The post title may seem a bit ambitious, but we always like to share what we have learned, especially since we seem to learn everything the hard way. We take the long road, no stops or short cuts and sometimes the reality of how we could have done things strikes many moons down the road. We will offer the abbreviated version so you can bypass all the detritus and actually have success a heck of a lot sooner (things we wished others would have shared with us!)
Let me go back two years, yes, two years. Michelle took me to a special Christmas pop-up called King Street Makers by Jordan of Local Trove and Sarah of Seattle Art Source. There were a host of handcrafted items, but I could not focus because one artist held my attention, a photographer named Valeria Spring. If I am going to be honest with you, I saw her photographs and thought, I want to shoot like that. Michelle recognized immediately what I liked about them since we both love movement in imagery. Valeria also has a beautiful painterly look, so very original to her and her tones are exquisite. I did what any person that has fallen in love would do, I started stalking, courting. I am usually pretty reserved and shy but I reached out to her to let her know that I loved her work and then I never stopped.
I showed Michelle her site and we both agreed it was inconsistent with the level of work she was producing. Since our background is branding/design/photography we decided that we would ask Valeria if she would consider a re-brand. That’s where the ‘attract the clients you want’ comes in, if you are a designer and you LOVE someone’s work and feel their brand is inconsistent then a gentle outreach to see if they would consider a design refresh could result in client work, maybe they don’t need you now, but you will be on their radar! This is something that is very touchy because if they LOVE their brand they could be offended, but luckily Valeria knew it was time, it was the time thing she didn’t have, (we are well aware of that conundrum). If budget is a hiccup you can see if the potential client may want to do a trade, we were smitten with Valeria’s work and knew she offered private mentorships so we asked if she would be willing to offset our fee with a trade, she was and we both felt like we got a good deal out of it! That’s key, you never want to feel like you are offering more of a service than you are getting if you are doing a trade it needs to feel of value to you, we certainly felt that way!
We are sharing our images above from our shoot/mentorship, we were thrilled with our results and learned so much from her. For me it was a little life changing, because it felt so much closer to what our ‘big picture’ is. We evaluated what we learned and decided that we wanted to empower more artists to create a brand + site that allows their work to be the star. We will soon be offering a class that will do just that! So you too can have a brand and site that will be astonishingly polished, professional and help you attract the clients you want to align yourself with. Best part? We will simplify the process and you will have our combined decades of experience working with luxury brands to get invaluable feedback (at a fraction of the cost to actually hire us). We want you to be successful, we always have and we know you can do this, we will make it effortless, pinky promise. Visit Valeria’s new site, we promise loads of eye candy and inspiration!
//RESOURCES//
Valeria Spring’s NEW Site + re-brand!!!
Portfolio + Branding Class (be notified of launch)
Miss Tristan B. is the co-creator of the world’s best + easiest product photography editing tool-Foto Rx | Shopkeeper’s Helper and one of the writer’s of this delightful blog. Her lofty goal here is to make this a creative resource repository and to inspire you to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with your life.
Thank you for stopping by King Street Makers Market and for highlighting one of our favorite photographers. Hope you were able to join us again this year!
-Sarah