By Peter Clark
A week into October, Austin-based photographer Jody Horton began preparing for November’s NYCfotoworks. He soon realized that he was in dire need of leave behind materials for the big event. This would be Jody’s first portfolio review event, so he wanted to make sure he presented himself in the best way possible.
After signing up for Fotoworks at our photo editor Sean Stone’s (who would be attending as well) recommendation, Jody filled the rest of his New York schedule with meetings at magazines he’d shot for in the past. He was hoping to have stand-out leave behind promos and business cards to give to everyone he meet along the way.
Jody realized he was too busy with shoots to tackle the project himself in time, so he contacted me. As always, I was more than happy to help him out. Jody said he felt lucky to work with me since I was able to offer advice on the design, layouts and printers (we ultimately used Paper Chase Press, who I’d received some nice samples from recently and was hoping to try out).
After going over the basics with Jody, I began the initial design process. I started by looking over some of Jody’s past leave behinds and improving on their design. The overall layout of his old cards would stay the same, but we revamped his logo and contact info so it would stand out more.
As for the images, having an iPad portfolio, Jody wanted a tactile promo that highlighted work that wasn’t totally contained on his digital portfolio. He also hoped to include some of his commercial-based work, that demonstrated a natural, editorial feel. After dropping the image selects into the final design, we sent them off to the printers. Paperchase offers short print runs of postcards, so we were able to come up with four different layouts with images on both sides, which came out great.
Once we’d tackled the leave behinds, I moved on to the business card layout. I started these from scratch but made sure they worked together with the leave behinds and Jody’s brand identity. We were on a tight deadline to get the layouts to the printer and the finished prints shipped in time for the reviews. After everything was said and done though, we managed to get all the materials to Jody a few days early.
Jody says he got a lot of good feedback from reviewers (as well as fellow photographers) on his new leave behinds and his portfolio. He’s now looking to send out his remaining postcards as mailers to clients.
If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level with print or email promos, reach out!