Wolf Craft - Your PR questions answered - edition #5

Welcome to the fifth edition of PR Questions with Nora.

This new monthly newsletter feature was inspired by you! If you've attended one of our recent PR workshops, you likely noticed there were A LOT of great questions during the Q&A's. We've collated all the questions and once a month we'll send you two in-depth answers to your most common PR questions.

Read past editions here.

Q: As a surface pattern designer what are the best example photos I can pitch? Pattern mockups, product photographs, or mix of both?

A: You definitely want real photos. Renderings aren't going to do it there.

This is a great moment for collaboration. I think you definitely want to show your surface pattern applied to something. For example, if you're doing something like fabric, maybe there's a cool furniture designer that does upholstered pieces that you can collaborate with on a small collection.

It doesn't even have to be for sale, it can just be for a photoshoot so you both have assets and you can spread that budget across two businesses.

This is also where the research part I always talk about comes in. What publications do you want to pitch? Look at how they've covered other surface pattern designers. There's probably like four kinds of images that they use. Try and get at least two of those kinds of images.

Using the fabric example, there's probably images of stacked fabric, images of upholstered pieces or the fabric in use somehow, images of it on a roll, and likely a few detail shots.

Whatever your contemporaries are doing that the publications are picking up is what you should do. This is speaking in terms of the types of visual assets you should make, not your actual creative work, of course.

Q: I feel like I need to start everything over due to inconsistency in my photos. But, I'm a jewelry maker and have a lot of one of a kind designs, so starting over means I’ll lose the ability to show pieces that have sold. What’s your advice about how to convert to a more professional look without looking like I just dropped in the game yesterday?

A: It sounds like you've been doing this work for a while and you have an archive of images, but they don't have the consistency and quality that you're looking for, and so you want to get that consistency.

This means you already have a benchmark, a moment to move forward from.

If we were working together, your homework would be to go out and get a light box and get a tripod specifically for shooting your work.

Then do a bunch of test shots so you know exactly what every new piece is going to go through in terms of asset creation moving forward. You’ll basically be creating a standard operating procedure for every new piece before it goes to the client. It gets placed in your light box and you document it from three angles.

Setting this up means that in a year you're going to have all these new consistent assets based on your commission's and the work that you’ve made over the past year. You’ll look back and your website, Instagram, Pinterest, etc will all be populated with a whole new collection of work.

You shouldn’t throw away your archival work, but start to transition into the place that you want to go. Know that month by month you’ll update one or two elements until it all looks cohesive. This won't happen tomorrow, but now you have a clear path forward.

Eventually you can remove your older work or can even put it on its own separate page on your website and state that that work is from 2021 and earlier. This way people will be able to see your growth. Remember that this is all very normal for business, so it's not something to feel discouraged about, it's something to move forward with.

A few useful tools to help you get started:

Our Photography for Media Outreach Guides

9 Tips to Improve Your Website Design

How to Ensure Your Images Support Your Story Angles

Thanks for giving us some time in your inbox! If you have any PR questions be sure to send them our way. We'll always respond and you may even see the answer in our newsletter!

Cheers,
Nora & Kirsten

PS - If you liked the newsletter, we’d be so happy if you shared it with others who might find it useful. Anyone new can subscribe here.

Wolf Craft - Your PR questions answered - edition #5

Q: As a surface pattern designer what are the best example photos I can pitch? Pattern mockups, product photographs, or mix of both?

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