At one time if you wanted to set up a website to sell your photography, jewelry or pottery online you would go to a webmaster and tell them what you wanted it to look like. Hopefully, he or she would listen to you and soon they would upload a website to sell your artwork on. But it can be a nightmare too, as I found out. Besides being very expensive.
Venues like Etsy, 1000 Markets and other selling sites were a blip on the horizon at that time. Wonderful places that would make our lives so much easier. In some cases you still had to have someone do the banner and avatar. But after working with Photoshop or other editing software for a while most artists caught on how to do them.
It is so much fun making an avatar. In fact many artists change their avatar every few months. I know I fell into that practice. I had a leopard, jaguar, pronghorn and baby, black cat and a black kitten. Every one of my sites, from my website to my Flickr page had a different animal on it. Everyone of them a wonderful creation. Not one of them had brand recognition.
I never gave brand recognition a minute of thought until on day while watching the Martha Stewart show. Everything changed. I can't remember the woman's name, but I won't forget what she said about brand recognition. You want your brand logo, avatar, stationary, and banner to be uniform.
Out went all the animals and I settled on one avatar. One of my most popular card photographs, my Birthday Cat Hamlet. My banner was standardized as well. Now no matter which of my online sites someone comes to they know they are in a Celtic Cat Photos shop.
I'm struggling with this too! It is so hard to settle on one image or logo. But you and Martha are right of course!
ReplyDeleteJust a thought, Julie!
ReplyDeleteGood information--I know its been said before. I guess I need to seriously think about all this.
ReplyDeleteBranding is incredibly important - recognition is a big key to building a loyal customer base. Great topic!
ReplyDeleteI am a graphic designer and I got a piece of advice years ago that I still share today. It is...take all your printed pieces and lay them out on the floor - stand back and take it all in. It should all have a common tread and look like it belongs to the same person/company. Great post.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I am a bit scattered too. Hope to get everything consistent soon!
ReplyDeleteHow funny that, now that I finally make it over to say a friendly hello again, I should read this post. I've been pondering this very topic myself, uanble to settle on my avatar between the more personal photo of me, or my best selling photo to date, "For Mother." ;) hehheh.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, just wanted to "pop-in," as it were, and say thank you for your visits and friendly, encouraging words. They do mean a lot to me.
Good post and I know this is so true. I think I have avatar ADD, LOL! This is something I need to get a grip on though. This is a very thought provoking post.
ReplyDeleteCathy, I couldn't agree more. I was fortunate enough to take an entrepreneurial class before I started my business and this is one of the things they stressed, the importance of branding. Great post!
ReplyDeletePeace, Judi