When you set out to find work for yourself as a designer, you are going to have to be able to sell yourself.  However, there are ways to NOT sell yourself as I discovered after reading chapter 6 of “How to be a graphic designer, without losing your soul.”  The author claims that talking too much about yourself can potentially clear a room.  You don’t want to talk people’s ears off about yourself when attracting business, just like you wouldn’t want to in a social situation.  Instead you should focus on being yourself and only providing the information that is needed to let them know about you, your past work and what you do currently.  There is no need to pat your own back as it may turn off potential clients.

This philosophy should be evident in your website, portfolio, promotional materials and in your sales pitches.

Philosophy is also an important thing to have when beginning out.  You don’t want to immediately sell yourself out and design for whatever presents itself to you.  Certain standards should be kept.  Some examples given in the reading I did were not designing for alcohol or smoking companies.  Although being too picky will result in a lack of work for yourself, so you have to learn to strike a balance.

While reading this, I started thinking about the design of my own new portfolio website.  The current one I have now contains probably too little “selling” content.  It is just basic information.  I think I’m going to have to learn to sell myself just a tad more (only a tad more!).  Because I used wordpress, I didn’t think to design a home page, but it is possible with wordpress, which is where the initial impression will be made.

Knowing your audience before you even start your website (or any other type of product design) is incredibly important as pointed out by Cynthia Baron in “Designing a Digital Portfolio.”  I’m still trying to come up with my audience that will be most suited to the work I like to do.  The problem with this is that I like to design things that may not make me a lot of money.  I may have to dull my style down to create for the crowd that is most willing to pay money and provide a steady stream of work.