On Brand-Image:
I've known for a long time the value of a Brand-Image and fitting a 'niche', as they say... but in looking through my work, it mostly looks disorganized. One of the biggest things I want to work on this year, is creating a cohesive presentation, both in the studio and online, so that all of my work... more or less looks like it all goes together.
I currently have a signature stamp using the emblem of a wolf on the bottom of some of my stuff, my initials on others, and a star on still others. I really like my wolf... but it doesn't go with the store name/image. (On a side note, apparently nobody recognizes it as a wolf anyway. Bahumbug.) If I ditch the wolf, I could switch to a tree, and/or the actual store name... Or, a branch of Heather. That could work. Using my own name sort of causes problems, what with the last name thing (which is why I don't much like using my initials, plus they're sort of ambiguous. "Who is this HB person?")
I also really want to move away from using class-glazes, and producing my own instead, so that I have a uniform palette to choose from, which will help with things looking like my work, specifically, rather than just anybody's. I know that it does to some extent, but there's room for a lot of improvement. When I look through my store at what's for sale, it's kind of all over the place, and I don't really like that. I want it to all tie in together and be mine. Part of that includes hunting down what glazes my high school pottery teacher had, because I really liked some of them. I did work on some loosely-associated 'themes' during the second half of the semester, with the two bowls and plate that have leaves pressed into them... And I would like to continue with that direction, as well as others.
And... I'm not sure I like the way some (a lot) of my pieces are photographed. Sadly, my camera is out of commission at the moment, but when it's fixed, there are some I need to re-take because they came out a little blurry, and also I find the use of mom's couch (yes, that's what it is, cheap scenery) a bit distracting.. The ones with the all-black backgrounds look much crisper. I think I need to find some sort of backdrop to put behind them, just a black or a gray sheet, and then do that for EVERYTHING, so it looks more professional. I've browsed around other shops on etsy, and noticed a lot of them have used a gradient black-to-white background, which I think is a photography backdrop. It seems to work pretty well, so that's also something to think about.
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