The Graphic Designer’s and Illustrator’s Guide to Marketing and Promotion
Allworth Press
10 East 23rd St. #510, NY, NY 10010
1-800-491-2808 www.allworth.com
“This book will show you how to use the other side of your brain so you can become as successful commercially as you are creatively.”
—Michael Tanimura, Director, Silver Image Creative, Inc.
It is not a secret that to achieve success is not enough to be a talented designer. Necessary be able promote or sell your work. Not everybody who starts work as creative professional understands that self promotion is really important step in becoming successful designer or illustrator.
Maria Piscopo’s Graphic Designer’s And Illustrator’s Guide to Marketing and Promotion is a absolutely useful guide to the field, that help understand how to create impressive portfolios and marketing tools like networking, find clients, learn sales strategies. Graphic Designer’s And Illustrator’s Guide to Marketing and Promotion provides us the instructions for setting up the creative business. The Author who is actually expert in marketing and promotion describes business secrets for designers and illustrators. In her book Maria pays a lot of attention to understanding the market of clients and how to reach that market through creating a marketing database; presenting an inspiring portfolio; distributing effective promotional material; utilizing valuable networking opportunities; developing profitable pricing and negotiating techniques; creating efficient advertising, direct mail, and public relations campaigns; making the most of the Internet and e-mail marketing.
All the steps to achieving client’s market are very understandable. She gives detailed explanation for all the steps.
Reading this book helps to create your own marketing plan, starting with defining of the target audience. Author makes us think about “target your market”. I really like this chapter because it is just excellent starting point for a creative’s career beginning.
So we start with questioning ourselves about “what sort of creative work do you like the most now? “Do I want to do a lot of money? “What do I want to do more of? “ Asking those questions makes us project ourselves to ten years. Now than we defined area where we going to work we define target audience, we ready to write marketing message and find new clients trade directories, industry trade shows, trade associations.
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In Chapter 3 Setting up Client Databases she describes how to manage the information about the clients which is really important for the business. Organize all the data is critically important.
For me as for recent graduate was especially interesting to read chapter about Effective Promotion Materials and Portfolio presentations- Chapters 5 and 6. Now, when we defined our market audience we can “first, create self assigned material, and second, clean out pieces in your portfolio that do not support your marketing message.” Maria explains not only types of portfolios but tells how to present them better to the clients: “Design and Illustration clients are hiring you for what you can do for them, not for what may look good in your portfolio.”
Chapter 7 “Pricing and negotiation” is very important topic for designers though many designers do not feel comfortable with that. Author tells us about the industry standards, pricing and negotiation the price, contract.
I glad that author included the chapter 8 about time and stress management where she talks about rules that help to organize the time fight with the stress, and “how to find the balance between business and creative issues”. I like that she included case studies and success stories.
One of my favorite chapters is “Marketing with your Web Site”. It helps to understand common designers’ and illustrators’ mistakes with creating web sites, special tips for designers and illustrators.
I like this book a lot. This is a great guide that helps basically to create marketing plan. It is written on easy language, has very good structure and has a lot of helpful information and tips for creative professionals. She uses professional terms and provides explanations to them. Reading book you not only get the information about the industry but get some ideas where to find new sources of information.
The that I liked most about this book is that it inspires to start the career. It makes you think that everything is possible if you will have clear understanding the industry and create plan of your career.
