I’ve talked a LOT about using WordPress for your artist website. I even built a whole class on using WordPress to create a fully functional, beautiful site for your art. A handful of artists keep asking me to share my list of WordPress themes that work well for artists. I finally sat down and assembled a list of some of the best themes that you can install on WordPress. Take a look!

FREE THEMES:

WPFolio – is simple, sleek, and easy to use. This theme comes closest to ‘traditional’ artist websites. Get WPfolio 2.0 here.

f8 Static – a free theme by GraphPaper Press a huge image at the top with a gallery further down the home page. Very beautiful. Get f8 Static here.

Fullscreen – A non-traditional site great for artists who want to make a big impact with their work right off of the bat. Here’s a rendition that I did, using Leonardo DaVinci’s work. Get Fullscreen here.

Workaholic – another Graphpaper Press theme for free! This one focuses on a message at the top, integration of social media, and the gallery on the home page. Get Workaholic here.

PREMIUM PAID THEMES

Paid themes often offer something extra. Ecommerce integration hooks, easier setup, better code, or some other feature. I’ve played with a lot of premium themes. The following are themes that I have played with, or that other artists I know and trust have used with success.

Striking – One of my favorite new artists, Michael Whitlark, uses this theme. It’s loaded with features, included a spinning  and sliding header, a bunch of fonts, and short codes for all sorts of fun tricks. Get Striking here.*

Deep Focus – Kelli Bickman is a mural painter that I’ve followed for some time. Her site is built on the Deep Focus theme, and I love it! It does a great job of organizing her work into easy to navigate categories. Get Deep Focus here.

The Style – A little bit different, but great for artists who are a little bit different. I’ve seen some politically charged artists with a message use this theme to great effect. Get TheStyle here.*

Photocraft – this is great theme for those who do works in series or who have strong themes to their work. It’s built for photographers, but you can definitely use it for your art. There’s a slide show built into the theme as well. Get Photocraft here.

Overall – If you want your look to have that modern, technology feel, Overall is great for that out of the box. In addition, there’s a multi-column gallery layout that’s built into the theme, as well as a slideshow on the home page. You can see here a video embedded in the home page slide show. Get Overall here.*

PREMIUM THEME FRAMEWORKS:

For the professional web programmers, or the masochists, there are some theme frameworks that carry some heavy duty capabilities. If you’re afraid of coding, leave these alone. That said, if you want a framework that is super-flexible, and easy to manipulate if you know a little code, then these frameworks are a starting point to do some great things.

Thesis – TheAbundantArtist.com is actually built in Thesis. I love Thesis for their support community, point and click design interface, and easy to understand instructions for making your site work. Read my original review of Thesis here. Not to mention the very solid SEO options. Also, if you are going to make multiple sites, Thesis actually allows you to export your settings and import them into another site with Thesis. Get Thesis here.*

Genesis – A competing framework to Thesis, Genesis is another powerful way to build websites. Genesis is backed by Copyblogger Media, one of my favorite companies on the web. One great advantage that Genesis has over Thesis is that it adheres more to the WordPress standards. This makes it work easier out of the box, and will support future features easier. Get Genesis here.

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Suggestions Welcome!

Do you have any great WordPress themes that you use for your artist website? Share them here in the comments. Got questions? Let us know!

Need Someone to Set Up WordPress for You?

Check out Done for You Artist Websites.

If you know you SHOULD be selling your art on your own website, but are not because the technicalities of accepting payment scare you, I am about to rid you of every excuse you’ve got!

I’m Stephanie Peterson, the founder of an e-commerce web design/development agency called Fairground Media. I’ve got over 13 years of experience. And today I just want to outline the top three simplest, most effective means for accepting payment on your website.

Though it’s the most intimidating part of building a website, the bulk of the challenge is that there are so. many. options. to compare. So, let me just break these down and give you some specific suggestions.

“Buy” Buttons

Ideal for artists without a variety of different items to sell; technophobes.

How it Works

You start with a basic working website. I recommend following Cory’s guide on How to Build an Artist Website in 10 Minutes with WordPress, because it will be insanely easy (and fun!) for you to maintain this type of site and make updates later. In fact, he shows you how to do that right in the video.

Assuming you’ve done so, you now have your domain name and web host all ready to go, and WordPress is installed.

Then, I suggest you sign up with either Paypal or E-Junkie.

Paypal will provide web code for you to copy-and-paste to your site which will display a “Buy” button to take your customer to their website for the purchase. E-Junkie works much the same, except the look of their checkout page can be made more seamless to the look of your site.

What Are the Benefits?

“Buy” Buttons are quick and easy to integrate into your website. Plus, the actual credit card transaction happens on a third-party server (such as Paypal’s or E-Junkie’s) so you don’t have to worry about having to up your website security to protect this sensitive information.

Open Source Shopping Cart Software + SSL Certificate

Ideal for artists with a variety of different items to sell; who can handle step-by-step technical instruction; who have some time.

How it Works

You start with a clean slate, just a domain name and web host all ready to go. No WordPress installation or anything like that.

Then, you choose your free, open source shopping cart software. I recommend OpenCart.

Now check to see if your web host provides an automatic install. For instance, using Blue Host hosting, when I log-in to my account and go to my C-Panel, there is an icon for “Simple Scripts” listed. When I click on this, I see that it gives me OpenCart as an option of something I can auto-install.

If you’re certain your hosting doesn’t provide anything like this, you can download the latest version of the software from the OpenCart website and follow the instructions from their website on how to install the files on your website. If you run into trouble, don’t hesitate to search Google or YouTube for more detailed info on how to complete the installation.

Once the software is installed, you sign in to the admin space (www.yoursite.com/admin) and configure the store as you please.

Next, log back into your web hosting account and purchase an SSL certificate. Follow the instructions for enabling the special url on your checkout pages.

What Are the Benefits?

The shopping cart software allows you to sort and display your products in a slick, organized manner. Checkout and the actual credit card transaction takes place on your site, within the rest of your site’s layout, which is perceived as the most professional integration possible.

Hosted Shopping Cart Software + SSL Certificate

Ideal for artists with a variety of different items to sell; technophobes; who have some money.

How it Works

You start with just your domain name; you haven’t purchased web hosting yet.

Then, you choose your hosted shopping cart software. I recommend Shopify or BigCommerce.

You reviews the plans they offer and sign up on their website.

Once signed up, you can sign in to your admin space and configure the store as you please.

Next, visit your new store website to see that checkout pages (where credit card information is supposed to be entered) has “https://” in the address bar. If not, find where on the site you can buy an SSL certificate and follow the instructions to have it installed.

What Are the Benefits?

The shopping cart software allows you to sort and display your products in a slick, organized manner. Checkout and the actual credit card transaction takes place on your site, within the rest of your site’s layout, which is perceived as the most professional integration possible. Since the software and web hosting are bundled, you don’t have to mess around with an installation– it is automatically installed for you. Also, some hosted shopping cart software carries the extra weight of the security burden by providing a built-in SSL certificate from the get-go.

Note-worthy

Shopping cart software of any kind (open source or hosted) will require a payment gateway and a merchant bank account.

The easiest payment gateway + merchant bank account starting out is Paypal (it does both). As your store grows, however, it’s worthwhile to look into options with fewer restrictions and lower high-volume fees. A Google search is the best place to start.

Conclusion

Many artists fail to put their art for sale online because they are TOO intimidated by the technical processes. I hope this article helps you to wade through the confusion.

While I am a web designer/developer by trade, I believe that building one’s own site starting out can be a great idea to feel out the business opportunity, take the time to “step into” your new business and decide what you want it to be, and for the familiarity that will allow you to actually USE and update your site(s) as time goes on.

If you have had luck with any of the above, I would love it if you would say so in the comments below. Or, if you have any quick questions for me, I’d be happy to try to answer them.

Too many artists are building someone else’s business.

Sites like Etsy, Artfire, FineArtAmerica, and others (which I call Art Malls) make it easy to create the illusion of having a ‘web presence.’ When they upload all of their work to an Art Mall site, it makes many artists feel like they are finally getting their work online. All you’re really doing is creating more content for these sites to sell, with no investment on their part. You could be doing the same thing for yourself.

Reasons to Have Your Own Website Instead of Using Art Malls

You are an artist, not a commodity. No getting lost in the crowd. If you are on one of these online art malls, you are one artist among thousands. Browsers will click right by all of your stuff because someone more interesting is right next to them. Even if you get featured as an artist of the day and have a few thousand people look at you, that attention is gone within a couple of days.

You can build your fan base. When you are on someone else’s website, you had better believe that they are benefiting more than you are. When they share a page with a friend on Facebook, that links back to someone else’s website. When they sign up for an email list, that list is owned by someone else, not you. With a little bit of work or a small investment of cash, you can build a site where people play directly with you, not with others.

You get your own domain name. If your website is something like www.YourName.TemplateCompany.com then you are leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. A real domain name (www.YourName.com) costs about $8 – $10. There’s no reason to not have a custom URL. In addition to it looking more professional, you will do better in the search engines.

Control over your look and feel. If you are a dark and brooding artist, why are you displaying your work on a site with cheerful, happy arts and crafts? You know that people’s reactions to art is all about context. They need to see your work in a context that makes sense. In online mall sites, you get a limited set of looks, with a very limited ability to change them.

Last week I had a client email me because her artist website was a mess. The company that she was with had made some changes to their websites and she didn’t like the changes that were made. In addition, the company was keeping her mailing list hostage – she couldn’t export her mailing list if she switched websites.

If you’re using a template then your site looks like hundreds or thousands of other websites. People expect artists to value creativity and originality. Your site should differentiate you enough to make you stand out. Also, most artist website templates already look like they were designed in 2000 with no updates since.

Non-flexible features. Even if the company just launched and they have every bell and whistle in their current templates, the Internet changes fast and you need to be able to adopt new technologies into your site as they come along. Most artist website companies shoehorn new features into their sites in ways that are awkward and unwieldy. Also, some artist website companies try to be all things for their artists and they end up not doing anything very well.

It makes you look cheap. If you are selling $2000 original pieces of art, why do you have a website that looks like it cost $30? Your image has to match your market. Since most collectors are wealthy and educated, they are probably going to expect something a little more sophisticated.

No access to the html of your site. In order to make real customizations to your website, you need access to the html files. If you don’t have access, you can’t change borders, colors, sizes, and where page elements are placed. In addition, if you ever decide you want to move your website to another hosting provider or another company, you’ll have to start over from scratch.

Search Engine Friendliness. This is a tough one for most web designers. Quite often, if they are good at making pretty designs, they’re not too good with making sure the search engines find your site. If you want to be found online, then you need to make sure that your site can easily be optimized for search.

How Do I Get A Good Artist Website?

I recommend hiring a professional website designer. I can give you referrals if you want. Expect to pay $500 – $2000, depending on what you want. It’s an investment in your business, and it will pay off many times over.

If you can’t spend the kind of money that it takes to have a really great website built for you, then I highly recommend WordPress as a way to get a high-quality website up and running. WordPress is a free website building software that can have a site up and running in literally minutes. If you want to see how I set up an artist’s website in less than 10 minutes using WordPress, check out How to Build an Artist Website in 10 Minutes with WordPress.

How to Build an Artist Website with WordPress from cory huff on Vimeo.

UPDATE: A few of you have asked me for a written version of these instructions. I had someone transcribe what I spoke. You should be able to follow along with the written transcript and refer back to the cleaned up, written version. Let me know if you have questions! Click on this link to get the written transcript.

How_to_Build_an_Artist_Website_with_WordPress

One of the biggest pieces of feedback that I received from the ArtEmpowers.Me courses was that there was a LOT of content to go through. People need a simple win.

I put the above video together to show you how you can create a simple, clean artist website in just 10 minutes. This video takes you through the steps of signing up for hosting, installing WordPress in Bluehost, adding a great art template, adding pages, and configuring your menus so that your site is presentation ready.

There is a lot more that you can do with your artist website, but this video will show you how to get the very basics. For in-depth tutorials, as well as help with marketing and selling your work online, check out ArtEmpowers.Me.

What is WordPress?

You can see my short video on WordPress above, but the the even shorter version is this: WordPress is a free, open-source software that allows you to build websites without learning all of the difficult coding work that professional web developers know. If you already know some of that stuff, WordPress takes care of much of the grunt work, and leaves you free to focus on design.

Want Some Hands-On Help Building Your Site?

Check out Done for You Artist Websites. I help you get the site set up, work with you to create a plan for marketing your site, and you get one-on-one coaching access from me. It’s a win-win-win!

image by Nancee_Art

I often receive emails asking me about what artists should blog about. It’s really not that hard. Don’t over think it.

Artists Should Blog About Their Art. Post pictures of your work. You’ll notice that most of my blog posts have a piece that I really like at the top. People really love interesting pieces of art. If your work is good, putting up blog posts featuring your work, with descriptions and stories about their origins, can have a huge impact on your web traffic and the engagement of your fans.

Artists Should Blog About Their Shows. Pictures, videos, and some descriptions are great ways to get people excited about past and future shows. When you are prepping for a show, whether solo or group, find some images of the space or the building and post them. During the show, take some videos of you talking to patrons or showing off your work.

Artists Should Blog About Their Lives. More and more collectors not only want to buy beautiful art, they want to invest in an artist’s career. The Art world is moving toward people wanting a personal connection with the artist. Blogging about what’s happening to you has been very effective for some artists as a way of making collectors feel like have an insight into the generation of the art and the thinking of the artist. Two great examples: Gwenn Seemel and Hazel Dooney. In addition, these artists create a great support and accountability network around themselves.

Artists Should Blog About Things that Interest Them. Share links to other artists that you find interesting, charities that you want to support, and the things that inspire you. Especially the things that inspire you. People love to be inspired – I know I do. I want to know what makes you excited, what makes you weep, what makes you laugh.

A few pieces of advice about blogging:

• Your Title decides whether or not people read your blog posts.
• Your blog should be a part of your website, not a standalone blog like on Blogger.com
• Sit down and create a blogging calendar. Decide how many times per week you’ll post (it’s Tues, Thurs, Sat here), and what you’re going to write about over the next 30 days.

Questions? Any good examples of successful blogging by artists?

Kids, don't be like me.

I have a confession: I am about to become a woman without a website.

My current site, which I created through Other People’s Pixels and chose not to renew, is about to blink out of existence any day now, and then the only way to see my work online will be through my Vimeo channel, which is woefully sparse. How did I get myself into this pickle? A fatal combination of fear, laziness, and complacency. This is my cautionary tale- because in the immortal words of Joey Comeau, “If you can’t be a good example, you have the obligation to be a horrible warning.”

My first website…

was a Frankenstein monster spawned by Dreamweaver and created to showcase my (in hindsight) rather hilarious undergraduate portfolio. It took months to build (a semester of web design for artists 101, in fact) and was STILL pretty lame. And I don’t even want to TALK about how long and unintelligible the URL was! This was about five years ago, too, when Facebook was still just for college kids and Twitter hadn’t fundamentally changed the way people communicate.

When the time came for me to put together  my “official” artist site, I was about to present my MFA thesis, and the idea of putting in the work to build ANOTHER site was as daunting as the idea of paying someone to do it for me. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but grad school is expensive! I saw companies like the aforementioned OPP as a happy medium- I’d be able to control content and some design elements, but the heavy lifting would be left to the experts, at a fraction of the cost. At the time, it seemed like my best option.

Times Change

Problem was, between 2006-2011 my work had fundamentally changed, and so had the world. For a newly-minted time-based artist such as I, prices for sites like OPP jumped significantly. By the time I figured out how to format and Flash-encode my videos for uploading to my site, I realized that the quality of said videos was sub-par, and that there were no analytics to determine if people were actually watching them. But I had paid for the full year up-front, and I wasn’t about to let that money go to waste. I resolved to do the best with what I had, and make the most of the customizations I was afforded.

In making my decision regarding whether or not to renew the site, I thought about downgrading to an image-based site and just linking to Vimeo-hosted works from within it. But media quality wasn’t my only problem with my online face- the frame designs and layouts offered by OPP were just not fit for the content I wanted to add! There is no way to upload art writings I wanted people to see, or list links to other artist sites, without annoying scrollbars built in to the frames. I’ve experimented with the interface so much that I might as well have built the silly thing from scratch in the first place. I didn’t like the blog/news format at all, either. I couldn’t add installation shots of shows I was in, for example, and people couldn’t leave public comments, so dialogue was impossible.

Artist Website Templates Don’t Work

Meanwhile, I began reading more and more about the perils of “stock design” sites, how they fail to set artists apart due to their telltale template formatting, and how they aren’t set up for the kind of social media integration that’s so de rigeur these days. You can link to a Facebook page, but there’s no “like” button embedding, no “retweet this” options, and no way to build a feed into the home page. When I met Cory and started reading this blog, the WordPress option became more and more attractive, especially since I have used the WordPress format a lot in work for other clients. I’ve shied away before, citing time constraints, but I am officially out of excuses. It’s time to make the site my work deserves!

In the following weeks, I’ll be taking Cory’s WordPress for Artists course as part of The Abundant Artist Community and sharing my journey with you. Maybe my experience will convince some of you that the perfect site really IS within your grasp. If I can do it, after all, anyone can.

Two weeks ago, I posted 9 Great Artist Websites. The response to the post was great and I got a few questions asking me how they could do what these artists were doing. I asked, over on TAA’s Facebook page, if anyone would like me to review their website. Ray Miller was one of several brave souls who agreed to have his site reviewed in public. Here’s my feedback.

click to enlarge

First Impressions

The site visitor’s reactions when they land on your site are very important. You want to make sure that a new visitor (and returning visitors) are met with a certain wow factor and a next step.

Call to Action. Ray’s site needs to invite the visitor to do something – I generally recommend that they invite the visitor to sign up for a mailing list or to take a look at a piece of art that is for sale. He should add a call to action to the home page.

Bigger & Better Photography. Ray’s work is actually outstanding. He’s won multiple awards and is an adjunct professor at a local school, but his photography is selling him short. He would be better served with one large, high quality image on his home page than several small images that make it difficult to see what’s happening.

Full or Flexible Width & Height. Ray’s site is currently a fixed width and height. I would recommend making it load a little more dynamically so that it can display larger on bigger screens, more effectively showing his photographs of his work.

Displaying Your Art

Image Galleries Are Tricky. Most fine art websites struggle to portray an artist’s work. While the pop-up lightbox that is shown in the above screen shot makes the image bigger and easier to see, Ray is missing the opportunity to create an image search optimized page with an introductory paragraph explaining where this work is, the background of its creation, and pricing for similar pieces.

Speed Matters. The gallery page has an exceptionally slow load time, which is not only a bad experience for the user, but can also cause search engines to drop your page from the listings.

Frames Are for Art, not Websites. You can’t see it very well in the above picture, but Ray uses frames throughout the site. Besides some technical issues with search engines that some types of frames cause, frames have generally fallen out of favor as a way to display large amounts of content. They needlessly take up screen real estate and they often cause confusion when scrolling.

Updated Content

Awards & Shows. Ray’s got the right idea with a News section, but he should keep it updated, with dates and times of when his awards were given. Also, the entries are cut short with elipses [...]. These should either be links to where they originated, or be taken off of the page.

Show Your Visual Appeal. Artists are generally visually oriented, and people want to see that the artist has vision. It should extend into every area of their display. Often times I will see artists go to great lengths to frame, light, and otherwise display their creations, but then o the web they don’t put as much thought into it. Make your News & Contact pages interesting too!

As you can see, having a great art website can require a great deal of thought and work. I always recommend hiring a professional web designer to build a site for you, but if you can’t afford that, then you should do lots of research and steal from learn from the best.

What do you think – does any of this help you with your website? Are there any other areas where Ray might improve?

When I first heard about IHeartArtPDX.com, I was thrilled. How cool is it that Etsy wants to teach artists how to further their careers?

I was especially excited to be part of I Heart Art’s upcoming workshop series. I responded to their RFP process, submitting an idea for a course about how to set up your art website as the central hub of your online business.

A few days later I received an email from an I Heart Art staff member telling me that my proposal had been declined. When I asked why, I was told, “While your proposal was professionally presented and compelling, we ultimately felt that the principles laid out in this curriculum presented a conflict of interest with one of our organizational partners and largest funders, Etsy.”

In other words: We don’t want you to teach artists how to sell art through their own websites because Etsy wants artists to sell all of their work on Etsy.

The IHeartArtpdx.com About page states

“We serve artists, artisans, students and museum guild members through outreach and education…”

I am disappointed that Etsy would influence I Heart PDX to choose to intentionally leave out a course on best practices for business on the Web. If the focus truly is on the artists, shouldn’t their best interests come first?

Perhaps I shouldn’t feel that way. Perhaps I should just be okay with the fact that Etsy and the I Heart Art team is making active effort to help artists make money. The reason I don’t feel that way is this: if an organization says that they serve the artists, then they should do what’s in the best interests of the artist, not their financial sponsor.

I wish that I Heart Art made it more clear by stating on their website that

‘we serve artists, artisans, students and museum guild members through outreach and education about how to use Etsy to earn income with your art…’’

Or something like that.

Don’t Worry About It, I’m Your Friend

The thing that gets me is that Etsy knows that the best way to make sales is to have multiple distribution streams. They are intentionally shaping their courses to teach artists that they should do everything through Etsy, and this isn’t right for an organization that claims to serve the best interests of the artist.

I don’t even know how to respond to the schools, like Pacific Northwest College of Art, that are complicit with this sort of behavior.

It’s essentially the same line that some art galleries have been giving artists since…well, forever. Sell all of your art through me, and I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry about what those other people say, just trust me and I’ll show you what to do. Only, it’s slightly worse because they’re doing it through a front organization that is focused on ‘community outreach and education.’

Etsy has several teams like this across the USA. I’m sure it works quite well for them.

Am I mistaken here? Does this not seem a little bit…disingenuous?

(for those who care, my proposal for the class can be downloaded here)

Before you built your artist website, did you spend time researching what’s out there?

Professional web designers spend hours every day looking at other designs, and, let’s be honest, stealing the best things that they see. That’s why design (and Art) evolve.

The state of artist websites is rather appalling, in my opinion. It’s really rather difficult to find artist websites that do a great job of both presenting the artist’s work, and making it easy for a potential buyer to purchase from or get in contact with the artist. The sites on this list made the cut, but very few were really in that upper stratosphere of web design.

I hope that this list will grow and that I’ll be able to add more sites as I come across them. So, in no particular order…

9 Great Artist Websites

1. Natasha Wescoat

http://natashawescoat.com

One of my personal favorite artists and a lovely person. Natasha is very tech-savvy and has written several articles for Mashable.com and other technology sites. Natasha’s site is beautiful and makes me want her stuff. A lot. I love how she uses BigCartel‘s shopping cart to sell her prints right from her site.

2. Ann Rea

http://www.annrea.com/

A very clean, simple design that works very well. Ann is very business savvy and artists can benefit from her blog and email list. Another artist who sells her work right from her site, Ann is a model for the art world to follow with how she implements her online marketing.

3. Ten Everyday Painters

http://teneverydaypainters.com/

A collective of artists who do some great work on their own, this is a good example of artists pooling their resources to create something that looks really special. I wish you could buy prints right from the site though.

4. Eleatta

http://eleatta.com/

Eleatta was in the first group of artists that I ever coached, and she’s done some amazing things since. Check out this video of a painting that she did for me. I like Eleatta’s organization, though I wish that she didn’t send people away to Imagekind as her only way to sell her art.

5. Amber Jean

http://AmberJean.com

Check out the Patron Place. Probably the most innovative thing I’ve ever seen an artist do online. I admire Amber on many levels and love hearing about her continued success.

6. Lori Mcnee

http://www.lorimcnee.com

Lori is a wonderful resource for artists everywhere. Her site is well designed, clean, and is another example of being able to sell art directly from the site itself. She also has a great blog where she shares what she learns.

7. Kelli Blickman

http://kellibickman.net/

I didn’t know Kelli before creating this blog post, but I sure wish that I did. Her site is slick, easy to use, and does everything that you would need an artist’s site to do.

8. Matt LeBlanc

http://www.mattleblancart.com

Another new artist for me, Matt’s work is big, bold, and colorful. As someone with years of experience in advertising, Matt has an advantage in knowing what works in marketing.

9. Austin Kleon

http://www.austinkleon.com/

Austin came across my radar several months ago in the major press coverage that he has received. In my other life, I spend a lot of time talking about the future of newspapers and media. Austin’s work is fun, with somewhat ominous overtones. Austin also uses BigCartel.

What do you think? Are there any other artist sites that you think belong on this list? What do you learn from looking at these?

Market Research = Playtime

Once you have this nice big list, narrow it down to the five keywords that set you most apart from other artists in your medium or genre. This is a lot easier if you are aware of  the other artists working in your medium or genre. In some sectors, this is called “market research”. Reason #23225 why it’s awesome to be a creative professional: For you, “market research” means looking at lots of art and researching the things you’re already interested in.  Don’t just look at who’s making work alongside you, though! Know the history of your tools, techniques, processes, and aesthetics. Consumers want you to educate them. Plus, this will give you lots of ideas for topics and articles to blog about and/or post to your online social networks.

Now that you’ve gathered research and listed the five descriptors that form the cornerstone of your brand portfolio, it’s time to fill up the rest of the portfolio with the details that make your brand come alive. These include the icon that you use for blogging, your business’ facebook and twitter accounts, etc., your typography, your color scheme, even the titles of your pieces. Speaking of titling, every last piece of copy that makes up your online presence should be infused with the cornerstone of your brand. Do you send a newsletter? Use some of your branding keywords in the sign-off: “with love from the workshop”, or “with spirit and strength”. Make sure your words match your work. For some tips on this, see my post on Artist Statements.

When you have a very facile grasp on your brand portfolio, decision-making becomes so much easier! Now you know what kind of online communities to network with, what kinds of art direction to use in product shoots, and whether or not an online merchant will carry your wares, just upon giving them a cursory glance. You can use every opportunity to connect people to your unique vision. Radiate your brand. If you make wearable art, wear it. If you don’t, think about how to style yourself to reinforce your brand. You don’t have to put on an artist’s costume, but consider how employees in other industries use dress to project messages about themselves. My work is colorful, maximalist, and soft without being overly feminine, keywords which I use as principles to guide my wardrobe.  Do you have a name for your business other than your own name? Get a shirt, smock, hat, or other applicable (as in, aprons for bakers) item of clothing printed with your that name and/or logo, for when you appear in videocasts, at art fairs, and during networking events.

By the same token, avoid diluting your brand. If your bff shoots dramatic black and white photographs and you make brightly colored children’s toys, don’t add their page to your page’s favorites on Facebook! You can “like” them from your personal account, but save your favorite pages, links, and blog content for organizations, things, and people who would look right at home inside your brand portfolio. You are building a world for your product to live in. You want your audience to see that world clearly, because they are buying your product in order to access that world. Make sure that this world is harmonious.

So remember, branding yourself as an artist begins on the inside, with the identification of the core values that drive your passion. It extends outward into the world through precise, authentic, and systematic re-affirmation of these values. You can know a ton about making AND marketing, but there is no substitute for knowing yourself.