Professional artists making a career from their work are, when it comes down to it, running a business. Like any business, they need to get the word out there and tell people what they are selling. Branding, marketing and PR are all essential elements to an artists communications strategy.

However, I often find that artists aren’t willing to ‘brand’ themselves. Listen, it’s not about becoming another BP or Microsoft. All it means is that you learn how to show off your work in the best light so that the people you’re talking to understand the right messages.

The way I look at it, branding builds your story, and marketing and PR tell it. So get building your public image in a way that people can understand what makes you special.

I’ve just finished working for a wonderful Liverpool-based artist, Faith Bebbington, and have put together some top tips for any artists thinking about their own branding and communications.

• 1.     Branding is not about lying. It’s not about hot air, and it’s not about selling out. It is about you. Make sure your designer understands the core ideas behind your work so they can design branding that can communicate these ideas clearly and succinctly.
• 2.     Don’t use formal motifs depicting your work in your logo design. Ideally your logo will stay with you for years to come, and the last thing you want is to have your branding defining and constraining the direction of your work.
• 3.     For visual artists especially, restrain your designer! Whilst it’s essential that your branding is really ‘you’, overworked, busy or just eye-catching designs will distract from what’s really important – images of your work. Think of your branding as creating a beautiful frame around your work – and make sure that they’re complementing, rather than competing with, each other.
• 4.     When sourcing a graphic designer, be wary of those with a ‘house style’. If they have a lot of projects that look similar to each other, then that’s probably what you’ll end up with too! Instead, look for a varied portfolio that reflects a varied client base and shows they care about getting what’s best for their clients.
• 5.     If you’re creating a website, make sure that you choose a content management system carefully so that it meets your needs. You’ll need to be able to easily update your site yourself, and make sure that the system you choose handles and displays images in their best light. Unless you know how to write your own code, be careful of designers building pages for you in Dreamweaver – as you’d have to go back to them every time you wanted to upload a new project.
• 6.     Make sure that all your communications reflect the standard and quality of your work. If you spend months and months on one piece of work, then send out a cheap brochure on poor stock, then it’s like falling at the last hurdle.
• 7.     When you are discussing your requirements with your designer, make sure to clearly set out the different media that you’ll be using to promote yourself. You’ll need your logo/designs to be set up for print use and screen use, for example, at least.
• 8.     Colour is important, but it’s also essential to request a logo that can be used in black or white only. This is very useful when your logo needs to go on third party materials eg gallery programmes, which might not always be printed full colour.
• 9.     Branding can be a useful exercise for you, too. Work with your designer to come up with your ‘core values’ and create a checklist or moodboard of words that are important to you. A useful way to do it is to pick three words or phrases that sum up how you would like other people to describe you and your work. Then use these words to inform any design decisions and make sure you’re going down the right track.
   
• 10. Put your all into getting a great result, and enjoy the journey!

My work for Faith Bebbington is currently available to view on my website at http://www.twentyfiveandahalf.com/work/faith-bebbington-artist and her website will be going live in the coming months at www.faithbebbington.co.uk.

I’ve been helping my partner Xavi get ready to launch his new website of Ecuadorian-inspired recipes.

He was born in the Galapagos Islands and grew up in Ecuador, before leaving South America. He’s lived and worked as a chef in Italy, Spain, Australia, the US and the UK so has some pretty wide experience to share.

His full name is Francisco Xavier - and in Spanish, Paco is short for Francisco (don’t ask why, I don’t know!). His website will be coming soon at www.pacoskitchen.com.

Almost done with the logo for Liverpool-based artist Faith Bebbington. It’s been a challenge to create a mark that’s both energetic and dynamic to reflect the movement and vibrancy of her sculptures, but without including any imagery that would constrain her practice, whilst all the while creating a sophisticated and distinctive colour pallette to support it. It’s been fun though!

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a one-day course at Manchester’s Madlab - a drop-in community-led digital laboratory. A ‘beginner’s guide to Arduino’, a digital version of a blank canvas, I guess, a basic(ish) piece of circuitry that you can use to create an infinite number of projects without having to be a massive techie. 

And yet, I suppose, there’s the rub. You don’t need to be a super-programmer, but you certainly need to have some understanding of coding works and how it could be expanded on to create real-world projects. 

For me, the Arduino seems like a fantastic tool. It makes it relatively easy to create your own gizmos and gadgets and link them to the net or other data-driven devices. 

It’s often cited as one of the building blocks for the DIY electronics revolution, and the Internet of Things. 

The class was excellent, and even with a fairly low proficiency in programming I got enough of a foundation to be able to carry on tinkering. I’m pretty excited about it too. Part of me, though, just wanted to understand the basics so that if I’d like to commission someone to work with it in the future, at least I’d be able to do so without looking like a complete Luddite.

It got me thinking again about the whole retro/vintage/revival cycle that seems to be never ending, particularly in fashion of course. The other day I walked into a very cool newish Manchester ale joint to find too men dressed in what otherwise would pass as lumberjack fancy dress behind the bar. But don’t you see, that’s not actually fancy dress, it’s fashion. 

Anyway, I digress. If the Arduino is so capable of creating new ideas, why isn’t this exciting world of digital things for all being more widely embraced? 

All I can think is this - new craft and hobbying media such as Arduino (for that is surely what it is) , are just too hard to learn, and this difficulty prevents many from starting to play in the first place - so we go back to knitting. Again. 

Fair enough, it’s a bit “business-business” for this blog, but we want people to sign up so I’m going to post it anyway.

In early August I’ll be running free one-on-one Brand Boost sessions in Manchester (9th August) and Leeds (11th August) with Anna Zachariassen of Thrive Media. It’s an opportunity to take a look at your communications strategies and work out, with free help from me and Anna, how you could engage better with your target customers. Oh yeah, did I say it’s free?

Find out more by downloading the flyer here: brandboost.pdf

Otherwise e-mail adam@twentyfiveandahalf.com for more info. 

I started uni in 2004, and just before I did, I bought a laptop. Seems hard to believe now, but I’d got through my Art Foundation course without needing one - I mean, I really had no need for it at all at the time - and I didn’t have a burning desire to buy one other than it being a nice new toy.

Seven years on, and the thought of embarking on a design course without one seems ridiculous. It’s become such an integral part of the design process - or at least certain stages of it - for many graphic designers.

But is this invisible line - the point at which it becomes part of the process - shifting? As controversial as it is to many designers, will pen and paper become obsolete? Will drawing, or writing anything by hand, go from a common skill, to being a skilled craft that only a minority can be bothered to learn? 

I can practically hear the screams of horror from my design tutors, some of whom were staunchly in favour of the pen and paper approach. And I can understand why, it would be a huge shift away from something that’s been around for time immemorial. 

I’m not suggesting that pen and paper should have no place in design, but I do think it’s worth considering, objectively and without nostalgia, whether the unflailing belief in their importance could perhaps be somewhat misguided. 

When I was in my first year of my degree, my tutors started to teach type through page layouts created on a layout pad with pencil and pen. We then took it to the computer, where it was refined and printed out. It was an undeniably beneficial process at the time, but then again, the overall result was destined to be printed. We were taught typography for the printed page. But when designing in the 21st century, where we are reading increasingly more information on screen, is it really fair on young designers to be led down this path? Since I’ve graduated I have barely worked on print work - I know that it exists, and I do get some - but digital is undoubtedly shifting the goalposts. 

Then we’ve got the intuitive issue. I grew up with pencils and paper. I did use a computer from quite a young age too, though, and for me even sketching out ideas can be quicker on a screen. That’s a personal thing, but it’s based on experience and education. Surely as more and more kids use computers from a younger and younger age, we should be looking at the future of design education for the real world and preparing students for a career that will most likely involve a hell of a lot of digital layout work. As much as paper stocks and gorgeous brochures still have their place, it’s time for design education to get real.

Retro. Vintage. Revival. We’ve even found ways to make the process itself sound new each season. It’s got me thinking, what’s the value in this recycling of ideas?

Hipstamatic’s a case in point. For those who don’t know it, it turns one of the world’s most sophisticated mobile devices - the iPhone - into a facsimile of a light-leaking, focus-blurring 70s Polaroid camera. From what I can ascertain from the news feeds of countless hipsters (or should I see hipstas?), it’s cool - not because you’ve taken a great photo, just because it looks kind of shit, for want of a better turn of phrase. Seemingly the worse the photo, the better. 

A few years ago I was working on Puma’s brand and communications whilst at my previous agency, GBH London. One of the Puma campaigns that was still in use at the time was called ‘Hello’ and was shot by Juergen Teller, the grand master of grainy, washed-out photography who’s since gone on to define American Apparel and Marc Jacobs through his imagery of waif like teens in various states of undress. Being cool brands in themselves, they are one reason that I’d put forward for why this ‘rough around the edges’, ‘spontaneous’ (when it’s anything but) style is now on the must-have list of anyone with an iPhone, £3.99 and some friends in drainpipe jeans. It captures a certain element of Juergen Teller’s art - which I am a fan of, by the way - but puts it in a fake Polaroid frame, turning it from a valid, thoughtful comment on spontaneity and energy into nothing more than an overused cliché.

My question opens up a debate that’s much bigger than Hipstamatic, though. Whether it’s bunting, knitting, cupcakes, burlesque, legwarmers or Polaroids, they’ve all had their revival (at least in the UK) in the last few years - albeit with a new added layer of irony and hipsters enjoying themselves with a look of knowing in their eye.

Why? I’m not sure, yet. Perhaps the world’s just moving too fast. I certainly feel like it is, sometimes. We just don’t have time to clutch onto anything stable, we’re rushing from place to place, trend to trend, looking for new things to drive our consumerist model. 

Maybe I’m looking into it all a bit too deeply, and a whole generation of early twenties young uns all have developed a genuine love of the Rayban Wayfarer all at once - but it seems a bit churlish to argue that millions of people around the world have suddenly developed an independent but identical sense of eyewear aesthetics. Maybe our contemporary ‘culture’ has just got lazy.