Creative Pep Talk
037 - Crafting an Impression
(upbeat music) Hey y'all, just a quick heads up. The episode you're about to listen to is eight to 10 years old. Now, these episodes were intended to be evergreen, and I still believe there's a lot of good information in these early episodes, but I do wanna let you know that some of my ideas have evolved over time. Times have changed since we made these episodes, and ultimately, I'd like to think I've grown a lot as an artist and a human, and that these don't necessarily represent my best work, or the best of the podcast. If you're new around here, I suggest starting with the most recent episode, or at least go back to around 300, and move forward from there. Enjoy the episode. (upbeat music) Yo, it's the creative pep talk podcast with me, Andy J. Miller. I'm a graphic illustrator. I make pictures for a living. This podcast is about finding strategy for your art career. Finding the right strategy to approach your art career, to find the success as you define it. That's what this is about. It's about commercial art. Art mixed with business. It's like the oil and vinegar mixture of art and business. They never can quite mash together, but they're fun to swish around in a Italian dressing of a career. That's what this is about. The Italian dressing of art and business. (laughs) I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have, and I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro, and that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out, squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEPTALK, all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. Hey, in case you don't know, we have a monthly live virtual meetup every last Monday of the month with supporters of the show from Patreon and Substack. We have so much fun on these calls and they are the warmest, most encouraging creatives that I have ever met. And we also talk real creative practice stuff. We have authors, illustrators, lettering artists, picture bookmakers, fine artists, musicians, and folks that work in video and film as well. And we have people that are just starting out, people super established in their creative careers and everything in between. For the rest of this year, we're gonna chat through our new Journey of the True Fan series exploring questions and ways to apply these ideas to your own creative practice so that you can leave 2024 stronger than you came in with more visibility, connection with your audience and sales. Sign up to whichever suits you best at either patreon.com/creativepeptalk or antijpizza.substack.com. And I hope to see you at this month's meetup. Today, what we're gonna talk about, you know, I wanted to get in here and talk about this idea of crafting and impression. Crafting and impression, you know, I feel like when I interact with students or people who want to be professional artists in some form, that they often live in this place that's like being a dog in a yard. And the dog thinks that there's an invisible fence. They think that they're, I don't know how these invisible fences work. I assume there's some kind of shocking mechanism. You know, it doesn't seem very nice, but I'm assured by many people that it's totally humane. Anyway, the dogs in the yard and they're under this impression that there's an invisible fence surrounding this yard. But I feel like so many times, it's actually not true. And maybe there was a fence at some point early on before they had the skills or the talent or the work. But eventually that invisible fence is gone. There is no fence. It's a perception in your mind. You know, I'll never forget when I was in college, my second year of college, my tutor had one of his friends come in who was a professional illustrator named Lee Ford. And Lee Ford, his work was fantastic. And he'd done a lot of magazine work and murals and whatnot. And he came and gave a presentation and then he hung around and gave us kind of a workshop. And we got to spend a lot of time with him. And I'll never forget what happened that day. That day, that invisible, I realized there is no invisible fence. There's no, there is nothing, you know, this brick wall that was between me and being a professional illustrator, I realized that it was paper thin, that this veil that was over my eyes over what was between me and making a living and being successful as an illustrator that so much of the thing that was blocking me was in my mind. And I realized that this, there wasn't that much different. Yeah, Lee Ford's work was much better than mine at the time, right? And his work's fantastic. And I'm not downplaying that in any way. I just realized that I thought that in between myself and making a living with art, I thought there was a vast ocean between that self and the self that I currently was. And I realized that it was only a creek, that it was just in my mind, there was this vast expanse in between myself and the career that I wanted. And I'm not saying, you know, it took me probably three or four years after college to get to a sustainable kind of salary, which is fine. But it was the biggest hurdle was that mindset, was that jump from that mindset. And I believe the reason why this is such a big deal is that mindset completely and utterly determines the way that you craft the impression that you make. Whether you think you're a pro or not, dramatically changes the way that you present yourself in your work. And so it makes me think about there's a test, I believe I heard it on Radio Lab, there was a test where they have these rats and the first group of people that come in to work with these rats to do these, I don't know, challenges, help these rats do these challenges. The first group they say, these rats are exceptionally dumb, they're really bad, they're, you know, out of all the rats, they're in the lowest 10%. And we're just trying to test them based on that kind of, you know, starting block. That's the kind of control for this test. And we're gonna just see how they do. And the people help the rats do these tests. And then the second group, with the same group of rats, they say these rats are in the top 10% of smarts, they're incredibly smart. We can't even believe how smart these rats are. And we wanna, based on that control, we wanna do these experiments to find out some more about smart rats. And the funny thing is, is that the tests were dramatically different. The same group of rats, different impression on the people that were just dealing with the rats. The people that were just interacting with the rats. The way that they thought about these people, the impression they got, the way the impression they got from these rats, changed the way that they dealt with the rats. And in turn, the rats changed results. They had different outcomes. And I think that's so much to do with, the impression that you make. And I feel like so many people, so many artists early on, think that they don't need to craft the impression. They don't need to sell their work. They don't need to present it properly. They don't, it's all about the work. And I get that and it's admirable to be obsessed with quality work. It's admirable. And I'm excited if that's you. If you really are all about the work and your work is fantastic and you're excited about that, great. That's fantastic. But then, but I think you have to understand this. That it's the people who don't go out of their way to present their work in the best light. Those people that don't go through that process are so unlikely to become successful. And you know what I feel like you hear all the time is this idea that if I'm teaching students, and I'm saying, look, we need to get you a website and I want you to get a website domain email so you don't have a hot mail. And I want you to get good product photography and I want you to have this and that and that. Without fail, every time you're gonna get this. Well, I know an artist, my favorite artist only has a blog spot. And how many people, though, out of the industry, what's the percentage of people that only have a blog spot that have a thriving career? Why is it that when we're talking about crafting an impression that we often go to the exception to the rule? One of the reasons, I think, is because we're lazy. We don't want to have to present the work. Yeah, everybody knows that there are these people that they never even had a website. They only have an Instagram. They only have this or they, you know, they didn't even have to go to art school. They didn't even have to do this and that and this. And it's, you know, there's a preacher in the South named Andy Stanley and he says this and I go back to it all the time, which is planning on being the exception is not a plan. If being the exception means you break the rules, somehow luck, chance, being in the right place at the right time, somehow you won the game without playing by the rules. And that happens, it happens. But you can't plan on it happening because it's the exception to the rule. You have to make a plan based on the facts, based on worst case scenarios. And the example he gives, and I go back to it over and over, is it's like saying my financial plan is that by the time I'm 30, I'm gonna have won the lottery. You can't win on, you can't plan on winning the lottery 'cause that's not a plan. You can't plan, yeah, plans are things that you based on probability, based on the majority. And so what I always say is when it comes to crafting impression, don't leave anything up to chance. I always say your self promotion that comes from, or in your marketing comes from all the things that you have in your power, that you can do, that nobody can say yes or no to. In every area in that way should be to the highest quality of your ability. Because every little piece contributes to the impression that people get from you. And art is so much about impression. If I show you a canvas with a few squares drawn on it, in a parking lot, that's gonna be a very different impression than if I take you to MoMA in New York City, to the, an art museum of high caliber. If I stand there and show you the same painting, the impression you get is going to be dramatically different. And it's gonna, you're gonna think differently about the artists that made it and what they're capable of doing. And that's what crafting and impression is all about. Imagine this, okay? Just bear with me for a minute. You're walking through the city, okay? On one side of the street, there's a restaurant. It's got beautiful signage, a beautiful logo with this custom crafted sign. It's got lights and the interior looks fantastic. The waiters and waitresses look pro. They look attentive, they look happy. And it's bustling. And you see that restaurant and they serve grilled cheese. But they serve it in these well branded containers, the furniture looks great. The menu is clean. There's only five things on it. There's only five things on the menu, all of them are some form of grilled cheese. Then, on the other side of the street, there's a piece of paper taped to the wall that says go down this alley. So you go check out it, check this out. You go down the alley, there's no signage, there's just a door. And in this door, you walk in and there's a guy sat there on a plastic deck chair. And you're just looking around, you don't even know really what's going on. There's maybe another door. And you stand there for a minute and you said, "Hey, is there a restaurant down this alley somewhere?" And he says, "You're in it." And you're like, "Okay." Well, can I talk to somebody who works here? I work here. Oh, okay. And, okay, well, can I see a menu? We don't have menus. Our food is amazing though. We don't have menus. We don't have signs. We don't have a name. But we can make you anything that you want. Like, okay, so just anything that I want. And he said, "Yeah, I'll tell you what's really good. "We've got lobster." And it's, and you say, "How much does that cost?" And he says, "Oh, we've got, it's costs. 54.99." You're like, "I'm gonna go to the grilled cheese place." I think, just imagine that. You know, when it comes to food, I'll tell you what, I hate risking it with food. I've become so ridiculous on this. You know, I got food poisoning a few years back at a wedding and I, food's never been the same to me. So for me, I don't risk it. You know, there's the odd hole in the wall type place that I know is renowned, that has the right signifiers that I trust. But for the most part, I'm pretty picky about what I eat because I don't wanna get food poisoning. And I'll tell you, I'm not ordering a lobster. And I feel like if I ordered a lobster at that place, it's gonna come out on a paper plate. You know, think about this. When people go to your website, when people interact with you online, what impression are they getting? Do you have a menu? Do you have a specialty? I trust the grilled cheese people. They know how to make grilled cheese. There's only five types of grilled cheese on their menu. And it looks fantastic and it's clean and it's simple and it's straightforward and I get it. I understand what the impression is. I know what they're trying to do. Go into the weird hole in the wall restaurant with no menu, no name, no sign. It's like, you have a website, but it's a blog spot. You don't have any, it's really hard to tell what it is you do. There's no menu. There's no, it's not clear. What do you actually do? If you say, we make anything, I'm not gonna order the lobster. I'm not, why? I don't trust that if you make everything, I don't trust that you have the time and energy to know what you're doing. Who are these chefs that can afford to work in a restaurant like this, where there's no specialty that I'm not gonna, I'll tell you the only thing I'm gonna order at that restaurant is fries. I'll have a side of fries. Why? There's no risk. You're gonna deep fat fries, gonna kill the bacteria. It's gonna be real simple. Just fries and it's gonna cost me $2. If you go to an art website and you're buying art, you're taking a risk, why most artists out there online don't know what they're doing. They're not professionals. They don't understand how to work the right programs. They don't understand what it's like to work on a campaign. If you're an art director or you're someone out there trying to hire someone for design or illustration, you don't wanna, every decision feels like a risk because art is subjective. And so, you don't wanna go to some website where it's really unclear. It's really unclear what it is this artist does. It's really unclear at what level this artist does it and you're not gonna order the lobster. And if you're selling art, you're selling lobsters, baby, because it's a luxury item. And we don't like buying luxury items from things that we're not sure what the impression is. We're not sure what this thing's about. Oh, the holidays are here. You gotta find a unique gift for Uncle Derek and your sister, Catherine, and her kids, Jetson, and Jeddah, and Jirfree, and Jacob, and another two J kids. There's so much thinking, so much searching. Plus, there's the ethical thing. You gotta shop small, it just, it's a lot. But it doesn't have to be. Uncommon goods makes all of this simple and straightforward, for real. The site is chock full of unique and interesting gifts that also support small businesses. My fam loves advent calendars. I think Sophie would like to stitch a day advent calendar and 12 days of hot sauce is definitely shouting my name. Sorry, that wasn't me. That was the 12 days of hot sauce calendar shouting. Seriously, we had tons of fun browsing the site for ourselves and kids and family to get 15% off your next gift. Go to uncommongoods.com/peptalk. That's uncommongoods.com/peptalk for 15% off. Don't miss out on this limited time offer. Uncommon goods were all out of the ordinary. So I've got three little things that I think will help you craft a better impression. Number one, get the toothbrush out. Get the toothbrush out. This idea was something that I really started thinking about a few years back. I heard Draplin do a talk in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he said something that I won't forget. It's kind of changed away. I look at a lot of my work. He said, when he makes logos, he'll craft something, but then he always gets down real deep into every little nook and cranny. And he calls-- I think he said it's getting all Paul Rand on the logo. And you're rounding out, zooming in and rounding out each corner, just giving it a little softness. And if you've done that, you know the difference between a logo that's a square with some type on it versus one that is just slightly-- you got deeper and dirtier with the toothbrush, and you cleaned out every little edge, and you perfected every little thing, and just got deep within the details. You know, Massimo Vignelli, who was a famed designer, he talks about on the Helvetica documentary. He talks about how, you know, type is really about the space in between the letters. It's not about the letters at all. And, you know, if you've ever tried to use a bit of Helvetica and you don't know what you're doing, you just throw the word "shop" down on the page, you throwing it down versus Massimo Vignelli throwing it down. You're going to see the dramatic difference, is that your type looks like you just open a word doc and type something out with the first letters that were picked, and his look like a piece of art. Why? What's the space between the letters? It's the space on the page around the letters, and the difference is the impression that you get is dramatically different by just the details, by not the work, not the letters, but what goes around the work. And so your typeface, your work might be fantastic. It might be amazing work. But the space around your work needs work. You need, it's just not just about the work. It's what does your website look like? What's the space around it? What's the, what do you say about it? What words do you choose? What colors do you choose? What, you need to think about, get the toothbrush out and get deep into every area around your work. What's the space around your work? What's it look like on social media? What's it look like on your website? When I go to the info section of your website, is there a nice photo of you? Is there a funny drawing of you? Or is it some terrible photo with a hotmail address and a bio that says, hey, I like to make money on pictures. I can do anything, send me an email at bigtimedrawguy@hotmail.com. Like the space around your work is just as important as the work itself. And I think you have to think about what it is that that space is saying. What is it communicating? Number two, red button. What I like to think about when I think about impressions is if this impression that I'm giving off through my online presence, my interactions in person, if it was one thing, if it could do one thing, if the impression equaled one button being pushed, what would I want that button to be? For instance, you might want it to be editorial illustration jobs, is that when people interact with me, the one thing that I want to come from it, the one thing that I want to happen is to get editorial illustration jobs. That's the impression that I'm great at doing editorial work. It might be logos or branding, brand identity. You might want to make this impression that I am fantastic at large-scale brand identities. Asking yourself if your website, if your online presence, if your interactions professionally in person were one giant button and it could just do one thing, just one thing, what would that button do? And everything that you craft your impression around pushes towards that button. It can be, I feel like we talk a lot about functionality when it comes to web design or your portfolios. And I think functionality is extremely high up on the list. And I used to think it was number one, but recently, I've changed my mind. I think number one is the impression. What's the impression when you hand them the book, your portfolio? What's the impression when they get on to your website? What's the impression when they read through your Twitter bio and your Twitter account? Nothing is more important than the impression that they get from interacting with your space. If it can just do one thing, what would it be? Everything else that happens beyond that is fine. It can, you know, the impression you give off, if it turns into other opportunities and other things besides that button, great. But if it could just do one thing, if you could just craft it towards one outcome, what would it be? Number three, get feedback. You know, I think sometimes our work and the way we present our work, it's like if you ever, you know, when you're a kid, they have these magazines and they have these photographs of these really tightly cropped zoomed in things and they're so close to stuff, you can't tell what the photo is. You know, it might be a die, a dice, you know, die singularly. It might be a pen, it might be, you know, something where it's cropped so tightly, you can't tell what it is. You can't really see what the thing is in a game. Sometimes I feel like we're so deeply connected to our work that we can't see what impression we're giving. And I think feedback is invaluable in this way and I think it's good to get feedback from peers, people who do exactly what you do. I think it's good to get feedback from people who have no idea what you do, like your mom and dad, probably. They don't probably understand what it is you do. It's good to get feedback from people that hire people for what you do. And there's all varying levels of trust that you can kind of use to your best ability. You know, you can't ask the same questions of possible people that hire you that you play in your mom and dad. And I think you need to look at questions like especially the people that you really trust, ask them to go to your website and just give them a few questions like how much do you think a year I earn on this work? How often do you think I get jobs? How busy do you think it looks I am? How, what kind of work do I do? What do I do for a living? What's my specialty? What am I really good at? What is my job title? Who am I as an artist and as a person? Ask them these questions. Then I would even say, go to your favorite, a couple of your favorite artists, ask them the same questions about their websites and their online presence. See what the difference is and ask them why? Why does it look like I earn, you know, 3% of what compared to what my favorite artist earns. This is so important. Crafting an impression is make or break. And going back to this idea of the invisible fence, why does that matter? Why does your mindset matter? Your mindset matters because it dramatically affects how you present what you do and how you present what you do, dramatically affects the outcome. So many artists, so many young artists or people that are not breaking through the areas they wanna break through, they don't because if you don't see yourself as a pro, if you don't see yourself as someone that's got skin in the game that's close to their goals, then you're comparing yourself to other people in your shoes. When I met Lee Ford, who was the illustrator that visited our school, when I met him, something happened that veil disappeared. And I quit comparing myself to my fellow students and I started to compare myself to him. I started to think, well, what would he do? I didn't think, what is my five buddies? What are their email addresses? They were all hotmail at the time, so it was mine. I didn't think that. I thought, what's Lee Ford's email address? And I thought, how do I get an email address like that? What's his website do? Not what, what does my my space look like? That's what we were doing at the time. The way that you perceive yourself, the way that you think about the difference between you and the pro that you wanna be, you know, if you think that your ocean's away from where you wanna be, then you're gonna cut corners now because you think it doesn't matter 'cause you're so far away. I've said this before, it's a zig-ziggler thing, is that the student that thinks he doesn't have a chance to pass the test, doesn't study, 'cause what's the point? If you don't think you're close to being a pro, why get the email account? Why craft an impression at all? Most people in that zone, what I think they do is they throw a few pieces up online and they say, well, if it works out, it works out and it's not, you know, whatever, we'll just see, if my work's good enough of it, then someone will find it. Making a website and, you know, with half the intentionality and not telling anybody about it, there's no point in doing it. Might as well not do it. When you put your stuff together, when you present yourself, the way that you go about your business, the number one thing on your mind is, what's the impression people get? And I personally have a very specific impression about what I want them to think about my work and what I do and who I am in the industry and what my position is and how well I can do it and who, what level I'm at. I have a very specific idea of what I want that to be. And I don't ever want to plan on being the exception. In any area of crafting this impression, I'm getting the toothbrush out. If there's something that I think, you know, this area right here, this looks weak. I'm gonna get down and dirty. I'm gonna get saw bass, Paul Rand on that. Get the toothbrush out and I'm gonna round out that edge. So what areas, ask yourself, what areas are you neglecting because you're either afraid, you can't figure it out or you're worried or you're lazy. Do you think it doesn't matter? Or you think, oh, you know, I know that one guy who just had an Instagram. What areas are you wasting the opportunity to make a big impression? All right, that's it for today. I love having the opportunity to talk with you. I really appreciate all the feedback, all the iTunes reviews this week. I appreciate all the emails and the tweeting and all that stuff. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing the show. Thank you for listening and being so encouraging to me, I really appreciate it and until next week. Oh, one more thing. You can listen to this show on illustrationage.com/creativepeptalk. It's a fantastic illustration website. Go check that out. And until next week, stay peped up. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Hey, y'all, one more quick thing. Earlier this year, I rebuilt my website using Squarespace's new fluid engine. And I was so pumped about how it turned out that I have been really thrilled to find as many ways to partner with them and tell you about what they can do and bring you discounts as possible. With social media going haywire, I think having a site that feels as unique as your creative work is essential to building trust with your target audience or your clients. I have had several clients point out how cohesive and fresh my site looks lately. And if you wanna check that out and what I was able to do without any code, check out AndyJPizza.com. If you wanna test it out, go to squarespace.com/peptalk to test it out yourself. And when you're ready to launch, use promo code PEPTALK for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks Squarespace for supporting the show and for supporting creative people. - I'm Whit Msildine. The creator of this is actually happening. A podcast from Wondery that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events. Told by the people who lift them. From a young man that dooms his entire future family with one choice, to a woman that barely survived her roommate, we dive into what happened and hear their intimate first person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Followed this is actually happening on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.