YOUR PORTFOLIO
There was a time when we went to a printer and had a physical book made of our paintings. Then we changed to making up a CD that we gave out. Some still hand out a USB drive with their portfolio on it. However, most places will just toss those out, worrying about viruses contaminating their computers. So, what do we do to get their attention?
We can give the gallery our website, but quite frankly, most will not look at them because they don't have the time it takes to navigate the site. Then, what do we give them? Most gallery owners want to see a brief PDF file. If professionally done, they are quite effective. There are apps we can purchase like Adobe Maker, but it is expensive because you pay for the year, all up front. On a month-by-month breakdown, it's not so bad. As for the PDF format, it is recommended that we only have one painting per page with the name, size, medium, and price below. Surround it with a darker gray or black background.
An alternative is to have flyers made with professional quality photos of our artwork on them. A recommended company to use is Vistaprint. They do great work at a reasonable cost. However, they use your photos, so you need to make sure your photos are top notch. I haven't done this myself, but a friend successfully landed a gallery using this method, and she used Vistaprint. I have a photo of her flyer below.
After she told me her story, I decided to have simple flyers made for the OLD TOWN ART SHOW on March 24th & 25th. I have a photo of these below as well. They are technically called "Rack Cards" as they fit in a holder that will hang on my grid wall. I will still have a small table to hold my business cards and postcard photos, as well as some rack cards too. Have one central location for everything, right?
Front and back of her flyer
