Every line in graphic design takes energy from the viewer. Lines tell us where to look next. So, to make good clean graphic designs, we give the audience clear, direct, fulfilling communication. We don’t wear them out with a bunch of lines. Examples of the kinds of lines I’m talking about…
Fulfilling lines are lines that point somewhere or lines that define things.
There was a time when people said “You need to get a 1-800 number to do business!” There were businesses that didn’t get 1-800 numbers and some of them survived. A lot of them did. It turned out toll-free phone numbers were not the only way to do business.
Mostly, I want to talk about social media here. We keep getting advice that we need our social media to be popping, but it’s actually impossible to keep up with all the major social media platforms if we’re solo or small operations.
Social media is meant to be social. We are supposed to interact on social media. That means, we can’t just post something cool and hope that leads to work or fame. People make comments or reacts, we enter into dialog with them, we build relationships and that leads to work or fame. Relationships take jelly beans. We don’t have enough jelly beans to spend all day on all of the platforms.
What I recommend is finding a social network that is fun. I like spending time on Facebook, so I use that one. Because it’s fun for me, I can make it fun for other people to interact with me there. I can spend less energy and more time interacting with people there. I can build relationships there.
We gotta keep…
The main fear is that it would be a red flag to not have a following. I get it, but we we need to think about what our audience actually needs and we can determine what red flags are real for them. If I ran a video production company and we don’t have a youtube channel, is this a red flag? Not necessarily. If i have a way to share videos with potential clients without youtube, I could be killing it. Customers might be more interested in hearing how I could solve actual problems for them than whether or not I’m popular.
It could be a red flag to have a flagging following. If I’m trying to be a popstar and have an tiktok account where nobody is following, folks might realize I’m not cool.
Intellectual property is pretty crazy to me. I’m not totally against it as I have been in the past, but it’s a wild world for sure. People can protect and sell a concept over and over again for infinity. What protects their concept is the courts, so lawyers need to be involved for protecting and selling and possibly recovering lost / stolen income.
I have never had anyone steal my services. People pay me for the gigs I do and services are very easy to keep track of.
I am always looking for ways to create more services and serve more people.
If we’re looking at a potential way to sell IP and it doesn’t turn us on, we could instead think of how to make a service. A simple example of this is… “I don’t know how I’m going to sell enough albums to pay for the recording, so instead I’ll sell 50 tickets to a show.”
Matt Kowal from https://majesticcollaborations.com/ had the suggestion to test every audience member of Boobietrap. These tests at CVS are 12 bucks each and are instant, so we could add $12 on to the ticket price, then have every person in the room tested.
I like the idea. It’s of course more expensive than a dozen dollars since we’ll need people monitoring the tests, we’ll need space to do them so that people are not grouped together and it will take at least 15 minutes to get the results, so probably at least 30 additional minutes of the night’s experience.
The tests are not as accurate as other testing systems, but it’s still a boost to safety.
oooh it would be nice to be in a room of guaranteed un-covid people!
Some people get a lot of what they want from secrecy. I don’t. I believe that we miss out a lot on capitalization by keeping secrets. We bring a lot to the world of entertainment when we get paid for services instead.
For example an organizer wants a band. They go to a producer. The producer goes to the band. The producer might charge $10,000 and give the band $5000. This is fine. If the organizer and band don’t know this the case, that could be fine. If the producer keeps it a secret, it’s kinda messed up.
There are some relationships that are worth $5000. If the producer is able to get a band way better than the organizer could get on their own, in a faster amount of time, and do other things to facilitate and make the booking process smooth. That might save the organizer serious money. If the producer makes it easier for the band to do the booking, clears headaches for the band and gets them in a good situation to be able to absolutely kill it at the gig, this is worth money too. The value is in the service. So, if the producer is actually worth this money, they have no reason to keep a secret.
If the band doesn’t know they’re being booked by the organizer for $10k they might not know how much they’re worth, this is detrimental to the band. If the organizer doesn’t know the amount the band’s getting, the organizer is also off track with budgeting for the future.
I would encourage people to talk about their contracts more. Producers, agents, gatekeepers, curators, and other middlemen have value. If we’re transparent about that, we can understand it and everyone can thrive.
It’s gotta be obvious that language is important to me. It gets my goat a little when creators say their mission is “making people happy.” I get what they’re saying, but I want to correct their language so that it’s more clear. Happiness is an emotion and emotions are transitory. We also don’t control people’s emotions, so it’s a rough goal.
What we can actually do with entertainment might not sound so cheery, but it’s awesome…
It’s beautiful because narratives stick. Narratives can be used by the individual to motivate the feelings they want. Narratives are memorable. Narratives can be recalled. Narratives can be reapplied to new situations.
One narrative I love and produce in my “work” is resilience. Things go wrong. I point them out. I deal with them. I use obstacles to my advantage. I would love for people to take this narrative with them so they can see hurdles as opportunities too. I would love for people to get the relief of knowing that things don’t have to go right for them to go great.
We don’t have endless time to work on unlimited projects and most projects need monetization to be sustainable. If it’s not making money, we can get dragged away by something that does.
Building a big following doesn’t necessarily lead to money and building a small following doesn’t necessarily keep us broke.
We can think through how we’re gonna make money from the get go… even if we’re making a youtube series and we’re okay with working for three years with no income.
How much we’re making from each person changes our focus a lot as far as dedication, focus, and trust. We don’t always need a big audience for every mode of monetization, but it’s helpful to at least make some guesses about how the work turns into money so we don’t end up ditching our audience when we realize it’s not keeping the lights on.
This might be half a thought… but “spoonful” shouldn’t be a complete word, so I’m inspired to write the impossible.
Last night I had a dream that this candy company wanted me to figure out how to improve their sales. My strategy was to add some poison to it.
The idea was to create a split packaging where one half was the treat, the other half was the toxin. The poison would be not lethal, but it would maybe make you sick if you ate it.
We animals have a high sensitivity to danger. We are attracted to learning more about it and will focus on it when present. The attention keeps us safe.
My dream marketing concept was that this candy would give a person a chance to come close to danger, then trash the poison part and eat the candy.
I don’t know what kind of legal risk this would cause and I wouldn’t want someone getting hurt because of the idea. I guess if people want to chose to eat poison, they could find it pretty easily anywhere.
One pufferfish can kill 30 people! Folks eat it by removing the toxic parts. I don’t imagine it’s all that yummy, but it’s adjacent to danger.
Giving our audience chances to check in and hand over control to us is what it’s all about. For live performers, this can look like moments of acknowledgment. For film creators, it can be chill out moments. For authors maybe it’s chapter breaks. They give us control, but we remind them that they gave it to us. If we aren’t willing to give up the reigns, they’ll take them back. If we’re not ready to take the reigns back (by offering something great) we forfeit our chance to lead and offer greatness.
Here are possible sections for showing value on a single page website…
The beginning of the page is best used declaring the Unique Value Proposition.
Stats are a way to quantify some value
There are lots of ways to have stats on a site.
I made a chrome extension to help you scrape all your kudos from all the major review sites for performers.
Here are some more examples of awards
here’s more on a performer bio
Gatekeepers want to know that you will share their mission. Food packaging at Whole Foods are good examples of this.
When we hear that someone shares our interest, whether it’s the health of our family, or getting audiences laughing hysterically, we feel safer and we assume value. Here’s more on that…
Showing the shows / venues / media that have used our services is a great way to show some street cred.
We can tell a story of how we helped a client / customer. This is really good if we’re offering different solutions to different clients. It shows experience, but it also allows us to show how what we do offers transformation.
The format i like is…
This can be used for showing value or clarity. Sometimes these are used for features of a product or service. They are vertically stacked sections that look like they go together in a set and are intended to be read together as a list. We can do a centered, aligned to one side, or zigzag.
More about benefits stacks and zigzags
When we’re making stuff, it’s gotta be for someone. This is a point I’ve missed before.
I made a cooking show on stage in San Francisco. It ran for a year total every week and it was really fun. It was originally Culinery Tuesdays. Then, I left town for a gig and came back to call it Crash Course.
It was chaotic and wild and fun and I cooked a different meal every week. I thought it was for people who wanted to see something fun. People who wanted a creative theater experience. Those people exist, but they didn’t know my show was the thing. I wasn’t clear about what it was for them.
My slogan eventually was “Cooking, Juggling, and Getting Hurt!” SF Chronicle called it “Emeril meets Johnny Knoxville!” People loved this, but not the people my age who were seeking entertainment. The people that came were women in their 40s. Fans of TV cooking shows. My show was accidentally for someone. I wouldn’t have had the success that I had without them finding it.
At the time, I thought maybe these women were attracted to a young creative man, but I think now they were attracted to the outside message. What they picked up was that, if you like cooking shows, and you want to see a twisted take on them, you can see one in person.
I got complaints a few times that it was not what they expected, but as I got better with making the show entertaining, those complaints started turning into “I did not know what to expect.”
If I knew then what I know now, I would have made the show even more for them.
We need what we create to be made for someone. We need that person to say, “This is for me!” Even if it’s one person… We need to know who they are and how to find them… or we can hope for luck and work way to hard making a cooking show for a year.
There are these memes that say “You had one job” Here are some examples…
They’re funny… but they make me cringe a little because I see so many freelancers who say this to themselves.
The people referred to in the memes probably didn’t have 1 job to do. They probably work all their lives and try to keep up.
We tend to tell ourselves our job is easy and we’re failing.
We tend to try to shame ourselves into working harder.
We tend to dismiss the massiveness of our undertakings.
Life is complicated. Work has many moving parts. We are trying to do more than we can. We have high hopes for our missions.
We can try to alleviate some of this “one job” syndrome…