Graham Jones talks self promotion

Graham talked of the ways in which he promoted himself and his two man graphic design studio ‘Loose Collective’ to potential clients and for maximum exposure. He stressed the importance of having to keep reminding people that you are here and producing exciting new work, claiming that the actual designing is only about 10% of your time and that the rest is spent promoting yourself! Graham encouraged us to exploit any contacts, putting together a database of contacts that you regularly send out your work to every couple of weeks. To gain repeat business off a client Graham suggests that every few months you drop them an email to remind them that you want more work off them, encourage them to have a look at your recent stuff. Graham sends out Christmas gifts, its something nice to receive in the post that teases them a little bit with your work. He often sends out child like things that everybody loves like window stickers, he encourages putting your personality into it because if a client can talk to you and your easy to get on with, then your much more employable, (Personality And Image.) Graham has six differing business cards to offer clients and he when sending out promotional material he will personalize it for each client, as he does his emails. Graham exploits every avenue of self-promotion available to him, he is linked into Twitter, Facebook, his work is on Behnace (a free network of designers and illustrators), Flicker and on a blog. Graham is passionate that graphic design is all about the detail. The main promotional material for Loose Collective retains a consistent identity, across all types of promotions, from compliment slips, to the business cards, stickers on envelopes, and invitations to cup of tea events! I will definitely be taking on Grahams advice by building myself a stronger online presence, creating an identity for myself that includes my personality and spreading this identity across various media. I also think that I should start to create my contact database now from practicing tutors, to Designate, Code Computer Love, Arts About Manchester, Johnny Hardstaff and Ian Anderson.  Maybe even sending work out to companies that have come into give us a lecture or those whom I am particularly interested in.