1. Know Your Product

What are you selling? Are you a designer? What’s your angle? Are you passionate about marketing or business too? Bookbinding? Writing? What is your skill set? What is design to you? Why do you want to be an illustrator? These questions need to be answered before you can build any sort of marketing kit.

You need to know why your product or services are indispensable to a firm and what you bring to the table that someone else doesn’t. This means you need to be aware of what other designers/illustrators/creatives are doing in the industry. Read blogs (see the right sidebar for a few), follow firms whose work you like and know what’s going on with relevant technologies. (Like, CS5 is coming out in three days.)

Designer Nubby Twiglet talks about marketing your design skills.

2. Shameless Self Promotion

Self-promotion is the name of this game. Creative self-promotion, that is. Last year I met illustrator Brian Stauffer, who gave my class some good advice on being illustrators/designers. One of the things he did in his early days was find firms he wanted to work for. At one firm, he learned that the art directors liked bowling. So he got a set of bowling balls, one for each director, and sent them a package with a note reading, “Most firms don’t have the balls to take me on.” Hello, ballsy. And he got the job.

What?! A paddleball promotion by Jay Vollmar. Awesome.

3. Mix It Up

Think print, web, video, social networking. For print, think of interesting forms that integrate logically and cohesively with your work and skills. Perhaps you can bind small books with examples of your work, or have them bound. Maybe you can letterpress a bad-ass poster showcasing your mad talents. What other forms can you think of? Interestingly folded brochures, calendars, business cards, postcards, maps, illustrations, decks of cards, kits, wine bottles (with wine?!) will help you get past the interns sorting the mail. Dan Redding has some good ideas on how to avoid the trash can.

4. Join the Wonder Web

The majority of my students do not currently have websites. In 2010, there’s virtually no reason not to have at least some online presence. With sites like WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger, presenting your ideas and work online has never been more accessible to the HTML layman. At minimum, you can upload nicely photographed images of your work (document your work!) and post your resume. Then, when a potential employer or client asks for your portfolio, you send them a link. People like this. It’s easy.

5. To Blog…or Not

The question of whether or not to separate a blog from a portfolio site often comes up with my students. And it depends on your blog. If your blog is generally professional, oriented to your craft, then it’s probably fine to integrate the two components. Like this site. But if your blog is a personal, journal-like sort of place, it’s better to keep the two things separate. Imagine that everything you are writing online, you are actually saying to a potential boss. Would you do it?

My friend tweeted the other day some advice from his dad, “Don’t put anything in an email that you don’t want on the front of the Boston Globe.” Same goes for your blog.

6. Make a Video. Or Vlog, as my Students Tell Me

From the Women’s Studio Workshop (Source: Abigail Uhteg.)

With built-in cameras and software like iMovie, it’s relatively easy to compile simple videos that explain you, your work, your process, a specific project. Like Abigail Uhteg’s video (above), compiled at the Women’s Studio Workshop in upstate New York. If an artist book video can go viral, you can too.

Design Currency: Icograda Design Week In Vancouver from GDC/BC on Vimeo.

But what makes these videos interesting? In both cases, the photography is clean, simple and well-composed. They are also well-paced with a clear narrative, delivering us information we are interested in. They’ve made us interested in what they’re showing, no? Even if we don’t understand printmaking, we see ink, we see paper, we see the process of something being made. We like this. So perhaps you can show us how to make something in your video.

Seth Godin talks about relevance and other things in his blog.

7. Acquiring Addresses

My friend, a VP of marketing, is involved with a start-up company in New York City. He told me that their list of 10,000 emails was priceless to them. “In fact,” he said, “if an investor had offered me $2 million dollars or that list of emails, I’d have taken the email list, hands down.”

How do you get this list? The list should consist of past, current and potential clients, so make sure you collect snail mail and email addresses for everyone you work with. (A clean Numbers or Excel file will help you manage this.) These contacts are your best audience, since you already have your foot in the door.

The next best way to get addresses is to do some research. If there’s a magazine you want to work for, look up the art director’s name in the masthead of the actual magazine. Find design agencies/firms who do work that you connect with and explore their websites to find names and addresses.

You can also buy lists. One way to do this is directly from a printer, perhaps the one that printed your postcard. Make sure the list is current, less than a year old, and will reach your target audience of art directors and senior designers at the firms or companies you want to work with.

This is a numbers game, and part of the reason I encourage my students to work in sales positions (which they all uniformly cringe at). Don’t just send your postcard to the ten firms you love desperately; send them to 200 firms. And be aggressive. Call up the firm and ask who to send a note to, apply for a specific job and follow up with a note or phone call.

(Lastly…) A Word on Identity

Freelance designers are entrepreneurs, and as such, many have corporate identities. This is certainly something for the emerging designer to consider, and the choice depends upon your goals. So, if you want your practice to be your brand and your business, a logo is an important component of that brand-building.

For me, I do freelance work, but it’s largely supplementary to grad school and other projects I’m working on, like my book. So an identity doesn’t seem to make sense for me at this point (even though I did try it out).

In conclusion, figure out what your long-term and short-term goals are, and decide accordingly. Nubby Twiglet talks a lot about how to create a corporate identity for your design brand.

A Valentine’s Day self-promotion from For Print Only for designer Brian Swarthout. Yes.

Self-promotion should be fun for you and fun for your audience. Funny earns bonus points in my book. Think of clever/interesting ways to show your work.

More Resources:
The Launch Coach
How to Get Motivated for Self-Promotion – The 99%
Blurb, On Demand Publishers
Lulu, On Demand Publishers
For Print Only’s Calendar