Student Blog: Graphic Design and the Actor: Branding 101

As actors, we are a business - we are our own CEO, our own HR department, and our own branding and marketing team. We cannot neglect the importance of design and consistency in a brand as actors, and therefore, we must learn basic graphic design. To be quite honest, I have no background in graphic design, so I run on a "good enough" model - and you should too. Good enough is better than bad or nothing! Let me take you on a journey through the world of the professional actor and how graphic design and brand consistency can be a benefit.

Website

Your website is a huge part of your brand. Ultimately, most people will find your website when you link it somewhere - in your social media bios, on your resume, or on a business card. Your website is the one-stop shop where someone can learn anything and everything about you. Think about your website as the sun, and social media and physical materials like other members of the solar system - all roads lead to the website! The website has the most information and is the least forgiving in graphic design. Website hosting platforms often have premade templates or themes, and I would recommend starting with one if you don't know anything about websites. Personally, I use SquareSpace (not sponsored).

When you are making a website, you should make yourself some sort of "portfolio" - mine consists of 3 brand colors and 3 brand fonts. For my own purposes, I made sure that the fonts and colors would be usable on Squarespace and on Canva, which is the photo editing service that I use (again, not sponsored). Having this consistency makes it much easier to keep a common theme between your website and any content you may need to make using photo editing softwares. To pick these colors and fonts, the internet was my best friend. Graphic designers and enthusiasts love to post various combinations of fonts that make a website look professional. After finding a heading font I liked (in my example, it was Abril Fatface, a fancy but readable font), I typed "fonts that go with Abril Fatface" in my search bar. Through that, I found my next font - Abril Display. These fonts happen to be in the same family (Abril), but your fonts don't have to be in the same family. I also decided to use the default font for body text on my template, which is Proximal Nova, which is fairly unmemorable. Most body text fonts are fairly similar, and if you can't find an exact match on different platforms for your desired font, you can find something that is very close. I also used the internet for my colors, which are oxblood red, camel suede, and a darker grey. Oxblood red is my favorite color, and since it's dark enough to be readable on a website, especially in a thick font, I decided to use that. Again, I typed in my search bar looking for "colors that go with oxblood red", and I found my two other colors. As long as your colors are easy to see and as long as you can read the text, you are all set to use whatever colors you please! Additionally, I would recommend writing down the hex codes of the colors you have chosen, which will make it much easier to edit using a photo editing platform or a website builder. Now you have a portfolio with your brand colors and fonts!

Social Media

Social media is an incredibly valuable tool in the actor's one-man business, as it creates the ability to network without having to leave your front door. Ultimately, social media is what you choose to show other people, so keep it balanced between professional content and your personal life. Posting is not about how professional the picture looks, how many likes you get, or how your feed looks overall. If you want to put in the time to make a feed look consistent, you can - but I find it's not worth it. You are allowed to be human on social media! Just be aware of what you post.

Also, recognize that social media is a tool that can help you create connections - with most social media platforms nowadays having a messaging service attached to it, it can be extremely easy to connect with others! You can also put a link to your website in your bio, or you can put a link to a reel, or a piece of past work. Use the platform to your advantage! Stories (applicable to Instagram and many other platforms) are incredibly useful for many different applications! If you're in a show and want to blast a ticket link on Instagram, you can include a link button on the story which will lead to the ticket page. Social media is incredibly customizable, and is one of the best ways we can gain connections and build our brand.

Email

For email correspondence, I have made maybe the most extra thing I could imagine - I customized an email signature that reads almost like a business card. This is more common in the LinkedIn side of the world (aka: finance, business, etc), but it can be very useful for actors! I have put an example without my personal information in the article here:

There are several different websites that will do this for you - but they usually make you pay for something you could easily make yourself! I used Canva with a business card template, and I inserted my acting headshot and information that I would be comfortable sharing with everyone I do professional correspondence with. You can then use this image in place of a signature at the end of your emails - most email services will allow you to have a custom signature for the end of your email that is automatically applied. This has saved me from having to type my information at the end of every email, and it also gives a fun twist on the typical typed up email signature. This is not at all necessary, but I have found a lot of positive reception to it.

To conclude, I want to mention that a lot of this work that we do is unpaid and often goes unrecognized. As actors, we put in hours of work to make ourselves look more professional, and ultimately, we have invested hundreds of dollars worth of wages and hundreds of hours of work into our own professional life. I hope I've cut some of that time in half with some tips on how to make it seem like you know graphic design! Trust me, I still don't - I've learned just enough to get by! Have fun building your brand!