As part of my exhibition at Hartford Art and Framing, I gave a talk on the topic of online branding for artists titled A Brand New You.
At the time, early concerns of the Corona Virus were just about starting to take hold of our community, So, I was pleasantly surprised that people still showed up to hear me talk on the topic.
My earnest desire is to support my community in any way I can. So, it was an honor for me to have folks show up even under these conditions.
As you may already know, I love to take photographs and videos of my art journey. I was lucky that my teenage daughter was home on spring break, so I enlisted her help for the event. She’s taking a photography class in school, so any chance to practice her photography skills is something she’ll jump at. She created this cool effect with the photo below.
Our packing list for the event included my laptop, my projector, two cameras (mine and my daughter’s), tripods, tons of cables to make everything work, batteries, a remote clicker for the slide presentation… Yes, you get the idea. We had a lot of stuff to pack to make this event what I wanted it to be.
After all of that packing when we got there, we found out that there was no SD card in my camera. So, we ended up having to use only my daughter’s camera.
I’m pleased to say the talk went very well. All participants listened with rapt attention and took down pages of notes.
Our community needs this information. We need to support artists especially textile/fiber artists so they can get their best work out into the world and profit from it if they so wish. I’m committed to doing my part in this.
After the talk, we got to socialize a little bit while keeping social distancing in mind. I autographed books and we took some pictures together. Although we went past our scheduled one hour time period, it felt as though we’d been there only a few minutes. Question and answer time was very lively, with so many great questions asked.
If you were not able to attend, you missed some really great information. I hope you’ll be able to catch me next time I speak at a venue near you.
We learned what branding is and why artists need it. We did exercises on how to create a brand and then discussed strategies for implementing your brand online.
Here’s the major takeaway from the presentation. Branding is made up of two parts – brand visuals and brand narrative The important thing is to define your brand narrative first. Then use your brand visuals – logos, colors, fonts – to enforce your brand story.
There was a lot of learning in this workshop. For me, I learned how much my community needs professional development resources. For the participants, they learned how to grow their audience, share their art with the world and sell their art.
Here’s some of the early feedback I received after the talk.
One,
And another,
Thank you if you were able to come hear me talk. I loved connecting with you. Looking forward to more opportunities to equip my art community with the skills they need to do their best work.
Before I sign off, I want you to leave a comment below and let me know what information you need to grow as an artist. So that I can deliver useful content that you all need.
That’s it for now.
Take care.
Love,
PS: Oh and one last thing. All along, I had a high capacity SD card in my laptop that we could have used in my camera. I never thought to check until the event was over before I noticed it. 🙂
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