20 Apr10 Second Test

Hour (more like 10 seconds) Glass Necklace by Maximilian Carrillo.

When a new person visits your website or shop, you have to make a good first impression right away. That’s why I taught you The Website Squint Test a while back. But today I want to teach you another great tool for evaluating your website’s efficacy so you can avoid having visitors hit the X, leaving your site for good.

Today’s tool is called the 10 Second Test. Grab a friend, family member, stranger… seriously, just ask the person next to you at a coffee shop to give up 30 seconds of their time.

1. Pop open your site and set a timer for 10 seconds. Have the person look at your homepage for just 10 seconds, trying to take in as much as they can.

2. When the 10 seconds are up, close the website and ask them what they know about it.

If they can tell you what you sell and describe who it might appeal to, you’re in good shape. But they might not be able to do that, which can give you really great information about where your site is ineffective.

For instance, if you sell hand-painted silk scarves alongside watercolor portraits and the person you tested says, “I think you sell scarves.” you know instantly that you haven’t given them enough information. They couldn’t discern that the there was something special about the scarves. And they had no idea that you also sell watercolor portraits.

So to improve your site, you might feature a watercolor portrait next to the picture of scarves and you might have some large text saying something like, “the personal touch of a hand-painted scarf takes every outfit to the next level of chic”.

Action Step:
Go find someone who hasn’t seen your site before and doesn’t know what you do. You can find people in relaxed settings like a church gathering, a park, a coffee shop, or even catching your neighbor as they get their mail. Then give them the 10 Second Test. Write down the results and what you can do to fix any problem areas. Then add those to your work calendar so you get them done!

13 AprCharging for Your Time

Paper Money, Extreme Macro by Kevin Dooley. Photograph.

We’ve talked before about pricing your art, even going into good formulas. But I haven’t really delved into the concept of charging for your time.

It’s a hotly-debated issue in the art world. Think about it. You might spend 100 hours knitting that shawl. If you charge a mere $10/hr, that shawl costs $1000! And that doesn’t include materials, overhead, or a markup for retail vs. wholesale. Ridiculous.

But in “regular jobs”, you get paid by the hour. You earn based on the time you put in. That’s a concept we developed during the Industrial Era. I don’t want to sound preachy, but things used to be based on the value of the product. First we traded… maybe 4 chickens for a donkey. Then we started using currency (we never stopped trading, for the record – still do it today) but still based things on the value of the product, not the value of the labor.

But ignoring all of that, the bigger problem comes in when you think about skill. How long does it take a knitter with 20 years experience to make that shawl? Potentially half the time it takes a new knitter to make the same shawl. But if they are both using time as a factor in their pricing, the unskilled knitter would make way more than the knitter with 20 years of experience.

And that just doesn’t make sense.

As customers in the art world, we want the artist or craftsman to be skilled. It might not matter in some instances, but innately we hope that the artist is talented. And even better if they can create quickly and get the art to us faster!

So why would we reward that unskilled knitter for possessing qualities that are the opposite of what we are looking for?

I will clarify here, anticipating some strongly-worded emails, that I totally support people learning new skills and selling their work. Many of my clients are actually new to their medium and there’s nothing wrong with that. But they should have room to raise their prices because their work isn’t ready to be sold at the same prices as an established artist in their medium. They should start out lower, taking the time to improve their work until it’s worth the higher prices.

There’s a whole different blog post about to come pouring out of my mouth (fingers?) here about undercharging and how it hurts the art market as a whole. But perhaps I’ll leave that for another time. Instead, I think I’d like to leave you with some direction. Would you like that? Yeah, I thought so.

People don’t care about how long it took you to make their new necklace (unless it takes longer to get to them, which makes them angry). They care that it’s gorgeous and well-constructed and made of quality beads where the enamel won’t wear off in a week. So when you go to price your work, stop adding time into your formula. Instead, focus on quality.

Most of the time your materials will take care of themselves in your formula because more expensive materials are usually better quality. Done. But beauty and construction. Those are things you’ll have to start establishing benchmarks for. Perhaps you look at shape and color and use those as main determinates. Whatever it is, make sure you pay attention to quality of material, beauty, and construction when finalizing a price on any piece.

And one last thing! Never be so scared to price “incorrectly” that you don’t put your piece up for sale. You can always change a price unless the piece sells. You can always rework your pricing formula. You can always revisit how you feel about pricing. Don’t let it be an excuse for not getting your work out there and into the hands of that one person whose life it could change.

06 AprVerbal Expression & Visual Conceptions: How Words Empower (or Enslave) Your Art

This is a guest post from Aradia Goseling of Aradia’s Hand.

Talking by Rebecca Volynsky. Mixed media.

“Words have power.”

You’ve heard it. You might have even said it yourself. But the power they have is tricky; they aren’t static things that retain an absolute definition all of the time. While the denotation does not often change, the connotation can range widely.

To one person, a word may evoke power and strength; to another, it can lend itself to feelings of oppression and low self-worth. This digression in meaning of the same word stems from the personal experiences of the people using the word. It’s really a matter of psychology and a very important point to understand when expressing yourself verbally about your art.

Recently, I used the term “scrap” to refer to a set of materials I was using. I’d been using the term since I could remember and I didn’t see the faintest thing wrong with it. Plainly put, scrap is just leftovers – what didn’t get used the first time around. But a dear friend brought up how negative the word sounded. Well, my, isn’t that interesting? It truly never sounded that way to me. In fact, I always loved scraps because they have such “hidden potential”. But there are several practical merits to her point.

1. For one, I’m not my market. And you can talk to Laura for more about that. So what I’m willing to pay and what I’m willing to buy and how I make those decisions is irrelevant in terms of my market.
2. Another thing, to value something less as an asset (eg materials) because it is left over from something else is to devalue your own work.
3. Finally, and perhaps most importantly – it’s not about how I feel, it’s about the feeling I want to convey.

So taking it from that perspective, how do you view your art? Does the language you use support the value it has and the value that you want to convey? Or are you secretly ripping on your own work?

Blessings & Namaste,
Aradia

Aradia Goseling is a handmade artist who uses a wide range of mediums from fiber to glass. She is always exploring new techniques and enjoys taking you on her creative adventures through her blog. In her spare time, Aradia loves indulging in fantasy novels and writing her own fan fics.

04 AprColor Widgets

A friend found some very helpful (slightly addictive) widgets in Wolfram|Alpha this week. I thought I would share my favorite color-related ones with you.

NOTE: This page does take a while to load since there are 6 widgets to call up.

This first one is called Random Colourand delightfully provides a totally random color. Just as described, huh? I think it’s really great if you’re needing some sudden inspiration. It will also give you info about the color including some close paint shades, the nearest Pantone values, and complementing colors. Pretty useful!

Next is Complementary Colors, which of course provides a complementary color to the one you’ve chosen. You have to input the color’s actual name, but it takes really weird names like “chartreuse” and “eggshell”. It gives you a nice swatch of both colors and what they look like when mixed together. Plus it gives their RGB values. You might need to tweak the RGBs to get exactly what you want since “teal” can mean a different shade or tone to the computer than you thought.

I also like CMYK Conversion. You input a CMYK value and you receive the color swatch and tons of info about the color. The color triad is my favorite! It’s like an instant color scheme.

Next up! Get Related Colors, of course, grabs similar and complementary colors. This can be insanely helpful for providing you with more than 3 colors for a palette and it’s nice if you can’t quite find the color you’re looking for, but you’re not sure what to do to get it. The Analogous and Monochromatic sections can help you tweak that color until it’s perfect.

If you’re having trouble getting the perfect paint shade, 3 Colorsis a blessing. You can input the colors you have (using names. It’s a toss up which will work. “Olive” is fine but “forest” is not.) and it will mix them for you and show you the result. I’ll note that it works with additive color mixing, which I think is more light-based. So I scroll down to the bottom of the results and find the “color blending” result. That’s the one you’re going to get if you mix paints. And then if you want complements or to tweak the shade or something, you can pop that RGB result into one of the other widgets.

And the last color widget I’ve got for you is Crayola Color Blending! Yep, pull out your crayon box. You can predict what color you’ll make by layering two fun Crayola colors. This one’s more fun than useful for your art. But hey! Maybe you do work in crayon sometimes. I don’t know.

29 Mar{Brand} Storytelling for Artists and Visual Creatives

This is a guest post by Amy Tan of The TreeSpace Studio.

Let’s step into Imaginaryland.

You just bought an original painting online. When it arrives and you’ve unboxed it, you see that it is wrapped in a gorgeous translucent washi paper and tied with delicate gold twine. Hanging from the twine is a beautiful little packet made from hand-marbled paper. Inside, an exquisite little accordian booklet in handmade paper with a sketch of the hike that inspired the painting, and a little dried flower from that hike. There is a personal note from the artist that tells you how much she treasured that walk and hope you’ll think of it too when you look at the artwork.

As the customer, you are delighted. You can’t wait to show that little packet to your friends and tell them about this artist who includes mini sketches with their originals.

That’s the art of {brand} storytelling.

As an artist, the biggest business goal is to reach more people and sell more art so that we can continue to fund the kind of inspired lifestyle needed to do what we love most-make MORE good art.

Think about this: A piece of art that you spent 1 month working on using meticulously chosen materials can easily cost $2000 per piece.

One of the most heartbreaking things I see all the time when artists and visual creatives promote themselves is how this $2000 piece of art is painfully misrepresented:

• Cheaply printed or glossy postcard that gives a potential client absolutely NO indication of the rich depth and tactility of the original pieces for sale.
• Boilerplate marketing materials and business cards that reveal nothing of the enormously creative mind behind it, so I don’t check their portfolio website out.
• Expensive art sales that stop at the transaction. Nothing memorable included with the purchase to rock my world or make me want to tell others about it.
• No accompanying story behind the art to emotionally engage me.

What missed opportunities!

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Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you art stands for itself. Understand the 3 key reasons you need to take branding seriously. I write about it here.

“An artist’s biggest asset is their world view. This is why folks are willing to pay tens and thousands of dollars to own a piece of art. More than just a physical object to enjoy, we buy art because we buy the artist’s world view. We want to own a piece of how they uniquely perceive the world.”

Branding for artists, at the very core, is really about being able to draw your dream clients into your world and make them fall in love with buying and following your work.

Let me challenge you:

: : What creative and delightful ways can you use the brand elements in the chart above to do this?

: : How can you control the way your story is presented so that you are able to garner the desired effect, whether it’s pure luxury, playfulness or rebellion?

Examples of {brand} storytelling pieces an artist should concentrate on:

• The story (mission & background)
• The logo
• The signature style (what you are known for)
• The signature mark (signing, stamping on art)
• The Unboxing Experience
• The photography
• The bridge piece or tokens of client appreciation. What it is:

http://www.treespacestudio.com/blog/2013/01/30/kinship-bridge-piece/

Story in a glass vial that comes with every piece of hand-crafted, salvaged wood furniture from Capsule Furniture.

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Further Resources to Check Out:

How do you train your {brand} storytelling skills?

: :  Look at the truly successful photographers, furniture craftsmen and couture fashion designers. These are high-end creatives who are usually well branded.

See how they:

• Control their {brand} story and message
• Engage and captivate their fans
• Observe the quality of their brand pieces and the perception of value you get from them

: : Read the book “Worth Every Penny”.

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About Amy Tan of The TreeSpace Studio:

Amy is an artist, brand designer and personal storyteller to boutique creatives. She opens up her Create-Your-Story brand design workshop twice a year (once in fall and once in spring) to passion-driven businesses who want to create or elevate their {brand} story.

Brand-to-Design Workshop by The TreeSpace Studio closes this Sunday, March 31st, 2013. Next workshop is not until the Fall.