I have something to confess. I’m not always 100% confident creating my marketing and promotional materials.
In fact, very recently I was really stuck. Frozen. Not “GTD”ing or whatever the hell that Super Special System is. I was using the “GNDF,” system, or Getting Nothing Done Fast.
I had a major mental block on what to put in a tear sheet. Do I send a tear sheet? Should I send a full-blown portfolio? Should the portfolio be attention-getting wackiness or straightforward down-to-business?
The longer I thought about it, the more the questions and self-doubt piled up. Despite having hired artists in two different industries and sampled (literally) thousands of portfolios, here I sat, unable to compile that knowledge into a tangible package for myself.
One day I had epiphany. I decided that the most important thing was showing the work in the cleanest way possible. You can only get into the heads of art directors and publishers so far. From experience I knew that someone reviewing art can have a totally skewed view if they haven’t had their coffee or got yelled at by their editor that day. Nope, that is not fair at all. It is the truth.
Trying to make a sample package that would have 100% no-fail appeal to everyone everywhere was preventing me from doing anything at all.
One thing I did know (again from experience) was that the people reviewing art samples want it to be super easy. They want to see cool art, file it for future reference, and get on with their busy day.
They don’t want to pop in a CD, read three pages of copy about how great I think I am, or go to a complicated third-party portfolio site and search me out.
They just want it easy, and rightly so.
I know there are people who hate pithy slogans like Nike’s “Just Do It.” Those words don’t motivate everyone. However, in this case, that was the best motivator I could have. I really just needed to do something, to take action. Agonizing over how to package myself was not moving me forward.
Granted, I did not want to just be sloppy in order to get something out the door (the effect might be worse).
The idea of simply making my art easily accessible to the people who want to buy it or hire me was the thing I needed to create my new packages. I had them in the mail that day.
It’s just so simple. Think about it a little bit. Just Do It a lot.
