Creative Identity: Personal Branding and Self-Promotion

Who Are You?

• Some people find it really easy to sell who they are, what they do and what they’re looking to get into next. 
• You might already be able to say you’re a portrait photographer, collage illustrator, or an editorial graphic designer.
• “everyone on this planet is gifted, sometimes it takes some trial and error to figure out what your gifts are.”
•  Truly interested in and excited by.
• That could be a sector or industry, and it doesn’t have to be what you’ve studied. 
• Graduating in graphic design doesn’t mean your only choice is to be a graphic designer. 
• You might decide you want to do something else entirely, or that you’re more multidisciplinary and want to work across a few different areas.
• When you can understand many mediums and have a variety of skills, it helps with collaborating and directing other creatives.
•  knowledge and strengths are totally transferable. A skill learned in one discipline can be really useful in another. 
• Graduates should not focus on what you think a job wants from you, but what you can bring to a job. 
• It’s hard to come up with a simple description or title for what I do. I believe that over time the work I make will define who I am, not the title I use.
• Just choose a title that matches the work you want to be doing. Focus on making good work that you love, and opportunities will come to you.
• Remember that passion is magnetic, and people hire people – it’s not based solely on your skill set and experience. 

Personal Branding

• Personal branding is a curation that forms an impression of who you are, as well as what you want to be.
• How you come across as a creative is similarly down to a combination of elements that create an overall impression. This can be made up of: Your work, personality, experience, interests, network and collectively, the way you express these differ
• Being cohesive and consistent will help you unify your brand, as it’s made up of so much more than just your work – it’s an overall sense of who you are.
• To start with, you can think about how you want to be seen, what kinds of people or clients you want to attract and what you want to be known for.
• Being decisive about the answers to these questions will allow you to have control over your public image, which is something you can then apply to your entire online presence.

Social Media

• It’s important to remember that personal branding is a spectrum and can be as involved or as subtle as you’d like. 
• Try not to worry too much about coming off as overly ‘professional’ or gaining loads of followers
• The whole point is to communicate your tastes and personality in whatever way you’d like.
• Some creatives put their day-to-day experiences front and centre on Instagram Stories for example, and others prefer to take a backseat and let their work do the talking
• While some creatives combine the personal and professional into one account, others like to have a separation between the two, or install privacy settings on their personal page. 
• Social media platforms like Instagram can also be a great tool for promoting your work and finding work that inspires you.
• As well as being a great way to get on peoples’ radars, social media can help you connect with creatives you admire.

Writing About Yourself

• Getting comfortable with writing about yourself and your work is an incredibly useful skill as a creative, and one that will serve you well across many different formats and platforms.
• Depending on where it’s seen, these kinds of texts are usually made up of: Information about you and your work, your achievements, recent clients, employers or experience, your interests and (if relevant) your availability. 
• You might also want to consider including contact information, as well as links to a website, social media or blogs, and in some cases, a headshot.
• People are far more likely to engage with a casual tone brimming with your personality. 
• You’re trying to stand out, so talk about what you do and why you love it. 
• Putting what you did into a concise paragraph was powerful. It helps clarify and consolidate your ideas.
• Writing becomes more specific to interests and inspirations; these elements were the driving factors behind desire to create. 
• What makes what I do different from others? What would someone who doesn’t know anything about me, and only has my work for reference, want to know?

Get Sharing

• how you promote yourself. There are tonnes of different ways to do this – from posting on social media platforms to going to industry events and chatting to people. 
• Self-promotion is equally as important as shaping your online presence – if you don’t tell anyone about your work, no one will be able to appreciate it!