Why Isn’t Branding & Design Part of Your Teleseries on Building a Business?

July 6th, 2011 | Posted in art, Blog, marketing | No Comments
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What good is sending more traffic to your site, if once they get there, your site has been slapped together and is just plain horrible?

Lately, I see and get invited to so many teleclasses. Whether free or paying, everybody has something they want to teach us, and of course the top issue is more traffic to your site or blog… and hopefully providing people with something they want to know and will share with others.

I click on those links and the sales pages are just pushing content and sign up forms, without caring much about how they look.

In addition, if a teleseries is about helping grow your business or build a new one, how come not one of the presenters is a branding or design specialist? Are they really saying that content is the only key here? That marketing a concept is more important than the presentation of it? That building a business has nothing to do with your visual footprint?

Well let me be the first to say, content is important, but your brand identity represents you, when you are not around.

Branding is one of the most important things about your business. When someone spots your logo or graphic identity and it’s distinctive enough, they remember it.

Do you think Apple, HBO, or Nike would slap a web page up there and not consider the branding, design and messaging all together? Every spinoff or product they launch or advertise is carefully planned, smartly thought out, extensively designed and pushed to market in just the right way.

Every business should consider the same criteria if they want stellar results.

It’s time that branding and design were equal components to any teleseries about marketing and building your business.

great branding identity for nike apple hbo

Brand Interview – Peter O. Zierlein, Illustrator

July 5th, 2011 | Posted in Blog, Brand-Interviews | No Comments
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Brand Interview – Peter O. Zierlein, Illustrator

poz Peter Zierlein on the beach

How long has your company been in business? Please tell us a bit about your company, its mission, goals…
I had my first assignments as an illustrator as a teenager while still living in Germany (posters for the local swim-club and painting carnival floats) and I started freelancing right out of art school (Pratt Institute) in 1991. I made a living largely on selling t-shirts which I stenciled with spray-paint and sold as “airbrushed” T-s’ at open air concerts. I also worked part time as an air brush and silk screen artist in the then renowned “T-Shirt Gallery” on 63rd and Lexington Ave. in Manhattan. My first illustration assignments were for the Village Voice, New York Magazine and I did monthly covers for The Big Apple Parents Paper. I moved back to Germany in 1992 and picked up illustration assignments for national and international magazines and newspapers, including “Stern”, “Spiegel“, “Le Monde Diplomatique” and Berliner Zeitung. I also illustrated some book and CD covers, and I drew characters and backgrounds for electronic game companies. At this point my work started to have a distinct style and conceptual viewpoint. In 1998 I returned to  New York and started illustrating for art director Steve Heller at the New York Times Book Review, which gave me a lot of exposure and I got illustration assignments from most major newspapers in the U.S. I also got involved doing posters, illustrations and public art happenings with a european school network, called “School Without Racism, School With Courage.” Lately I’ve been doing series of symmetrical paper cuts which I’ve been selling through galleries. This work is rather decorative and I want to find clients in surface design and the hospitality art market.
My mission and goal is to create graphic art that is intelligent, compassionate, legible and comprehensible. I try to achieve this by simplifying line and form in favor of content.

Babeldog by Peter Zierlein

Do you donate to charities? Tell us about that also and why.
I have donated art for various silent auctions, such as food banks and to raise money for other social causes, because I believe in supporting those institutions. I am also into social activism through art. For some years now I have been affiliated with the organization “Schule Ohne Rassismus/Schule mit Courage,” a european student network that promotes a culture of non-violence and anti-racism through programs in High Schools. I provide posters, magazine covers and illustrations to their publications. I’m also trying to push the principles of the european organization through an independent study, called “Project Courage,” which I offer at the Art Institute of Boston. Project Courage is about creating ad-campaigns for High Schools, promoting better civic behavior and tolerance through education, discussions and group activities to undermine bullying and racism.

How did you know what typeface (font) would be right for your company wordmark or logo? If your logo has an illustration, describe why that art was the right thing, animal, place, object, etc…
I don’t really have a logo, more of a tag. I sign my work “poz*“,which stands for my initials, with an asterisk. In print I set it in Helvetica Neue, because it is easy to read.

How did you decide on the right color palette to fit your company look and feel?
My color palette depends largely on the job at hand, but I try to restrict my palette to few colors.

Lucky 13 Tee by Peter Zierlein

How did you decide which type of designer to work with, or did you design your own identity and web presence?
I have worked with a number of client’s designers around typesetting and to create web pages. For my own website I prefer a simple design and function, which I created myself.

In what order did you present your company to the world? Did you start with marketing and products, or website, blog and social media?
I first started cold-calling and sending postcards of my work to clients and bought pages in a couple of illustration sourcebooks. As I mentioned above, my illustrations were seen in print a lot, which became my best marketing tool. I also pounded the streets with my portfolio and tried to drop off and show to as many publishers, graphic designers and art directors as I could in NY and other cities that I visited. I had my first personal website in 1998.

How long after the launch of your company did you start pitching in social media?
I’ll sporadically post new work on FB or announce new uploads to my blog or website. I started that may be 2 years ago.

Bliss by Peter Zierlein

Did you do research or study any software, take webinars, teleclasses, before approaching any area of your marketing or web presence?
I socialize with other artists, illustrators and graphic designers and have taken some pointers about marketing and web presence in that context.

Do you advertise locally in newspapers and/or nationally in magazines? Are they effective?
Having my illustrations in print is highly effective advertisement. I have been approached for work and get comments by many people that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have reached. I have also had advertisements in Print Magazine (a trade publication where I illustrated the Rick Poynor column ‘Optic Nerve’ for a few years) and have gotten some work from that.

Do you advertise online using Google, Facebook or on other company sites? Are they effective?
I have a website and a blog that I pluck and post on various artist and illustrator sites and networks. I’ve had an online portfolio on i-spot.com, but didn’t think I needed it anymore. Web-presence is both very important and effective, especially for promoting un-commissioned or personal work. The draw-back of online promotion is that there are so many artists using the same places to post and advertise themselves, and so many more illustrators and illustrations out there, so that all artists have to work more and faster to keep up with globalized competition and speed.

When you printed your products, packaging, business cards and other print marketing did you choose an online printer or visit a local vendor?
I use local vendors.

Did you know anything about different types of papers, when you wanted to print your marketing materials?
Yes, I think it really makes a difference what papers you are printing on. For my paper cuts, the materiality of the paper is most important, as the paper itself becomes the artwork.

HChelena2 by Peter Zierlein

Have you ever used “green” technology in printing, using FSC certified papers or recycled paper and if not, how likely are you at trying this on a next project?
I’m open to the subject, but honestly – I haven’t paid much attention to the environmental aspect of printing. As an artist I’ve used oil paints, spray-paints, laquer, acids, paint-thinners, cobalt-dryers and diverse other chemicals that are probably not very environment friendly…

If you sell products, are they produced in the USA or abroad?
Proudly made in the U.S. of A. – unless I’m abroad.

Is there anything you haven’t yet tackled, but will want to do soon?
I’ d like to get into surface design and hospitality art, still looking for takers…

Kilim by Peter Zierlein

To learn more about Peter Zierlein, visit the links below:

Website: www.peterozierlein.com
Blog: mindoverman.blogspot.com
Website: http://www.schule-ohne-rassismus.org/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=848344870
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbgSlFDsyFQ
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/peter-o-zierlein/12/31b/53

Brand Advocates in Your Corner Make Social Media Work

July 4th, 2011 | Posted in art, Blog, marketing | No Comments
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I’ve been tweeting and posting for years, but it hasn’t worked as effectively as it has lately and I’m going to share why.

We follow others on Twitter or like pages on Facebook, and those people can reciprocate, but then the conversation may be over. Obviously you’re now in their live stream and maybe they see a post and find the content interesting, maybe they even click on the link or share it, but they may not remember who originally posted that information later on.

Lately I have been engaged with a few others where we are retweeting each other’s valid content we feel our own followers will find helpful. As “brand advocates” for those you really know and respect, whose businesses and products or services you admire, you can really tweet and post sincerely, and that is the key here.

Being a brand advocate means you sincerely “like” a person’s mission, cause or business and want to share it with others.

An example is my colleague, Andrea Rosenfeld, who’s an amazing kinetic jewelry designer and decided to launch a new creative mentoring blog, Open Studio – Creative Mentoring,  to help other artists starting out. She asked me to be a guest blogger and write about applications and software, both web and graphic issues. She’s going to have a variety of other bloggers writing about different topics artists will find useful.

I started a new section on this branding blog of interviews, and Andrea was the first person I wanted to feature.

We respect each others missions and since our blogs are both informational content to help other creatives and business owners, we’re able to tweet and post and share each others latest news with gusto.

This is social media in it’s most pure form. Efficiently sharing valid content we hope our followers will appreciate and share further. We’re not just blindly retweeting ambiguous posts.

What does this mean for us? Andrea’s followers are interested in following me and my followers are interested in her. So both of our following is growing, as well as our Klout scores.

What’s important to know is it’s not about how many times a day you tweet or post, but how engaged the recipients are. People will comment and participate when the information is of value to them.

Be yourself, share wisely. When others benefit, so will you.

open studio creative mentoring by andrea rosenfeld

How Facebook & Social Media as a Marketing Tool Helps Artists

July 1st, 2011 | Posted in art, Blog, marketing | 1 Comment
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Facebook has become a great resource for artists! (illustrators, designers, fine artists, photographers, musicians and actors…) Not only do we have the ability to post galleries of our work, but we can create an event page about an upcoming production or exhibition and invite all our friends. Our friends can share the event with other friends and so on. Facebook stores our response, “attending” or “maybe” and will remind us of the event.

Today, we still receive direct mail postcards and brochures about upcoming productions and exhibitions, but there’s nothing better than having that information stored in a place we visit everyday. It’s a great way to be reminded as the event draws near.

Facebook also lets us feature our lastest videos so business owners can feature a new brand or product, actors can show a clip from an upcoming show, and musicians can feature their latest song.

We have the ability to create custom pages (iFrame apps) and they can include audio, video, forms, basically anything you can put on an html page and then you can set any of those custom pages as the landing page for newcomers. You can grab the link to that custom page and post about it, sending people to check it out. You can even load a store custom page and sell products right in there as well.

So okay what’s the ROI (return on investment)?

Since Facebook is FREE, I’d say the ROI is pretty amazing, but here are a few stats just from my own experience.

In the past two years my Facebook friends have tripled. It’s amazing to me sometimes over these many years just how many people I’ve met and know from the last! I have been invited to many more exhibitions, webinars, teleclasses and events, and by knowing about them and attending them (some in person) I have been introduced to so many new people.

As a creative, the larger your reach, the more opportunities will come your way.

social media creating artist connections

As for Twitter, it has been a different experience. The sharing of bits of information can be a wonderful resource for news and meeting and learning about new people has it’s benefits, but so far I don’t see the ROI as much as on Facebook and I think it’s because the dialog on Facebook is much more personal and engaging. The conversation can be among lots of people at once, rather than just a dialog between two.

On LinkedIn, I have been using this networking site for a few years and have built a great business posse. My connections have also probably quadrupled. It’s a great place to share information with like-minded individuals and groups to have engaged discussions. When looking for companies to pitch to, or people who might help you, you can’t beat it’s database of millions of professionals.

Savor The Success is a growing community of women entrepreneurs across the planet (15,000+) and I have been a member since 2010. This has been a very valuable resource for me. My visibility and clients are expanding due to this exceptional online community.

In the past few weeks, I joined this new community, Social Buzz Club, and I can see now how being a charter member and soon blogger of this new social media community is going to explode it all for me and super charge my online visibility. The sharing of valuable content between colleagues, having brand advocates in your corner for your own business, and being able to share that information with friends, what could be better?

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