Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Hosted gallery presentations
Many fine artists want a web presence but are intimidated by the technology or
lack the resources to hire someone to create and maintain their site. For those who
are established in their field, a gallery site can be a substitute for a personal site—a
way of establishing a foothold in the virtual world. There are both fine art and com-
mercial gallery sites. In both cases, the site is the product of an individual's personal
vision—the curator in a fine art gallery, the artist representative in the commercial
site. An artist has to come to the curator's attention, and the curator has to want to
represent that artist. Assuming the chemistry is right, the artist gains an immediate
increase in visibility, as well as a personal advocate.
Social networking site
There are a variety of social networking sites that provide a way for you to
share short notes about your work and display images or videos. Facebook has edged
out MySpace as the major website for this purpose. Companies, design studios, and
working professionals are now using it as both a personal space and a marketing tool.
Any prime destination is an irresistible magnet for posting your work. Plus, a
social network not only enlarges the number of people who know about you, it can
provide that special sense of personality that bridges the gap between a formal port-
folio and the person behind it. However, indiscriminate friending offers casual con-
tacts access to not just your own personal quirks, but those of your irrepressible
friends and family.
Key to using Facebook as a portfolio adjunct are its Privacy settings, which you
can use to limit access to some elements on your page. Next you need to customize
the Search section. You might want to block most people from seeing the pages you
have become a fan of or from seeing your list of friends. And you must maintain these
settings as you add new friends to your list.
All of this takes a lot of effort, and Facebook, like other social networking
sites, is a place with a friendly, no-stress vibe. In short, if you're not committed to
massaging your contacts, it may not be a worthwhile choice when there are other,
more focused outlets.
Blogs
An adjunct to a personal portfolio, although not a substitute for it, is the per-
sonal or studio blog. It offers an opportunity to talk about your work in a conversa-
tional way, without weighing your formal portfolio down with opinions and insights
that can seem overdone or even pretentious when visitors are concentrating on your
work itself. Here is the place to talk about your creative process, and how successfully
you met your client's constraints. It also provides a place to roll out experimental
work, or material in a new medium.
The potential negative of the blog format is that it comes with the assumption
that people not only might comment, but probably will, and perhaps at more length
