Self promotion is important, and as visual artists we need to get our work out there to solicit paying jobs, be it freelance contracts or full-time benefits-paid jobs. Here are a few of the ways I can think of right away to promote yourself and your work:

1. The Internet

Get yourself a website; a your-name.com website. Put your work up. Tell your friends. Work the blogosphere (forgive me for the term) to your advantage. Find some design blogs, read them, post comments, leave your address in the URL box when replying. Traffic isn’t going to come to you at first, you need to place some lines and gradually reel in traffic.

Pros: Everyone uses the internet, your potential audience is nearly limitless. Personal portfolio sites are great to make your work visible to people that might hire you.
Cons: The Internet is saturated with everyone’s work it’s hard to stand out from the crowd.

2. Pro-Bono Work

Do some work for a needy cause, or an organization in a tight spot. Don’t just do some pro-bono work because the person soliciting the work makes some random promises of more work to follow. Be careful not to get taken for a ride though.

Pros: Everyone wants something for free. You can really easily pick and choose your projects and who to work with (or not).
Cons: You don’t get paid. Exposure is based on how high-profile the client is. Pro-Bono jobs don’t usually have much of a budget at all so often you can’t used much fancy stuff (materials wise).

3. Competitions

There’s lots of creative competitions out there; everything from shirts to posters to mockups. Be wary of what you submit work to though, just sayin’ is all.

Pros: Crazy exposure + prizes!? What’s not to like.
Cons: You’re competing with everyone else for the top spot, which means your work needs to be that much more creative and awesome than everyone else’s. Know your rights when submitting work.

4. Be an Entrepreneur

Perhaps get some of your work printed up and sell it, not necessarily to make a big profit but just to get your work out in public (of course you don’t want to lose money). Start a business, a sole proprietorship (cheap and easy), and sell stuff online or in person.

Pros: You can turn self-promotion into money and potentially a side business for supplementing your income when your job/career workload is light.
Cons: You have to know how to do a bit of marketing (and self-promotion [now were getting recursive!]) already and how to work the hype-machine in your favor. Can be a bit costly to get things rolling.

5. Portfolio Magazines

Submit your work of online (or meat-life) magazines that are purely about up-and-coming artists work, usually centered around a theme. JPG Magazine is one dedicated to photography, ANTI by RevloverLover accepts all mediums, ROJO Magazine, and a few others (you can find a bunch at PDF-MAGS.COM).

Pros: Usually completely free. Great way to get your name out there.
Cons: There’s no money it in, but hey, self-promotion’s a bitch.

Jeffery Zeldman hits the nail on the head with his latest essay. I really suggest that everyone take a few moments and read it over, even you non-web designers; it’s a smart article that while relatively brief, covers the important things about web design so that even those that don’t speak XHTML can understand things.

As much as I like looking through portfolios all walks of designers, I find it a bit lacking sometimes. I like knowing about the designers, their hobbies, their process, their setups, their work spaces. I feel it lets me see a little more into how their work comes to fruition. So from time to time I like to browse Apple’s Pro Profiles Archive. There’s all sorts of nifty information lurking in the profiles that tells us a bit about their work, their setup, but more importantly we get little (and sometimes big) hints at their processes.

In addition to sketching and working on personal projects as part of my daily, between classes, ritual at the art building I also take some time to browse design related websites such as Computerlove, NTMY, k10k, The Ad Feed, and Netdiver. With all of this daily information to digest I’ve come to find more and more designers and illustrators out there that I’m absolutely envious of the work they produce. I thought I’d share a few of these folk and mention a thing or two about them.

I had seen an illustration by Karl Kwasny aka Monaux about a year ago and immediately saved it to my folder of photos that visually inspire me, although at the time I had no idea who actually was the artist. Somehow more recently I stumbled upon his website and I was struck by his illustrations. There’s something about his style that grabs me; his use of line and color is superb and his illustrations appear soft and full of fun things to look at.

Si Scott has some of the most stunning type treatments I have ever seen. Ever. The fluid text style he employs is quite mesmerizing. I don’t know what else to say about him other than his text based illustrations are hard to beat.

The only other designer I’ve run across that has type to match that of Si Scott is Marian Bantjes. Marian’s attention to detail and the complexity of her designs are absolutely stunning. From vectors to ballpoint pens, Marian’s calligraphic stylings are at the top of the list. Also, her work is avilable in tshirt form from Veer (all profits from the shirts go to American Red Cross and AIGA’s Disaster Relief fund).

Matthew Woodson runs his portfolio on his website called ghostco which has fantastic examples of his illustrative prowess. I’m not sure where I first encountered his work but I was immediately attracted to his bold figures with high contrast. I really enjoy the effect he achieves when he combines traditional media, such as india ink, with digital artistry. His images remind me of dreamlike thoughts and a feeling of longing.

Steven Harrington is another one of my current favorite artists/designers. His silkscreens are reminiscent of 60s and 70s design aesthetics, if for no other reason than the his color choices. I’m also enjoying the halftone he integrates with his screens instead of just going for solid splotches of color.

Another designer I’ve been watching as of late is Fiodor Sumkin; a designer from Belarus with a thing for type, illustration, and ballpoint pens. Fiodor’s typography takes heavy inspiration from 1960s era rock-posters, and his illustrations commonly involve imagery of the 70s and 80s. I find his style (somewhat nostalgic) is refreshing in this era of vectors, bitmaps, and bright shiny colors.

So those are my current favorite designers? Who’s are yours (not that anyone really reads this though)?

A few weeks back I got wind of the annual Art & Design Career Expo. I have been interested in getting a summer job or internship in the local area for a while now but haven’t had much luck finding a place to apply or actually securing a internship for the summer which is why I was particularly interested in this expo.

As far as having a portfolio to show in person I didn’t exactly have anything of significance, which is a problem when that’s what everyone wants to see if you can imagine. I had a few drawings from studio classes, a poster or two from random projects, and this-and-that lying around. But what I did have was a week; one week to get my work together and get it in some sort of presentable fashion. Luckily time was on my side, barely, though it’s not like I was in some life or death rush, I just wanted to be prepared as well as I could be. (more…)

Wow. I would have never guessed at how busy I could potentially be this semester. It’s actually pretty crazy. My first semester at the University of Michigan has afforded me tons of work and little free time. Combine classes with a not-long-but-not-near-distance relationship and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a lack of ambition and effort when it comes to being creative.

Because of my transfer status with all my credits that I had already amassed I have to take a total of 3 or 4 regular academic classes in the next 2.5 years which means I get to overload with art classes. The overload is going to be, and is, the worst this school year because I’m trying to get all these art credits for my “sophomore review” even though I’m technically a junior. Whomever says art classes are easy obviously never took more than two at the same time; while they may not have a terrible amount of class work, the projects really stack up. Never before have I had more out-of-class work than now.

With that said, I try not to get burnt out, creatively speaking, on all the mundane and redundant projects assigned. How though? I should be burnt out, but I’m not, I just don’t get it. Perhaps because I have lots of personal projects on the back burners I don’t put my all into the assigned work. Do I take the easy way out? I would hope that I don’t, that wouldn’t say very good things about me as a student and as a artist. Maybe it’s because I take brakes frequently enough to look though books, look though other designers portfolios, and sketch (I always have my trusty Moleskine sketchbook close at hand).

I wonder what other people in my (relatively) same predicament do? Do most people have some sort of recharge mechanism for their creative juices?