Self promotional item is important because promotes you and your services, if done correctly it can gain you customers. There are many things you can do, from providing a portfolio of your work to a simple toy or gift that the customer will want to keep so that they are constantly reminded of you.
What is the point of this piece?
This piece of self-promotion is something you can send a potential client when they are half interested in your services. It needs to contain some person info to make me interesting, tel the client what I do, why i’m the best and then close the sale to get them to contact me to take up my services. I will research this then decide how I will do it myself.
Jon cleave created a wonderful experience which is a portfolio of his work in a book, a business card and a letter all sealed in a large envelope with wax stamp, you can see this here;
Wong Sockying is a graphic communication graduate from Singapore and this is what she sends to her clients;
It is design help sent in a box, all the cures for every types of different design jobs, this way the client has a fun experience of the designer but also learns what Wong does, brilliant self-promotion.
Another designer, Christer Dahlslett has gone down the route of being medical, by providing a operating table and surgical equipment and also the doctors notes card which has all her personal details, you can see this one below;
Farm design go in a complete different direction. To brand their company and all the different services they provide they have likened themselves to a set of ice pop. Each Ice pop represents one of the different services they do, and they have a flavour board which describes each one. This one works really well because it arrives in a cool box so it would have to be opened straight away and contains quite a few so has to be shared with colleagues within the office which gets them talking about the company, and the more people that know about the business the better. Also who doesn’t like ice pops? Check them out here;
Something I noticed is that each one has a consistent design throughout, which helps with continuity. This can be seen here really well too where George has put a portfolio of his work together and uses a colourful diamond system to give it a nice overall design.
So from my research I have found that continuity in the design is important, making it interesting for the client to use is a massively important and if you can get them talking about it to others, even better. In a sense having a gimmick, something for the client to play with makes them look at your branding longer so you are winning more advertising time with them. Continuity, interesting and gimmicks are the three most important things I have learn’t from my research so my next step will be to decide what I will create.
References:
akbrodie.wordpress.com 