How to Promote Your Work ListThumbs
How to Promote Your Work
Many new designers might think that having their own site is a real important thing, that it will make their work known, and it get them jobs and money. Well, having your own site is important, but it doesn't mean that you don't need other tools to place your work out there.
It is a geniune mistake to think that your site will work solo. The internet is a big place, and if you're a new designer, your site might be very much as an isolated island in the pacific, like this one. What you'll need to make your little island known is to build brigdes from main land to your island. Main lands are the big and famous portfolio / image sites, that allow you to make your account and place your work there. That's free promotion to you.
Also, you'll get real feedback, unlike you'd get in your own site. Flickr, DeviantArt and Behance are only a few examples where you'll get this kind of visibility. For example, there are some really famous artists that not only have their personal sites, but also have their portfolios in these other sites, such as Guilherme Marconi, James White and our very own Fabio Sasso, all these at Flickr.
At DeviantArt you'll find another great roll of artists, such as Cris Vector, Artgerm and Loish (my personal favorite). There's also the DeviantArt shop, where you can sell prints of your work.
At Behance, another great portfolio site, you'll find more of these awesome artists. Glenn Jones, the Lichtfaktor crew and Peter Jaworowski are some of them.
Of these, only one or two don't have a personal site, but that only proves that if you don't want to have your work sitting alone on an island, you'll find everything you need in main land. You don't have to get worried about domain and host payments, you don't have to worry about making the site layout. But of course, if you're a web designer, having your little island is still really important.
Anyways, I just trying to make my point when I say: new designers, you must join one or more of these sites, unless you're a goddamn Da vinci and you make your island some kind of Atlantis... These sites offer you almost infinite feedback if you make the right connections, and that will make you a better designer. And that's pretty much it. These sites are an awesome source of promotion to you! Use it wisely! I hope you guys liked this post! Cheers. ;)
Typo Experimental Tutorials, comment please :D
Ups sorry...
this is nice artwork
but i think less article contain :)
It is very important to get you work out on the internet aside from creating your own website. I have been putting a few things I have done on other websites aside from my own and people do notice. I actually got my current job at a Web Design Company because of it. It is really about networking. Some of my friends who saw my stuff show their friends and they in turn show their friends. It worked out great. By the by great stuff, love it.
Katie
great post.. very true about the islands and main land thingy :)
also being on one of these sites gets you loadsa encouragement and motivation. it's well worth it!
21 Comments
Great article! Nobody is going to promote your work for you, so it's really important to get out there and push your work and talent. It can be a tough thing to do but sites like Flickr and Twitter make this sort of thing easy.
When my site first started I used Flickr a lot to promote my work. Many sites like PSDTUTS and BITTBOX have Flickr widgets on their sites which allow you to post your designs directly onto their site's front page. This is a great opportunity to get your work noticed and if you post links to your site in the Flickr caption area, you can drive traffic to your site as well.
www.colorburned.com
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i like the 10th one Artgerm!
Wow what an Effort!
:D LawrencE :D
I really liked the topic...
But...On this sites there is one problem...Pople seem to never leave comments on your work...I even dunno why...
Like if you checked,at least leave a comment...
It is hard to get comments on those sites unless you cater to a certain niche, and get in good with those higher up in those niches usually.
But yeah, it's true that a lot of people will look at your stuff and leave, not giving you any feed back at all (I've seen this even on some really amazing artists on DA).
And yeah Artgerm's stuff is ridiculously amazing.
(PS the link to the DA account for artgerm is broken)
Well said. Getting found on the internet is truly the one thing everyone seems to be after, but it's something that only so few actually achieve. It's nice to see the range of outlets dedicated to surfacing rare and interesting content grow over the past few years.
Great post, really enjoyed it, keep it up :D
Paulo, i think you missed out on a quite important point. Sure a lot of the freelancer get "know" through the internet, but what happened to sending of your portfolios to different types of marketing agencies, that you might be interested to work in? My main area of work is done in photography, and that is taking the same direction as graphic design, but yet are forgetting to send in their portfolios the old fashion way. That is also one way to get your name out there.
Getting media attention is always something positive, getting a scrappy peace of work might be good as well, to get you started on your feet!
Those guys are some very talented people i must say, and they are the ones that you find pretty much all over the web if you look into these types of works.
Otherwise, nice peace
ttp://flickr.com/photos/alexanderblacker/
Thank you for this postings, the designers reading them can potentially save themselves a lot of time and effort by being exposed to other artists experience, true, it also depends on your location, but the mistake of thinking your own site will do the work for you is pretty common, i work with a lot of artists and musicians and often have to gently tell the work is not done with your site or your demo, most artist forget that marketing will do the wonders you see on commercial music for expample where you see the content doesn't match the quality or viceversa, so we have a better chance of balancing things better to attanin success ( I prefer to call it self-realization personally) in a more efficient fashion.
Great article, these sites are wonderful tools for exposure. It's too easy to throw stuff on one's website and forget about the networking/marketing aspects that need to be taken care of. Thanks for this!
Thanks for the great post.
I always knew I was on the right track by joining all these user content driven sites. Just didn't know it was also considered 'best practise'.
I'm glad that I'm on at least 2 of the sites you mentioned. Flickr and DeviantArt, I'm also on CarbonMade (which I think deserves a mention).
Even though I haven't uploaded much. At least I'm on the right track; feels good to know.
I also post some of my designs on my blog.
Thanks for the great portfolio tips.
Looking forward to more...
think there's another important factor to regard: community work. especially at deviantart it's very important to talk to everybody as much as possible. otherwise your portfolio will vanish in the mediocracy you'll propably find there.
I find that finding work is much easier to do in the real world than online. Trying to get "famous" online will mainly win you critique to learn from, the most people that spend time looking at design and illustration online are artist and not people who are looking to hire. I must agree with Blacker that showing off you work in the real world is still very vital, at least if you are after a job.
Great post. Thank you. This is one of those posts that really does help designers - as artists and businessmen/businesswomen.
Really great article!
I think that if didn't exist sites like Deviantart.com and BeHance Network,
i will never sell so well my art!
I started all from Deviantart, and posting, chatting, answering comments and what else...Now i am able to have many visits on my website that become all potential buyers!
Antonio Felaco (Italy).
Anfex.it
cool...thanks for the advice.
AA
Typo Experimental Tutorials, comment please :D
