FullBleed

In Part I of Marketing for Designers, ADCMW’s own long-time member Deane Nettles shares how he has learned to leverage the web as a foundation toward promoting his creative work. Stay tuned for Part II, which will include his recommendations on how he has used social media tools to build upon his website and email marketing efforts.

Let’s presume that there is an inside world and an outside world. The inside world is your studio where you live, and the outside world is where your clients live. If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve built up a client base. Those clients recommend you to other people, and there is this buzz in the outside world … which provides you with new business.

But, to build buzz in the online world, where do you even start? Here’s the answer: with a website.

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Wisconsin-native Jen Fose admits to being the black sheep of her large, mid-western family. Of her 25 cousins, she’s the only one who “stayed the somewhat uncertain course of a creative professional.”

Now, the 25-year-old is living in DC and working with the Creative Studio team at Ogilvy; not necessarily your black sheep of design leaders in the industry.

“My family members have all selected very practical career pathways and have become either accountants or engineers,” she said, acknowledging that she’s always received widespread support from her family for her creative pursuits. “I’ve proven that you can make a living doing something a bit less conventional.”

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Featured Illustrator: Christa Smith

Fall is a great time for meditation and reflection on what went well this past year. For this month’s “Three” our selected ADCMW members share with us: “What was your favorite project ever?”

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This is the first feature in a series on the DC-area fashion and merchandising scene.

Running Sharp Shirter in the DC community is awesome! The greater metropolitan area is constantly throwing events for local businesses to show off their stuff. I’ve noticed a real growth in the grass-roots movement over the past few years, and now’s the perfect time to be in the scene getting your work noticed.

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Since graduating from McGill University in Montreal, Claire Manibog has been working as a philanthropic advisor — and she loves it.

“Basically, I help people like Bill Gates make smart choices when they donate their wealth to charity. I work with an incredible team of smart, young people and their energy, optimism, and brains keep me motivated every day.”

Though, Claire doesn’t seem to be short on motivation.

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Illustration courtesy Mal Jones

Hey, you! Are you ready for some exercise? Step away from that color palette you’ve been over thinking, that CSS code you’ve pored over 12 times already, or the proposal your boss is bugging you about, and give me 30. Thirty seconds that is, in Brugger’s Relief. 1, 2, 3 … Oh, wait. You don’t know what Brugger’s Postural Relief Exercise is, do you?

Seeing as you are reading this article within the confines of FullBleed, I will make an educated guess that you are a designer, and that one frequently overlooked element in your job description (as said designer) is that you sit in your chair, all day and every day, with client meetings and coffee refills being the only exceptions.

This means, my friend, that you are a chair athlete.
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Jessica Avison wishes she could tell her younger self to stop worrying. “Don’t be afraid to try new things. Things will come together, as long as you keep trying.”

So far, her life has been following that advice (although with *some* fretting, after all). For examples, she just started a new career in design, she’s about to be married (on Saturday), and she’s getting involved with DC creative groups (even if she doesn’t initially know anyone in them).
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Smoke Break - Featured in the 2009 DCist Exposed Photography Show

From where does your inspiration originate? Familiar places or new, untapped areas? And where do we find the strength or courage to channel it when times are tough? Or when plans go awry?

I think we find that inspiration comes from within ourselves and, sometimes, from the help of others — even if we weren’t looking for it at the time.

When I was laid off from my job of four years in March of 2008, I had very little idea what my next move would be professionally and/or creatively. I knew that I had a lot of support from family and friends, plus a large network of fellow creatives from the DC design community. I heard the all-too-familiar cliche that this sudden change would most likely lead to bigger and better things for me, and that I should focus on the positive aspects of my freedom.

And I believed it. I really did. I just had no idea from where these new opportunities would come.
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Illustration courtesy Britt Irick

This is the third of three questions we asked for August’s “Three” series. Check out what several local creatives had to say, then share your own insight via the comments below!

We want to know: How do you fight the economic downturn (personally or professionally)?

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Andrew Cohen abandoned a computer science degree program at George Mason University to pursue a graphic design degree, instead. It was a transition that happened naturally — from his playing “Oregon Trail” on an Apple II GS using disks that needed to be flipped halfway through the game to learning photography from his mom and sister to creating websites in Dreamweaver and Photoshop.

Now, the 24-year-old Old Town resident and suburban-Richmond native spends his time designing for the web; that is, when he’s not playing soccer, mountain biking, running, snowboarding, reading, hoarding music, drawing, photographing, catching up with his sister (who’s studying in Buenos Aires), or complementing his rewarding job at Brightline Interactive with freelance design — an endeavor he’s thought about doing full-time.

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