Your Design Vocabulary

When jewelry artist Thomas Mann came to speak at East Stroudsburg University (PA) in February, he covered a huge amount of material designed to help artists design their businesses to survive in our current marketplace. One thing he stressed is the importance defining our design vocabulary, or the language we use to describe ourselves, our art, and our businesses.

Why create a personal design vocabulary?  When someone asks you “what do you do?” how effective is the language you use when you explain it? Are you helping another person to understand why your work is valuable to them? Are you helping them to imagine why they would want to own one of your products, or partake of your services? If you are already selling your work, then you are already successfully offering something that people are willing to pay for. Develop the language you use to describe it. If someone approaches you at a show or other venue, would you be ready to offer a quote about what you do, or why you do it, or why people want it?  How ready are you for an impromptu interview?  Tom reminds us that these opportunities are the best kind of free advertising, but to take of them, we must have already developed our design vocabulary.

How can an artist or craftsman create his own design vocabulary? Tom’s suggestion: Write about it. Write about your business for a few minutes every day. Write about the materials you use. Write about the techniques you use, write about the forms you make, about why you make things, about the concepts behind what you do, about the inspirations the move and excite you. Write about every aspect of your work.

 You already have an entire language that you use internally when you talk to yourself silently (well, silently for most of us) about your work. Write about it until you figure out a way to make this language public! This writing will create your design vocabulary. It will be developed into your bio, your artist’s statement, and your descriptions of your work. This writing will become the backbone of the press releases you write to announce your work to the public, and the short “elevator speech” that you use to introduce your work to the world. Even if it’s only for 10 minutes a day, start your day by writing about your work. I have started writing, and it’s tough, but I’m starting to find inspiration arriving. Now if only I can get it to stick around for a while.

A Visit from the Mann

From Feb 7 – 8, jewelry artist and gallery owner Thomas Mann visited the Poconos, PA to speak to artists and students at East Stroudsburg University. Tom brought his gallery exhibition “Storm Cycle” (link to a video or site), which gets us up close and personal with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Tom collected bits of personal paraphernalia left after the storm floods retreated, and created gallery art that includes stories about the individuals and families that owned them. The more I read of his personal accounts, the more meaningful the art became for me.

Tom stayed for two days to present “Design for Survival”, a 2-day course designed by Tom to meet the needs of artists who are too inexperienced in the world of business to create sustainable businesses based on their art. Often lacking business training as well as experience, many talented artists and craftsmen burst upon the crafts scene, excited to sell and become known in their fields. Very often working from home with little overhead, they typically charge too little for their work to really maintain a business, inadvertently undercutting experienced artists who have priced their work to survive as a sustainable business. They close up shop a few months or years later, disillusioned and frustrated by failure, and not understanding that they actually put themselves out of business by ignoring the rules of a sustainable business.  Does this scenario hit just a bit too close to home? Most of us have no idea of how to price our work or run an arts-based business that can survive the competitive and ever-changing market. Tom has created “Design for Survival” to meet this need, and to help artists find lasting success in the business of craft.

University art students that attended Tom’s seminars got a real behind-the-scenes view of business as a self-employed working artist. Local members of the arts community gained detailed information about retail shows, juries, marketing strategies that really work, appropriate pricing, reaching your market, and so much more. Stop back soon, I will be posting more details, and sharing a lot of what I learned.