Utilizing Social Media to Publish Your Creations

It turns out that only a small number of Indonesian graphic designers publish their work on online media. It is quite a contrast to the digital age like this, when having online portfolio is important to attract company’s interest and open up opportunities for collaboration with other designers and creative workers. Therefore, to Indonesian designers, especially graphic designers, publishing their work online is necessary. So, what should be taken into account to exist in the online realm?

Utees.me CEO Amrit Gurbani conveyed, “There are 3 factors need considerations in order to build online existence, which is to build personal brand, utilize social media, and create interesting content.” On a workshop entitled “The Future of Design” held by Utees.me on Friday (3/11) at Binus FX Campus’ auditorium, Amrit explained the importance of personal branding on the age of internet, when competition is wide open and stiffer. In his opinion, establishing personal brand on the internet is important because many companies have started assessing candidates’ profile, data, and online portfolios. “Candidates having online portfolios will be further considered by the company,” revealed Amrit.

Nowadays, Amrit observed, Indonesian designers rarely have online portfolios. For the time being, no specific data are available on this subject. However, Amrit explained, the phenomenon is indicated in Indonesian hashtag and keyword on social media platforms dedicated to designers. In his opinion, it was driven by design students who still lack self-confidence to upload their portfolios on the internet. Years after, once they enter the professional world, they do not have the time to showcase and manage their portfolios on the internet. “Therefore, very rarely Indonesian designers put their portfolios on the internet, compared to the total population of world’s designers active on social media platforms for designer,” said Amrit.

Apart from building personal brand, creative souls, especially designers, require to exist on social media. Amrit continued, social media are the means of connecting people (human to human) in which they gather in one space. Along with internet progress, social media become more specific according to segmentation of content and industry domain. In this context, designers can take advantages of the more specific social media advancement, wherein many new social media support designers need to publish their work. Take Instagram, a platform generally based on graphic contents. Other platforms also provide support for designers and illustrators, for instance Behance, Logopond, and many more.

Utees.me itself is a platform dedicated for creative souls, such as graphic deigners, who look forward to applying their work on T-shirts. “Utees.me exists for creative people who want to transform their artwork into a product, t-shirt in this case, which their friends as well as a wider market can buy. Not only for graphic designers, lay people can also create artwork on Utees.me because it provides design templates which can be used for expressing their ideas, both in picture and writing,” explained Amrit.

Last but not the least, beside building personal brand and using social media, is creating attention-grabbing contents. A factor to first consider is creating a content that matches the brand DNA and character being built. “Make the content consistent with brand DNA. If your brand is characterized by rebellion and freedom, don’t make a contradicting content, for example, characterized by purity or innocence,” Amrit emphasized.

Amrit recommended best practices for content making, they are staying consistent (signature), offering values to audience (sincere value), and lastly but not the least is being full of surprise. “Consistent content doesn’t mean repeated and boring content. Content may some times be made off beat and surprising,” said Amrit. Finally, creating content is an art of getting to know our audience, what kind of content attracts them, and when it has to reach them so that we receive positive response and the content goes viral.

What are you waiting for now? Go upload and manage your work then be prepared for collaborations with other creative souls!