203: Prepping the Portfolio: Back to Our Roots

Before I ever signed a licensing deal, before any of my fabric collections, any catalogs, any trade shows, any conferences, I had one thing, and that was a portfolio. Now, my very first portfolio was handbound. It was completely handmade. Every page, every aspect of this portfolio was, was handmade by me. And it felt like just this incredible treasure. You could feel my hand in every crease and every page. It was imperfectly perfect and it was so incredibly beautiful. And I carried that portfolio around with me. I carried it specifically, this is back in 2012, to international quilt Market. And. And I was there to show my patterns, but really more than that, I was there to introduce myself, my heart, and my story. So fast forward to today and we just wrapped up exhibiting at the world's largest trade show called the Licensing Expo. And I knew that I needed a new portfolio. This is something that, you know, I've had bits and pieces of, but I honestly have not updated it in years. Years. And so I knew kind of deep in my bones that I wanted a new, beautiful portfolio, but also that I wanted it to be digital. And so I knew that it had to feel really special. And I think that that's one reason why I took so long to develop it. Because anytime I feel like something has to be really special, it feels kind of hard to wrap my head around. Right. So I had taken a stab at developing this a couple of times and I just wasn't loving it. I knew that I wanted it to feel handmade and heartfelt and incredibly, deeply personal. And also I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to do that. So how do you bring story and that tactile kind of edge to life in pixels? How do you translate something that feels emotional into something that is scrollable and shareable and easy to look through? Felt like a big task. And so that's exactly what I'm going to walk you through today.

I'm Bonnie Christine. And this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside this moment Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life.

But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer.

Fast forward to today.

I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'LL help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

I think it's really easy to feel like digital means cold or sleek or templated or clinical. But I think that creativity allows you to really transform even something in a digital space to something that feels really warm and really personal and really heartfelt. A portfolio should, first and foremost showcase your work. Now this is true for you, no matter what it is that you're showcasing, whether it's art or illustrations or patterns or something that's handmade. But the portfolio itself should first and foremost show your work. Show the type of work that you want to do more of, but it should also tell your story. I believe that the connection is what connects, obviously, but it's what opens doors. So instead of kind of creating something that feels generic or even sterile or even over designed, I tried to ask myself different questions. How do I make this digital portfolio feel like an invitation, feel like an open door, feel like it is a conversation happening rather than just a catalog? So at our licensing booth at the Expo, we created this entire experience. There were handmade birds hanging from the ceiling and fabric samples strung along the walls. We had soft seating. We created this open air greenhouse that you could step into. And I knew that my digital portfolio needed to track, it needed to echo that same experience. It could not just be this sterile, scrollable catalog. It needed to be tangible and tactile somehow, and most of all, rooted in story. So let me share with you how we did that. But before I get into what we did this time, I'm gonna take you back to that first portfolio. My dream at that time was to introduce myself as an artist to the art licensing world. I was sharing artwork. I was also sharing hope and vision and a story. I will never forget that I had lunch with one of my good friends, Katie Daisy. And Katie, way ahead of me in this world. She was established, she was earning revenue from her artwork, and she had also gone to art school, which at the time I was a little bit envious of. And we were talking about this kind of portfolio and I was envious of her art school experience because they had access to all of these kind of portfolio building tools and ways to make a handmade portfolio. Anyways, Katie said something to me that stuck with me forever. She said, I wanted my portfolio to feel like the most special book any art director had ever held in their hands. And I remembered that and it impacted Me. That is why I decided to take a bookbinding class. So I was living in California at the time. I'll never forget. I drove up to San Luis Obispo to this woman's book, adorable backyard studio. And me and one other friend learned how to bind our own book. We learned about how to press the the front and the back, how to actually bind the interior pages. I had to figure out how to print them all of these things because I too wanted my book to feel like the most incredible, special book any art director had ever, ever held. And I think I accomplished that. Now I have kind of updated my advice because from there I began to more thoroughly share my work. And that put me into this spin of creating lots of handmade portfolios. And they're extremely time consuming. I believe I made about 20 and I started sending them to different art directors. And the name of the game is that oftentimes you just just don't get things returned. And so I think of the 20 I got three returned to me. And so I had to kind of update my process and update my advice. I really do love a handmade portfolio if you're going to keep it always with you, but not if you are going to be sending it around because odds are you're not going to get it back. So anyways, that was my story of my very first one. I still have it today. I keep it in my studio and it is so special. I put some interactive elements into it, like a envelope with some of my original sketches that they could open and take out. I included a letter to everyone who looked at it right inside. So fast forward to this year and my goal was really the same. I wanted to build something incredibly personal but fully digital. So I wanted the viewer to feel like they could still see my fingerprints on every moving part. Something that felt modern and easy, but also warm and intentional and human. Thus is the challenge in the online world. Right? So I want to kind of COVID some actionable steps for you. If you are looking to also create a heartfelt digital portfolio space, the first thing I want to urge you to do is start with story. This is something that we heard over and over and over again at the Expo. Everyone we talked to loved story. Story driven. Heartfelt human made artwork has never been in higher demand than right now. And that is a great thing for me and you. So instead of jumping straight into your artwork or your portfolio, start with the why? Who are you? Why do you design? What inspires you? What moves you? Your artwork or the product that you're showcasing inside your portfolio. They are all pulled from lived experiences and likely sketches and moments of inspiration. And so that is the story that you want to pull the viewer into. Let your process be visible so include things like photos, video, maybe process of your sketchbook or painting or your messy hands when you're making your thing. Maybe you've got mood boards that you can show off or progress shots that you can pull someone into. Your story is the thread that really guides someone through your page from the very first image all the way to your call to action. Now your call to action is likely going to be something like get in touch or view the full catalog. We'll talk about that a bit more in a moment.

If you are a busy entrepreneur like me, you'd rather spend your time on the work you love and growing your business than on a mountain of paperwork. Now when my team started growing, I knew that I needed something to make complicated business tasks like payroll simple and personal. That's when I found Gusto. Gusto has been a game changer for my business. It's like having a fairy godmother for all the less glamorous parts of running a business. With Gusto, I can handle payroll in minutes and manage benefits and time off requests as well, all from one beautiful, intuitive platform. We've been using Gusto for over five years and and I cannot recommend it enough. It's important to me that my team feels cared for and valued and Gusto helps me do that. Their platform is so easy to use and my team loves how easy it is to hop on the app anytime, see the status of their pay, their time off, and even their 401k contribution. So whether you're a fellow artist, a small shop owner, or anyone who values creativity and team spiritual, Gusto is there to help you simplify the complicated parts of your business so that you can focus on what you do best. When you're creating a business that you love, every bit of help counts. If you're ready to transform the way that you handle payroll, benefits and HR, visit bonniecristine.com Gusto that's bonniecristine.com forward/gusto and join over 300,000 business owners, including me, who found their perfect partner in Gusto.

Number two is design for feeling, not just function. Now when designing the layout, I want you to think about the order, so think about the mood. How do you want someone to feel as they scroll? This will bring you into kind of moving outside of that catalog mentality and into creating a website or A page that feels like an experience for me. That meant including a photo of me, sketching at my table, maybe adding watercolor textures, layering in videos, and my design process. It also meant highlighting six specific collections that felt like chapters of a story. So the ones I included were Apron Strings, A Year in Petals, Forest Floor, her in History, the Open Road, and the Wild Forgotten. Now, I included six collections. I have over 15 in totality. And so something I'll kind of explain to you now is that I did also create a catalog version of all all of my artwork that is very utilitarian, but that's not the portfolio facing page that I wanted to draw people into. So instead of that, this public portfolio page is again, an experience that draws you into the story. And so I'm showing a sampling of my most favorite work. Now, this sampling is a great representation of my full body of work, but it is not my full body of work. Instead, I invite them to view the full catalog and I put this behind a password. Now, this is something that we talk about a lot. Should you password protect or should you not? I think that it's really important if you're new to just get eyes on your work. Maybe consider not doing a password protected site at the beginning because honestly, you want to learn. Lower the barrier of entry to viewing your work. I have a password on my page number one, because of the breadth of work that I'm sharing. It's over 250 patterns there. And if someone is going to fully view my entire library, I would love to know who they are. I would love to connect, I would love to understand why they're interested in viewing my entire library of work and kind of open that door to a bigger conversation. I also potentially have things behind that password that are not available for public eyes yet. So for instance, I may have a brand new collection that is licensed but not released yet. Let's say for fabric. Now that means that they are available for licensing in other industries and on other products, but I am not allowed to share them publicly yet. That's another reason why I have a password protected full catalog that is very utilitarian as well. Now, we're going to invite you to see both of these. If you go over to the Show Notes for today's episode, you can grab a link to my public facing portfolio. The URL to that is also pretty easy. It's bonniecristine.com portfolio but on the Show Notes, we're going to show you a little video of the password protected version version of the Site as well. So even though you might not be able to go look at the full catalog, you can see how I designed the layout in case you want to do something similar. So beside each of these very curated collections that I kind of pulled out, so I'm showing somewhere between, let's say four and eight patterns, whereas the full collection is typically more than 20 that's available behind the password. I share the inspiration behind the collection. What does the collection mean? Where did it come from? What was I inspired by? The goal is to create emotional resonance and be able to just say a little bit more about why, why I designed this. Okay. Number three is to make it personal. Professional and personal can coexist beautifully. This is why I chose to pull in so many different aspects. On this page, I have a video where you can see some of my process and some of my lifestyle, kind of B roll and behind the scenes. You can see some behind the scenes clips of me painting and brainstorming. You can see photos of my hands working in my studio table and those messy middle moments. You can also see this really beautiful kind of process of this slider that moves from a sketch to finished pattern. I, more so than anything, wanted to breathe life into this page. Now that technology is just knocking at our doors left and right. I want to invite someone into the handmade, into the tactile, into the human made process of this moment. This is human made work that cannot be replicated in any way. So I think it's easy to feel like a digital portfolio is just a gallery. Keep it clean, keep it minimal, keep it easy. But I believe that a digital portfolio is a first impression and it should feel like this whole welcome experience. It is all about connecting them. So I think sometimes we feel like we've got to make an impression or we want to impress someone, show them the breadth of our ability or our work. But really, when someone doesn't know you and all they see is your work, it's missing this immense opportunity for connection. Who are you? What do you do and why do you do it? And what does that process look like will resonate and connect and open the door. So don't trade away that personal touch for polish. You can absolutely have both. Personal and polish go super well together. And when you lead with your heart, you fully stand out. Not just for your art, but for your story. So let's recap what I shared with you today. My first portfolio was handmade. It was imperfect, it was full of heart, and I loved it. It got me to where I am Today, my new online portfolio is working to translate that same essence into the digital world. I led with story, I infused it with process, and I wrapped it up into a meaningful collection of my work and experience into my world. It's an invitation for you to come into my pace and see what makes our brand so different. At the licensing Expo, people wanted to know the artist behind the work. This, again, was just this overwhelming takeaway that I had was people wanted to know the story. That is the power of portfolio storytelling. Even online, you can leave your fingerprints on every aspect of it. So before I let you go, here's what I want you to do. Take 15 minutes this week to revisit your online presence. Choose one spot. Maybe it's your portfolio page or your About Me page, or maybe it's even your Instagram bio. And soften it. Add a photo, add a process, add a video, add a sketch, add the story that will bring people closer to who you are. You can download the free portfolio storytelling template that I created for you. It's going to help you shape this narrative so that your next portfolio page feels like an invitation, not just a showcase of your work. So head on over to the Show Notes for today's episode, that's@PropriationalCreative.com to download again the free portfolio storytelling template. Now, next week, I'm going to be taking you behind the scenes of our first licensing expo strategy. What worked, what what surprised us, what we'll do differently next time. And yes, there will be a next time. Until then, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.