After posting my last write-up about setting up, I’ve come to realize how much there is to take in…perhaps too much for one post. I am obviously taking action bit by bit, but had originally thought to post about my efforts once a week only. Now I’m thinking perhaps it’s best to split it up more and post as I go about each step of the way. It will make it easier to focus and tackle the to do’s I think. You can review all the creative business 101 posts individually, but here’s a review of what I’ve done so far:
- Made the decision to start! Yay!
- Figured out my motivations, inspirations and ultimate goals
- Wrote my mission vision statement
- Wrote a business plan brief that includes:
- my design collections, specific list of themes I want to build
- weekly marketing action steps
- specific goals with specific deadlines – so they are measurable
- Decided on my official business name
- Purchased my domain name, registered name on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc…
- Created logo of my official business name
- Ordered business cards with new logo
- Gathered my current body of work – digital files into folders for organization…
Whew! So now that I have most of my work in digital format and looking at it…I’m now thrown into the process of trying to figure out how to organize it all. Because I delve in so many different things, this is a bit more challenging for me. Many other visual artists might simply have a gallery with all their paintings, for example. I was thinking to have patterns, digital stamps, colored graphics…but not sure that really makes sense from a presentation standpoint. Should I go by media type, by collection, by style… or perhaps cross reference to it’s viewable in many different ways? Ultimately, I have to think of my customer (going back to the business plan) and figure out what they expect to see – what would help achieve my goal of being licensed. I want to present myself in the best way and show the breadth of my work, but don’t want to seem scattered either. In the licensing industry often artists show only a few examples to the public and hide the rest under a password protected area for actual clients to review. It’s a way of keeping the actual collections to be licensed exclusive. Hmm…
I’m going to take some time to think about the organization of my work and how to present it…what I really want to portray…and all the while I am working on creating new work as well. Going through a bit of struggle that I will blog about later…but I hope that this review was helpful. It actually helped me to see what I’ve done and what I need to do next. Something about writing things down…
Let me know what you think, where you are at and until next time my bloggy friends…ciao ciao!
