Enter the HOW Promotion Design Awards

Calling on all you fabulous Photographers, Designers, Illustrators, Students check out the –

HOW Promotion Design Awards
Deadline: March 1, 2012
ENTER NOW

“Could your promotional design skills sell dentures to the Tooth Fairy? Show off your abilities—and let HOW promote you for a change.

If you win, you could see your work published in HOW’s October 2012 Self-Promotion Annual—a key resource for clients looking to hire talented new designers. The Best of Show winner also scores a free trip to the 2013 HOW Design Live, including round-trip airfare, hotel and Conference registration.

Enter your most persuasive, memorable work in a broad range of categories, from designs created to promote your own business to student projects, personal promotions (invitations, birth announcements and more) or client work. ”

http://www.howdesign.com/design-competitions/promotion-design-awards/

Fun Promo by Winnie Au

Fun and playful holiday promo by photographer, Winnie Au. The cards featuring furry friends will surely appeal to many of her clients. Check out her exclusive dog portraits site at http://dogportraitsbywinnie.com/. It’s a smart idea to have a site totally devoted to this particular niche of her business.

A personal and heartfelt holiday promotion

Photographer Clark Vandergrift created this beautiful video as a means to reflect upon the loss of his mother at Christmas time. He says. “My middle son Morgan (8 years old) and I shot on 5 separate days for lighting consistency throughout the story (the edit and sound design was another week in the making). It was cathartic for both of us to shoot the film and feel the motivating force behind it. I originally intended to only show this film privately to family and friends. But I was encouraged by a colleague to make it public… of course upon doing so I needed a license for the music. Special thanks to Nan Wilson and Wieden+Kennedy for the license. ”

He then created a printed mailer with a QR code on it that sent the recipient to the video.

The Stars Above from Clark Vandergrift on Vimeo.

Why Bloggin is Good for You

A blog is good for you. I don’t mean in that chicken soup for the soul kind of way. (Although there’s something nice about sharing your thoughts and stuff you’ve made with others.) But what I really mean is that a blog can be good for you professionally. If leveraged, it can be a great asset to your marketing efforts.

Blog vs Portfolio Site
Typically, the work featured on your website is categorized, formatted and displayed within a particular gallery structure. It’s often static for a period of time. And that’s great and appropriate for your online portfolio. But sometimes, you just want to show something you’ve made and maybe even talk about it and provide a little more info about the work, the process and/or yourself. A blog provides a quick and easy way to do that. Your portfolio site is like a gallery, but your blog can be opening night. It’s an opportunity to show yourself, talk about your work and have a conversation. You can post stuff when you want, in lots of different formats and sizes and talk about it or not. It’s active, casual and organic. And a great way for a client, art director or anyone else to get to know a little more about you – what makes you tic, what you’re passionate about, what’s going on inside your head. Think about it this way, a portfolio site is often all buttoned up while a blog gives you an opportunity to let your hair down.

Tips for Leveraging Your Blog

Keep it Fresh
The expectation for a blog is that it’s current and active. So if it’s it not, it could give the impression that you aren’t either.

Be Yourself, But…
You should feel free to be yourself on your blog, but keep in mind your audience. That may limit your ability to speak as, ahem, freely as you may want to.

Give Us More
This should be a place to take a peak behind the curtain. Show people more about what you do and how you do it. This could include process shots, personal projects, “behind the scenes” images or video, and other random tidbits.

Be a Show Off
Show off your new work, recent promo, or just that shot you took or thing you designed and love. Mention if you’re in a show, won an award, or participated in some event. Go ahead, talk about yourself, it’s ok.

Connect It All Together
Obviously, connect your blog to your portfolio site and vice versa. Make sure there’s a way to contact you from your blog. Think about connecting to your social channels, like tumblr, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.

Getting Started
If you’re new to all of this it’s pretty easy to get going. Here’s a great resource I found that goes over the basics. http://the-best-web-hosting-service.com/blog/2011/08/how-to-start-a-blog/

Some Great Examples

Tom Kershaw
http://www.tomkershaw.net
It’s great to see such a talented and local photographer. He really utilizes both his portfolio website and accompanying blog. Both work well together to showcase his work. His blog is set up as a “photo feed” and always fresh with new work. His portfolio shows the curated final images in a more structured manner.

Tom says, “On my blog I post photographs documenting life experiences, places I’ve been, people I meet and events I attend. Also it’s a place to put work not worthy of my portfolio. For example when I do a photo shoot, I may post four or five of the final selects on my blog whereas the portfolio would only get the best one or two. You could argue that you should never publish anything other than your absolute best work, but I think it is nice to see alternates and experiments as it tells more of a story overall.

A good example of this is this shoot I did:

http://www.tomkershaw.net/#2525489/Black-Lipstick-Curls

http://www.tomkershaw.co.uk/blog/2012/01/03/black-lipstick-curls/

You can see I didn’t select any of the full body shots for my portfolio, but they were still interesting so I wanted them to live on my blog.

I keep the design of my portfolio and blog fairly neutral and similar to each other, but I go back and forth with this. Sometimes I think it might be nice to have the blog predominantly white so it is almost the inverse to the portfolio. ”

Ryan Hughes
http://ryanennhughes.com/blog/
Ryan Hughes uses his blog to mention a feature in PDN, show “behind the scenes” video & photos, and more. In both this example and Tom Kershaw’s, both the portfolio website and blog share similar visual features. This consistency helps to orient the audience and visually connect the two.

Reena Newman
http://blog.reenanewman.com/
Reena Newman’s blog, The Hungry Photographer gives Reena a spot to talk about the work, tell stories and share a bit about her process, challenges and successes. It’s a great way to get to know her as a photographer.

Jessica Hische
http://www.jessicahische.is/obsessedwiththeinternet
Jessica Hische’s blog is an important part of her brand. She’s a typographer, designer and illustrator and has made a name for herself creating great work but also talking about it. She’s often asked to speak at conferences and workshops. Her blog is full of articles, examples and musings.

Josh Letchworth
http://joshletchworth.com/blog/
Amongst other things, Josh shows “behind the scenes” video footage on his blog, such as the shoot for the Nike BMX team out in LA.

An entire website/portfolio/promo overhaul

Photographer Nicolle Clemetson recently did an entire website/portfolio/promo overhaul. It was also featured on LiveBooks. Check out her website at : http://www.nicolleclemetson.com/

“Do Something Different” by Melissa Hennessy

No Plastic Sleeves is very pleased to welcome Melissa Hennessy as a guest contributor. Melissa has no shortage of hats. A former photographer, with a brief stint as an agency account exec, she has 20+ years in the photography & advertising industry. The last 8 years have focused on building relationships with creatives & promoting the select group of artists she represents. http://www.hennessyreps.com/

Do something different:

Like many agents & art buyers, I receive multiple types of promotions, both in email & printed formats, and the occasional pdf of a photographer’s portfolio. But recently, one of the artists in my group -Andrew Reilly – asked about creating a video of his print portfolio with edgy music that paralleled his style, but wasn’t shot from above, a la page turning style. Andrew had been using theAgency Access option to embed video within an email campaign to send behind the scenes videos of his work, but was looking for a way to create a more dynamic piece that highlighted a set of images with an edgier feel to them. “The piece was cut to music that pushed that concept and has been one of my more effective email campaigns in the past few months” We started showing it on the iPad at agency portfolio reviews & found it immediately had more impact than flipping through the printed book. See Andrew’s video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krjGFoGoGmQ

My curiosity peaked & we scoured You Tube, thinking others have done the same & found similar concepts with photographers Ben Watts, Christopher Wray-McCann, Margaret Malandruccolo, and agent Norman Maslov.

The piece I found on Ben Watts called “Lickshot” is actually his second, a follow-up to his book Big Up. Lickshot is a 58 second, highly personalized visual scrapbook and travel diary that reflects the incredible variety of Watts’ photographic subjects — high school ice skaters, Brooklyn biker gangs, and lounging sunbathers to world-famous actors, supermodels, and todays hottest musicians. The idea came from wanting to show more collage/in-your-face pics that emphasized his use of bold color. Watts has also received positive feedback & is working on a 3rd piece.

Wray-McCann’s piece is called Snap & you can view it here: http://wray-mccann.com/snap/.

I asked Christopher how the idea surfaced:

“I’ve been working with motion more and more over the past couple of years, and this past summer I had the extreme good luck to meet the amazing editor, Josh Bodnar (he won an Emmy for creating the title sequence for “Dexter”). Josh told me that he really liked the narrative / cinematic aspects of my work and mentioned that one of his hobbies is “Mid-wifeing photographers into filmmakers”, and suggested we make a video together. He asked me to pull 150 images that I really loved, & he’d take them back to his studio and play around with them for about a week. He said, “When I’ve got something I like, I’ll send it to you. You might love it, or you might hate it, but we can take it from there.” One week later he sent me the piece and I was blown away. I loved it. I basically decided not to change a thing.

“I think it’s a given to say that in the world we work in, things are moving faster than they ever have before. And keep getting faster. The sheer volume of images at people’s fingertips naturally shortens attention spans. At the same time this means that anything you create has the potential of a global audience. What I find the most satisfying about the video we made is that is a fantastic overview of my work. I think it gives a solid impression of my approach to photography and life in general. In 41 seconds.”

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive. For the creatives who hire me, it’s a buyers market. There are so many photographers to choose from, and at a certain level professionalism, individual creativity, and extensive experience are a given. But the most satisfying comment I’ve heard from several creatives I’ve never even met is that this video gave them a sense of what it would be like to actually work with me.”

I asked about the music used in the videos & all of the photographers did get permission to use their titles. There are also royalty free sites online with ample music selections. In addition to music, Los Angeles photographer Margaret Malandruccolo includes her own voice over in her video , describing her drive & passion to create pictures.

Whether created for a photographer’s own promotional piece, or as a “greatest shots show“, like the one created by agent Norman Maslov , these video scrapbooks are a unique way to weave one’s personality into a non-traditional overview of an artist’s work & let the video tell the story. With so many promotions coming through multiple channels, each of the above examples provides an entertaining way to get the viewer’s attention. Printed books, direct mail, sourcebooks, etc. are still all viable options in the creation of one’ s brand, and video is one more layer that goes beyond the static, two dimensional medium.

http://www.andrewreillyphotography.com
http://www.wray-mccann.com
http://www.benwatts.com
http://www.maslov.com
http://www.mmphoto.com

Melissa Hennessy
hennessyreps@comcast.net

Mark Katzman: Thinking Inside the Box

The Marriage Between Digital and Print Yields a Commercial Photography Portfolio for Today’s Changing Climate

“St. Louis, MO, 11/10/2011. A nagging question on the minds of commercial photographers and reps these days is how to present work. Do you go for the tactile experience of the printed book or the dynamic and vivid display of an iPad? How do you get the best of both worlds? Lifestyle photographer Mark Katzman has come up with one answer: Think inside the box.

Katzman’s most recent portfolio foray is an elegant combination of an immaculate, hand-printed book and an iPad – both integrated into a single hand-crafted object so beautiful that is screams to be touched. Carved from a block of solid Walnut, the box houses an iPad within it’s pencil-thin cover, while a hand-printed book is bound seamlessly and elegantly into it’s wooden body. ”

For a look visit: http://www.markkatzman.com/#/client/ipadport/0

Contact Us

Drop us a line.

Danielle Currier
danielle@noplasticsleeves.com

Larry Volk
lvolk@endicott.edu

No Plastic Sleeves says ‘hi’ to its international visitors

I just wanted to say how happy I am that No Plastic Sleeves has “gone global” with regular visitors from so many different countries. A special thanks to all our international followers!

G’day! Hej! Hola! Servus! Cześć! Hallo! Selamat datang! 您好! Ay up! Kia Ora! God dag! Hoi! Guten Tag! Bom dia! おはよう! Hei! Preved! Szia! Ciào! Pryvit! Salut! Merhaba Selam! Chau! Selamat pagi! Tere! Salaam! Hi!

Countries represented:

Australia
Netherlands
Switzerland
Spain
Austria
Denmark
Poland
Germany
Singapore
United Kingdom
Canada
New Zealand
Sweden
Mexico
Portugal
Japan
Finland
Russian Federation
Hungary
Italy
Ukraine
France
Malaysia
Turkey
Latvia
Argentina
Indonesia
Hong Kong
El Salvador
Brazil
Estonia
South Africa
Slovenia
Pakistan

Join us for a workshop at the PRC this Saturday!

Brand and Portfolio Development: Intensive Seminar with Larry Volk and Danielle Currier
Saturday, November 12, 2011, 9:00 am – 3:30 pm
BU Photonics Building, Room 203
8 St. Mary’s Street, Boston, MA
$120 General Public | $100 Members (cost includes the book No Plastic Sleeves: The Complete Portfolio Guide for Photographers and Designers, which retails for $34.95)
Limited to 30 participants

http://www.bu.edu/prc/workshops.htm

A First Promotion by Carla Richmond

Great concept and execution by photographer, Carla Richmond, for her first promotion. Fun, retro style typographic treatment for her name adds a bit of style too.

Carla says, “I made my very first promotional piece! Well, I actually made it over 5 months ago…… and still haven’t sent it out. Self promotion is a scary thing. It is a small edition of only 50. I decided the process would be easier by targeting my market and making the promotional piece it’s own piece of art. I want to thank Ryan Dougherty for helping me with the concept and execution (www.cinderandsledge.com). This simply wouldn’t have worked without him.”

Comm Arts Web Pick of the Day

Recently submitted to No Plastic Sleeves by artist rep, Sarah Claxton, this site for photographer, Joshua Cogan was recently named a Communications Arts “Web Pick of the Day“.

To experience the site, go to: http://joshuacogan.com/

Sarah commented about the site –

“Joshua Cogan’s website was created in collaboration with Bluecadet interactive, an agency based in Philadelphia that Joshua has done a lot of multimedia work with. Having worked with Bluecadet before, Joshua knew the best approach was to define his needs both in terms of functionality and form, as they are incredibly talented at dovetailing the two. They went through several iterations until they settled on the current design.

They set out to create a portfolio site that reflects a strong personality. The challenge was making the site’s functionality more than just a basic set of slide-shows. Joshua’s work spans many different areas and subjects, none of which are the same but many have overlapping themes and commentary. He wanted to capture those subtle links that make his work cohesive.

They built an intricate, interactive tagging system that allows users to navigate through the photos within main categories like Travel, Photojournalism, and Portraiture. Users can also click through photos by theme, curating those images by their personal interests like Faith, Music, or even Usain Bolt.

The site features granular social media integration, allowing visitors to share direct links to images. Viewers can mark their favorite images, which are displayed on an unobtrusive bottom navigation bar and stored, making sharing your favorite images upon return visits simple.

Built in Flash, the site has a robust Drupal backend, making the content fully administrable and allowing Joshua to easily upload new photographs.

The care and attention to detail, combined with photography, have had an impressive effect. A few months after its launch, the site boasts impressive analytics, with users viewing around twelve pages per visit, spending an average of nearly eight minutes on the site each. There’s an almost non-existant bounce rate: 98% of visitors go to the site and stayed. That means almost no one entered only to turn around and leave, instead exploring and viewing the images.”

PDN Online provides top 10 iPad Apps for Portfolios

http://www.pdnonline.com/The-10-Best-Photo-Po-3732.shtml

FlexFolio

Xtrafolio Photo Portfolio Professional

Sort Shots

Portfolio to Go

Valise

Viewbook Portfolio

Portfolio for iPad

Foliobook

MediaPad Pro

Padport

Anyone out there have any they recommend? Share your thoughts.

Natasha Nicholson’s Promotional

Check out this promotional effort recently submitted to No Plastic Sleeves by Canadian photographer, Natasha Nicholson. The images on the postcards are beautiful and rich with detail. She turns food into works of art.

Inspirational! Ryan Hughes 360 Project

This project by Ryan Hughes, a motion picture director and portrait photographer based in Toronto, Canada is truly inspired! Great work on the post production and synchronizing to the soundscape. Everyone I shared it with was blown away by the final pieces. Thanks to Ryan for emailing me about the project. This is a great example of personal work taking you to new heights. It’s also significant that Ryan received a fellowship to complete this project. Fellowships and grants are a great way to realize projects, travel to interesting sites and hire folks to collaborate with. Another plus – sharing “behind the scenes” footage adds a whole new dimension to experiencing the work.

“The 360 Project is an exploration into the crossroads of photography and motion pictures. It is a study of peak dance movements, captured simultaneously by 48 cameras aligned in a circle.

There are two components to “The 360 Project” – “Ballet 360” features ballerinas from Canada’s National Ballet School, “Krump 360” features dancers from Northbuck Krump. The two styles of dance represent polemic perspectives in both technique and origin – one is beauty, the other beast.

The resulting images resemble a type of digital statue – a frozen, peak moment, embodying the essence of each dance form in 360 degrees.”

- Ryan Hughes

BALLET 360 (The 360 Project) from Ryan Enn Hughes on Vimeo.

KRUMP 360 (The 360 Project) from Ryan Enn Hughes on Vimeo.

The 360 Project – Behind the Scenes from Ryan Enn Hughes on Vimeo.

This work was made possible with the support of the Ontario Arts Council’s Chalmers Arts Fellowship. Additional support provided by Canada’s National Ballet School.

Set photos are photographed by Melissa Tait.

Great Article – Editing Your Portfolio by Zack Arias

Check out the full article here: http://zackarias.com/editorial-photography/editing-your-portfolio/

“I know many of you are wondering why I’m working on a print portfolio. What about web sites, PDFs, iPhones, thumb drives, laptops, etc, etc? Are printed portfolios still relevant? In my opinion they are. That opinion also is held by many in the editorial and advertising world. I know of two leading Ad agencies that won’t meet with you if you walk in with only an electronic portfolio. They want to see your book. The printed output of your work. Anything can look good on an iPad. Can it print? Can it run larger? The devil, and the jobs, are in the details. Wedding photographers know this all too well. Do you want to deliver a disk of zeros and ones or would you rather deliver a beautifully printed album? What is going to live in plain sight? A thumb drive or a book? Which one will be cherished? Which one has lasting value? Which one makes you more excited to deliver? Which one is instant? The book. That’s which one.

A printed book is a thing to take pride in. There’s something tangible about it that holding an iPad doesn’t compare to. Note that I’m a big believer in electronic forms of showing your work. I walk into every meeting with a print book AND an iPad. The book is the best representation I have of the work I do. The iPad holds expanded galleries of work that support the book and hold other galleries of work that don’t find their way into the main book. Things like personal projects, travel photography, video, etc. Eventually I want to have a series of print books that show a range of the work I do.”

– Zack Arias, Photographer

Workshop at PRC with Volk & Currier

Yup, that’s right. We’re at it again. This time, we’re conducting a workshop at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University. It’s called – Brand and Portfolio Development: Intensive Seminar with Larry Volk and Danielle Currier.

This workshop will discuss and explore one of the most difficult aspect of portfolio development, which is creating a unique presentation that best reflects your brand. The biggest challenge in the development of materials for marketing and self-promotion is creating those materials in such a way that reflects your personality as a professional and a photographer. The workshop will present two sessions: Part 1 will explore the notion of branding and the development of your unique identity; Part 2 will focus on translating that brand and visual identity and extending it into your portfolio and marketing materials.

If you’re interested: http://www.bu.edu/prc/workshops.htm

Cheers, Danielle

Ode to the Poster

“Posters are tactile, emails are not. The mere fact that posters are large, that they are printed in multiples and that they can be quickly posted on visible surfaces gives posters more potential staying power than the most striking tiff or jpg.” – Steven Heller, art director of the New York Times Book Review and co-chair of the SVA MFA/Design program

Sure, posters are “simple”, but they’re relatively inexpensive and they still work. Especially when the image in the poster is striking, as in the posters below. Check out this summer 2011 poster promo by photographer, David J Peacock.

Behind the Scenes with Chris Crisman

Last January, I wrote about “The Beauty of a Hand Made Book (Chris Crisman’s New Promo).” This summer, Chris and his team made another fabulous hand made book. He says, “Even though it’s a labor of love, hours and hours go into the planning, designing, and manufacturing of these books. Each one is a unique and individually crafted piece. The craft of each book is such an important aspect of the project that we wanted to try and capture the process, as you can hopefully see in the short film below. I worked with our awesome assistant/bookmaker Tye Worthington to put the video together and I hope that it shows how the care that we put into each of these pieces.”

I’m really excited to share with you Chris’s video which gives us a behind the scenes view of how this little labor of love was made. Enjoy!

Distinct Brand Flavor – Friend or Foe?

I’m often asked this question: If I create such a distinct looking visual “brand”, one that focuses on a particular area, won’t that pigeon-hole me and my work? And the answer is; Yes, sometimes, but is that always such a bad thing? There is an advantage to looking like a “specialist” in a particular area of the industry. Just ask, relative newcomer, Reena Newman, whose made a name for herself by doing just that.

I recently had an opportunity to interview Reena about her portfolio and its distinct flavor.

An established photographer friend of mine has always told me that if you stick with it, it’ll take five years before you really begin to see success as a working photographer. Well, I’ve “officially” been at it for about three months, so you may have to call me up and ask again in four years and nine months… ha ha.