Wanting to get published?
Since I started as editor on my own a couple of years ago for the design and art fields, I have become aware of common difficulties artists / designers -without them knowing about it- drives them away from being considered in serious publications.
I annotated a few pointers collected as “most important” every time I review a single piece; they are not listed here in any specific order but chronologically.
Information
Information about your work will let the editor know your piece(s) much better and will be much more confident to contact the most reliable artist instead of the typical “I madez dis quickie” comment. This will also save up a lot of time for text composition and the information released will be precise and catchy for the readers.
Updates
Keeping editors and the audience in general up-to-date about your latest works, thoughts and professional activity is very important, VERY; specially for those who follow you because of your work (of course, not due to your looks or scandalous life). Technologies within Social Networks such as RSS / Atom or Email Newsletters let you do that easily, and will allow the editors to have all new entries (from you and other personalities) in an organised productive way however method they use to monitor updates from their sources. I usually discard immediately websites without a RSS or ATOM feed. If you are not good at web-programming (using dynamic server-side languages for example) then build your website over a fully-costumizable already made system, some of them might be Tumblr, Wordpress or Cargo; they will all let you create a professional automated website (with your own domain, of course).
Authorship
If you are going to use a pseudonym, be serious about it. I have become more interested in furthermore contact data such as country, age and maybe even social relations with other people in the scene. Sometimes links between this data makes it more publish-worthy than just having the name of the author.
Collaborative work
If you have created a Collaborative work with another artist or company, please provide at least a link where you can find more information about the other side of the collaborative effort. Otherwise it will probably be unreliable information in the eyes of an Editor, basic research is done through different source confirmations.
Taxonomy
Tag or Classify your work, and justify why if possible. It is not required you to be extensive on the subject about why it should be classified in that category, but it is needed at some level since sometimes techniques could be confused, and it would be a terrible mistake to have your piece classified as digital when in fact it is traditional, or to be mixed media when it really is cutting-edge vector work.
Editors could waste a lot of time just figuring out what kind of mad techniques you used in your piece; this will, of course, also help the neophyte.
Watermarks
Don’t watermark your work horribly; I have seen huge watermarks that even for the appreciator would be impossible to correctly visualize your work. A beautiful signature, reasonable positioned is more than enough. Watermarking it will add extra steps to the online publishing processes, like contacting you first, to convince you that the Editor isn’t an art thief and then to ask you for a version of your piece without that huge awful watermark on it. Adding extra steps in the publishing process is never a good idea, NEVER.
Press Releases
This is one thick subject, I have received several press releases over the first year and the first paragraph from them all makes me suggest you this: Do not praise yourself… it is illogical to do this, plus it gives you a bad, a very bad position. Auto-stating that your company / studio / work is top-notch state-of-the-art is not selling anything, is treating the editor and readers like a morons who can not make their own conclusions or discern about what you are saying or exposing in the press release.
About Fan-Art
Fan-art in your professional portfolio?, A big no-no. Unless it has been done for a commercial project delivered directly to the producing company. Fan Art is a great way to show support to your favourite series / movie, whatever, but it doesn’t make a great complement for your portfolio, since it is not yours, entirely.
Restrictions and Contact Info
Your work is so incredibly awesome that art thiefs / low profile agencies will profit from it; because you are so clever you put a huge warning: Do not copy, redistribute or reuse in any form (a.k.a, commercial licenses). All that is great, but no contact information in case an editor wants to write about your work?, and of course, it is not writing alone, the reader got to see the piece the editor is writing about, right? Well, that is not so clever; get your contact information visible.
Visibility
Make your work visible in detail, it is not enough to cut a nice presentation, a real appreciator or editor will check for every detail if possible, and a five hundred pixels image of your whole work just won’t make it. Don’t be afraid of showing the magnificent detail of your work to the spectators. Bandwidth and huge servers have solved the storage and viewing issues which were common… a few years ago.
Like I said, this is just a brief compilation about the thoughts I have had in this short time as editor. Any thoughts about it?.
