The Blackbeard Legacy, a comic book that followed the fictional adventures of the daughter of Blackbeard the pirate. He submitted drawings from the project to the Kentucky Arts Council and was awarded an Individual Artists Grant in 2007. Maydak used the funds to research pioneer Daniel Boone with the intention of creating a comic book based on his life. Traveling to historical sites and libraries around Kentucky, he became fascinated with the history of Kentucky pioneers in general. His research led to the comic book 1782: The Year of Blood, which chronicles battles between settlers, American Indians and the British during that year.

Trying to succeed as a comic book artist, Maydak soon discovered that the field was fiercely competitive. “I tried to make it in the comic industry, but it is practically a slave market,” he says. “I love comics, but I wasn’t able to make a living from them. There are so many other entertainment options for people now, but a lot of pop culture is driven by comics even though a lot of people don’t realize it. To try to make a living off selling a $3 book was just too difficult. It’s become a licensing industry. The real money now is in licensing characters—putting them on other products.”

Maydak illustrated the comic book series The Blackbeard Legacy, which features the adventures of the imaginary daughter of Blackbeard the pirate. This is the design for page one of issue three.

While he struggled as an emerging comic book artist, he was also teaching part-time at the Baker Hunt Cultural Arts Center in Covington, Kentucky, a gig that led him to try his hand at painting. “I started painting by accident,” says Maydak. “I was teaching comics, and a faculty exhibition was coming up. I was getting tired of putting page after page in frames to display them. I had been helping a friend paint his kitchen, and I had sketched this crude house on the wall with the paintbrush. I thought, ‘Hey, that’s kind of interesting.’ So, I spent a week doing five paintings of houses for the show, and they sold within an hour. The bottom line is, it’s just as hard to sell a $550 painting as a $3 comic book. People may not know what to do with a comic book, but they understand that a painting can be hung on their wall.” He’s been making paintings ever since.

In his early “cottage paintings,” Maydak painted houses with skewed roofs, curving walls and towering chimneys.

Imaginative architecture

Most of Maydak’s paintings incorporate architectural imagery ranging from cottages to industrial complexes and machinery. But, influenced by his comic book roots, they are never straightforward. In an early series he refers to as “cottage paintings,” he created a world of houses that lean this way and that, sometimes nestled by a creek or a grove of blossoming trees. What could be a quaint and cliché subject in the hands of another artist becomes strangely animated and original under Maydak’s invention. Roofs slant and walls curve. Towering chimneys rise into the sky, belching smoke into the air. It’s like the house and the landscape around it are alive, swaying and creaking to some fantastical force.

In a monumental painting, Maydak brought the Cincinnati skyline to life, with skyscrapers standing tall but skewed, brought to life by Maydak’s imagination. The buildings’ windows create a mind-boggling pattern. “That painting took me about three months,” he says. “It’s almost like a texture, all about the windows. They’re all there, I counted them out.”

The Cincinnati skyline comes alive with Maydak’s comic-book inspired style in this monumental 48×60 acrylic painting.

In his most recent work, Maydak has turned to the industrial world, in part inspired by his background. “My dad grew up in Pittsburgh, around all these power plants, and every time we’d visit his family there I’d look at those structures and think they were awesome. There’s just something beautiful about them.” A painting of a building on 28th and Broadway in New York is a sprawling conglomeration of water towers, seeming to grow out of the roof of a strip mall. “This was a random, non-descript place, where they sell knock-off watches and perfume,” he says. “The water towers caught my eye, and Broadway runs on an angle so you get these interesting perspectives you don’t get elsewhere. I took some photos and made some sketches, and this became one of two paintings I made from that trip to New York.”

Each of Maydak’s paintings begins with an idea, photographs and many sketches. A shelf in his studio is filled with black, hard-bound sketchbooks. Many pages have extra sheets taped onto the edge, where he’s run out of room while drawing. When working out a composition, he often photocopies a sketch, cuts out elements such as buildings or figures, and moves them around manually. For this process, he prefers not to use a computer. “I did use Photoshop^® when I started out, but it felt so remote, just clicking the mouse,” he says. “Using your hands is such a tactile experience. I make a lot of mockups using photocopies. It encourages me to think differently. Using your hands stimulates your brain in a new way.”

Industrial forms have found their way into Maydak’s recent work, with machines such as tanks marauding the landscape.

Cottages, now transformed into factorylike structures, continue to show up in his paintings. “My cottages always had big chimneys, so I just took that one step further,” he says. In other works, bulky industrial machines that resemble tanks lumber through lush landscapes. Are they war machines attempting to escape the fight by retreating into a land of blossoming trees and babbling brooks, or are they deliberately ripping up the grass and flowers? They could be either, or both. Maydak likes to keep his paintings open to allow viewers to create their own stories. “I’ve learned that what makes a painting successful is how accessible it is to your audience’s imagination,” he says. “A mechanic knows how to fix your car, a doctor can help you get better when you’re sick, but an artist can help you feel creative if you’re too busy being an accountant.”

Building a business

Maydak quickly realized that he could make his work more affordable by offering prints and giclées on canvas. And, he found an avid audience for his original paintings and prints at comic book and pop culture conventions.

Because of the burgeoning popularity of his work, Maydak quickly outgrew the studio he set up in a bedroom of his apartment. Now, his living room displays many of his original paintings. Crates of wrapped prints stand atop the bookshelves that house his extensive comic book collection. Portable walls for hanging work at comic and art shows lean against the wall near the sofa. His bedroom has become a staging area for shipping prints purchased over the Internet, with boxes of canvas giclées and huge rolls of bubble wrap stacked in the corner. It’s obvious his business is bursting at the seams. “My business has been expanding pretty fast,” he says, “but fast enough to manage.”

In his most recent work, Maydak’s cottages have been superseded by fantastical, factory-inspired structures.

For a short period, Maydak sought out full-time work for the steady income. He cites an interview with a potential employer as a pivotal moment in his career. “I interviewed at a design company that makes art distributed by major retailers, and it was one of the most educational experiences I’d ever had,” he says. “The interviewer started listing responsibilities, and the position was for a type-A personality. I had to tell him right then that the job just wasn’t for me. He really appreciated that, and asked to see my work. I told him I had been thinking of getting reproductions done, but I didn’t really know how to go about that. My portfolio was filled with paintings of architecture from the neighborhood, and one turned out to be the church he attended. He was so impressed he helped me out by producing some giclées for me at cost. It got me started and totally changed my career.” Even though he did not get a full-time position with the company, the connection led to other opportunities. “Later, I painted the company’s headquarters, and it now hangs in their lobby. They paid me in prints. It was a terrific arrangement, and totally changed the way I saw the art business.” Maydak, who calls himself a “lone wolf,” is now entirely self-employed.

Marketing to the people

Maydak loves selling his work in person. Annually, he sets up booths at about twenty art fairs and comic book conventions, and believes that to sell your art, you have to get it in front of people—lots of them. While he does a few art fairs a year, he focuses on comic conventions, traveling to cities like Boston, Pittsburgh, Seattle and San Diego for popular shows, where he makes an effort to make his work accessible to a wide variety of people. “There are a ton of people who would never step a foot in a gallery,” he says. “People often tell me, ‘I don’t know a lot about art, but I know what I like.’ It’s that market that I’m trying to reach. When I look at price points, I try to keep them accessible to a wide audience.”

“I like talking to people,” he says about the comic show circuit. “It blows my mind when an artist wants to hide, or get a manager and give them a cut, because that’s all your hard work. I was really shy when I was a kid, but when you’re an artist you get a chance to step out in front of a crowd and show off what you do best. You’re in your limelight, at your most secure. I’m very sociable when I’m in front of my work at a show. I’m confident. This is what I do. This is me. You learn a lot about human behavior and interactions and socializing. I get to travel all over the country. It’s a great experience.”

A collection of industrial water towers inspired Maydak to paint this building on the corner of 28th and Broadway in New York City.

Of course, offering your work up to the public can draw criticism. “You have to develop a tough skin when you put your work out there,” says Maydak. “There are a lot of different kinds of people at conventions, so you never know the remarks that people will make. An elderly woman once asked me if I had ever been to Paris, referring to a painting I had done of the Eiffel Tower. I said no, that I worked from a photograph. She replied, ‘I can tell—it doesn’t look like that at all.’ I like it when people shoot from the hip, so I could appreciate it. On the other hand, my brother was selling paintings at a comic show, and someone told him he was ripping off a well-known comic book artist. A little while later, the guy came back and bought two of his paintings.” The lesson—you have to know how to handle comments from the public, because you never know who could be a potential customer.

Maydak stresses the importance of the point-of-sale. He says you need to remove boundaries between people and the sale, making it as transparent as possible by marking work clearly with prices and offering them different ways to purchase. While he sells at art fairs and conventions, he also offers giclées online. “I use etsy.com. When you see so many people and give out your card so often, the online sales can be the payoff. You may do a show and make a certain amount of money that weekend, but you don’t know exactly what you’ll get down the road because of contacts you made there,” he explains. In addition, monetary sales aren’t always the end result. As a result of one recent art fair, Maydak will be included in a publication, featured in a public television piece, and received a commission to draw caricature-like portraits of a business’s staff.

In addition to traveling to art fairs and conventions, Maydak exhibits his work locally. A neighborhood mall converted an empty store location into a gallery, and he rents a wall there for a modest monthly fee. It’s constantly manned with a cashier, so when someone wants to buy something, they can do it instantly. A busy nearby eatery also displays several giclées, and interested parties can either purchase the work there, visit the mall or check out his online shop.

Maydak and a few of his colleagues also offer “live art” events, a trend in which artists gather at a bar or other venue and draw or paint spontaneous, large works of art while people watch and socialize. “Anyone can participate, and we invite people to join in so it becomes a real community project,” he says. “It’s a fun way to promote yourself. At a typical event, maybe forty people show up. But, as long as you get photographs, you can post them on your website or Facebook so the impact goes a long way.” Maydak’s advice to other artists is to think outside the box and not necessarily depend on the conventional gallery arrangement. “Whatever you do, show your work to a lot of people, in places with a lot of traffic. Show it to people who would never step into a gallery. Find your tribe.”