how-i-built-myself-as-a-brand-roberto-blake

Many people have asked me lately how I achieved some of my goals and popularity as a designer so quickly. In all honest I’m forced to admit that it has more to do with my understanding of 2 things rather than some tremendous talent I supposedly have (I still have a ways to go to be the designer I want to be), and those 2 things are: Marketing and Technology, and the fact that applied them to Brand Development.

Of all the reasons to go to college as a designer, learning about the principles of marketing and branding are certainly up there. We are all in age where technology has taken over our lives, yet many people don’t know how to use there technology or time effectively, or to for that matter to any constructive purpose.

In my article How Designers Should Use Twitter to Succeed, I addressed the nature of twitter and how designers and artist can benefit from using twitter “purposefully”. Twitter presents individuals and businesses are rare opportunity to display their value, communicate with an audience and meet their needs while establishing presence and creditability.You also have to keep up the momentum once you start this process.

This is key factor (among others)  many people overlook. You also need to have a message and tone when communicating with your audience, and be consistent about it. Using current technology I built a site to give me an online presence, utilized social media to build a community and an audience, and then proceeded to demonstrate my value in the form of my talent, my experiences, and my insight into the creative world and profession. And here is how I did it:

Brand Name:

I decided that rather than brand myself under an alias that I wanted to be more transparent, and brand myself as an individual and receive all the credit for my work, but myself at the forefront. There are some advantages and risk associated with this.

Once you make this decision you have to be sure that you protect your reputation and that you separate your personal life both online, and in the real world. You have to properly maintain your online identities and avoid overlap.

Brand Position and Message:

This was very straight forward. I’m a graphic designer and visual artist. This is the niche/skill that I wanted to promote and attach to myself as a brand and individual. It meant that I would be communicating with a very diverse audience as it would include the online design and artist community, as well as the advertising industry and its client base.

To that end I chose my brand message and tone; the stance of promoting, demonstrating, and encouraging a high quality of work, communication, and fair practices.

Brand Management:

The route I chose in terms of marketing techniques was combination of social media marketing, publication, and search engine marketing. The social media platforms I chose to utilize were mostly niche blogs, youtube, and twitter. With regard to search engine marketing I put a complete emphasis on natural results, and penetration. I developed a blog and website to promote myself, my skills, and my accomplishments, while at the same time cross promoting other individuals within the design and art community, providing resources, information and critiques.

As a result I built a following and built strong relationships which I used to further expand my reach and audience. I took online interviews with other designers that promoted me through their blogs, featured me on their sites, and promoted my articles. Eventually I also was published in niche magazines that are widely recognized in the design and art community internationally (Advanced Photoshop and Photoshop Creative).

As an additional marketing tool I self published an art book through a print on demand company (blurb.com), and I’m currently in the process of promoting it.

Through my youtube channel I address issues in the design community, offer advice to new designers, and provide occasional tutorials.

Brand Equity:

As a result of my efforts I currently am a first result in Google in particular for my name, and also appear as a suggested result, whereas a year ago this was not the case. I have a great deal of penetration within Google and return consistent results more than 10 pages deep. I have achieved similar results across all the major search engines. I have over 1,000 followers on twitter and twitter grade of 97. I have received over 20,000 views on Youtube for my 9 current videos, and average roughly 80 views a day. My site currently holds a Google Page Rank of 3. I have been featured to date in Advanced Photoshop Magazine and Photoshop Creative Magazine, and have won the award for Design of the Week from IloveDesign.com

Brand Definition:

I use as my logo my initials and a stylized crop mark. I chose not make color a feature of the logo allowing me versatility. The purpose is for the consistency of emphasizing my identity and declaring via the crop mark symbol fact that I’m an artist. The crop mark is an object that is universally associated with artist and designers, and most people recognize it. I also make sure that I’m consistent, in using wherever possible and when associated with my name.

Brand Image:

Perception is reality, and how you are or your brand is perceived will determine your reality in terms of your clients and relationships. Things that contribute to a strong brand image are a high quality of work, creditability, presence, and appearance. As a designer and an artist I try to make sure that my online portfolios display the best work that I produce, and that my online presence in terms of my web site is professional and thoughtful.

On a personal note I also stylize myself as a creative professional and approach people as such. My clothes, language and the tools that I use are all a part of maintaining that image and reinforcing my brand and what I want it to convey. There is something to be said for looking the part, any designer and artist should know that most of communication is non-verbal and should be applying their good design sense to themselves as well as their work.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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Promote Yourself As A Graphic Designer

I recently decided to shoot a series of videos giving advice and discussing various topics for Designers and Digital Artist. One thing that stood out is the importance of self promotion and branding. Though this was addressed in my design education years ago, I don’t feel that enough emphasis was placed on how important it was. Self promotion, time management, and a good portfolio will make or break your career in this industry, more so than anything else from what I’ve seen.

In this video I cover a lot of questions that new/young Designers and Digital Artist have asked me, but also address things that are relevant to any designer or artist looking to get more work or recognition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O02iGAzqflw

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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I was approached by another Graphic Designer “Okee”, to develop a logo for him. Okee specializes in original designs for products, mostly t-shirts and occasionally commission digital artwork and has several products featured in online stores. Being a very unique and original individual and an artist himself, Okee wanted a logo that suited not only his original design style but that reflected his personality as well.

After looking over a lot of his work, and working through a few sketches I came back to him with a basic concept and then I presented him with digital version with 2 variations of the same design concept in black and white and 3 different spot colors. Initially I thought he would choose a particular one and a color variant, but he liked the overall unity of the designs so much he decided to use both logos and to use the various colors as needed. Talk about original!

I was actually quite surprised (but happy) with how taken he was with the overall finished work.
That is in fact the reaction I think all designers would like to have from a client.
Below is the finished logo concept and its variants as I presented it to Okee.

Roberto Blake | Logo Design | Okee

Okee Logo Design Process

When I designed his logo I made sure to follow some basic tenants of logo design that a lot of graphic designers forget or are even unaware exist. You would be surprised how often this tends to happen.

The logo was developed in “vector format” to ensure that the logo was scalable and easily reproduced. You always want to develop logo’s in something like Illustrator or even InDesign, Corel Draw, or Macromedia Freehand. The quality is something you just can’t match in a raster based program like Photoshop. You should also always export logos as EPS files for clients.

I made sure that the logo could work with out color, I started in black and white and then branched into my individual spot colors. I also was very careful about choosing my fonts. Some fonts are more scalable and readable than others, and I always try to keep that in mind during the logo design process.

To ensure it was both describable and memorable I felt the need to reach into the past. Logos should always have a sense of familiarity to them while being unique. I decided this one needed a touch of art history somehow since it was after all for a fellow artist. I thought back to something that has always stuck with me since college; “Piet Mondrian”.

Piet Mondrian is a historical designer from the late 1800′s. He developed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the use of the three primary colors. This helped me in not only determing the spot colors for the presentation, but also the overall concept that I wanted to unify with the font. I had sketch some blocks for guides around my original designs and decided based on Mondrian to incorporate them into the logo proper. The end result was what you see.

Ultimately I had a great experience working on this project and Okee has approached about future, and possible collaborations.

Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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