What is the Name of Your Business? And Why?
For this week’s Weekend Forum, I thought I’d follow up on a recent post that inspired a lot of discussion, called Is “Freelance” a Bad Word?
In that article, I pondered the question of whether or not using the word “freelance” can devalue your services in the eyes of certain clients. One of my favorite things about that post is that the artists who responded in the comments took the idea much further and stated it much better than I did. It also made me curious about another aspect of an Illustrator’s brand identity: the business name.
Whether you operate under the name Jane Doe, Blast Off Designs, or Hungry Artist Studios, you are making a choice that has a major impact on the first impression of your brand. The way I see it, your name is one of the most personal decisions you can make about your creative business, and the way to approach that choice likely varies from one artist to the next.
Please join the discussion and find out what your fellow artists have to say in the comments section of this post.
What is the name of your business? And why?
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In Norway, to become a single person business, you have to use your last name in the business name. And I wasn´t really too keen on having a business name. So I called myself:
Den Unge Herr Holms Tegnede Tjenester
(The Young Mister Holms Drawn Services)
Just because it was the longest and most old-fashioned name I could think of at that exact time.
My legal business name for sales tax license is just my name. I understand pseudonyms like a lot of my friends use, but I had already been putting my name out there for so many years that I didn’t want to switch it. Hansma isn’t a super common name either. It is pretty simple, and a lot of people just call me Hansma instead of Heather and have my whole life. The only other thing I go by is Hansma Illustration when something demands a business name (like USPS, whom I use to ship) or for my website. It uses my distinct name and says what I do succinctly.
“Fantasio fine Arts” is still my approach to take fantasy illustration to a fine art level, this name developed from the need to append something original to my screen name and describe the business, this was the best sounding option and I´m still happy with it.
As a freelance illustrator your name IS your brand. Your clients want to call you by that name, refer you by that name, and write a check to you with that name. While you can certainly think of a much more creative name for your services I would think you would want your customers to remember your name over all else to represent your work. You might want them to connect you to the work and not the name of a miscellaneous studio. This extends into profile names as well. Especially if you are very active in an online community, you have the ability to be well known and it might as well be your name they know and not a silly nickname or reference to a favorite book or movie, etc. Get your clients, friends, and fans to know and remember your name. Unless of course you really choose to go by that nickname, just be consistent.
So, for branding purposes I will continue to be Aaron Miller whether or not I add “illustration” or “fine art” to the end.
I’ve been thinking about this exact question all day! At uni we’ve got an assignment which involves us creating our brand identity, but one of the restrictions is that we’re not allowed to use our own names it can work as an amazing brand name too (i think my first name is kinda cool but dunno how well that’d fly with my tutors yet). Plus for me that’s a bit annoying because most illustrators seem to use their actual name, but my course is unfortunately mainly a design course.
The business name I came up with for the moment is ‘See turtle fly’ which evolved from the fact that in my life I have often been compared to a turtle, but also because turtles don’t go so well with business values and so I wanted have a name that pushed conventional turtle-istic boundaries. I’m not totally sure about that for the moment but I’ll go with it..
The other important thing I wanted was for my business name to work with my real name and the way I’m thinking of connecting them is through the logo, which will work as a turtle and also as my initials which are two Ds.
I’m amazingly pleased with the timeliness of this topic and looking forward to hearing your names and opinions! :)
I go by John W. Tomac
I use the middle initial for a couple of reasons. First, right after graduation I was living with my parents. My father has the same name, but different middle name. It was a way to differentiate between the two of us when the phone rang.
Second, There happens to be a somewhat well known mountain biker named John Tomac (no relation) I thought the middle initial would help separate us in search engines.
Other, than that I agree with Aaron’s post above. You want people to know and remember your name.
I also registered John W Tomac Illustration as the name of my business for reasons Heather mentioned above.
I go by my first and middle name. My middle name, Beatrice, was given me after my great Grandmother who was very artistic, so it carries significance for me. I like that it reminds people of the great Beatrix Potter too!
I have 3 businesses – one which will probably be converted to a non-profit in the next few months to allow it the much needed resources to grow [Working Artists Network], the other two not formalized yet in terms of registered business structures other than under my own SSN [Adrienne Fritze, Artist-Entrepreneur - for my arts-based personal projects, and What's Inside Marketing - my new marketing services company].
Working Artists Network is “The Artists’ Chamber of Commerce”, and is a network of both artists (at any stage, in any genre) AND service professionals and public officials/servants who support the businesses of artists.
Adrienne Fritze, Artist-Entrepreneur exactly explains me in a nutshell as I am both in fairly equal parts. I am artist, and I use some sort of art in ALL my businesses and projects.
What’s Inside Marketing speaks to my expertise and philosophy in marketing which is that the only relevant information in terms of getting your products and services to the right folks is to understand what sincerely interests them, AND you.
I have a tendency to use descriptive names and titles for a couple of reasons:
1) It helps people get oriented to what’s being offered in a no-nonsense way, giving them just enough information to pique their interest and invite them to take a deeper look, and
2) It translates well into SEO, which is a key component in all my marketing as the cost is mostly in terms of time and talent applied to the marketing program, key factor for both myself and my clients.
Working Artists Network is the mature brand of the three as I’ve run that business now for 6 years, learning what the business is as I go, adjusting the taglines, rewriting the descriptors, etc. It’s website is beginning to shape up nicely to reflect its vision and mission [http://workingartistsnetwork.com].
Adrienne Fritze, Artist-Entrepreneur has had the least amount of attention as I have a tendency to leave my own stuff to the last moment. This brand will mature over the next 12 months as I have two major projects I’ve undertaken that will transform my life and the lives of others through creative outlets/processes. I’m finally understanding my place in the world (I know, I know – I’m 49! You might think I’d have it figured out already eh?), and my website will reflect those changes in time [http://adriennefritze.com].
What’s Inside Marketing is an immature brand in terms of graphic identity, but the name itself is spot on for how I do the work of marketing and what I think is important in a respectful and meaningful way. I’m just working through the language of that company, which you can witness live and first-hand as I build that website [http://whatsinsidemarketing.com]
As you can tell I have a tendency to use websites to work through the structure of a business. It’s the most effective and powerful tool I’ve ever discovered to craft clarity into/out of a business or project, and one that I thoroughly enjoy using as I work through the relevance and place for each entity.
I love this part of what I do…
;-),
A.
My business name is Diana Ponce Illustration… straight and to the point. It describes who I am and what I do. In it’s shortened form (DPI) it’s a spin on the digital work I do (the licensing branch of my business is DPI Studio).
I’m on the cusp of starting my own art business, and I’ve been pondering this very thing. Chuck’s the name I go by, and how I tend to think of myself, although it’s not my legal name. Since you don’t get many girls named Chuck, people tend to remember it. But if people get to know my name before they know me, as they probably – hopefully! – will in the future, it may be confusing for them. I’ve been using a derivative nickname online which pre-empts that confusion, but I’m not sure if that’s what I want to use for the business. And of course I could go with something totally different for the business name, but I still run up against this nickname/legal name dilemma in regards to me personally.
I chose not to trade under my actual name because I often will hand off projects to my peers when I’m over booked. Also my name is fairly common and would be hard to google.
I went with “Shaded Areas Illustration”. It’s based on a geometry reference but at the same town sounds directly and entirely related to imaging. So…. yeah. Seemed like a good choice to me. :-)
I’m still pondering my business name.
I’m not going to disclose it, but it is essentially my Chinese name.
Go me.
Way back when the web was young, and AOL was the only game in town…I tried to get an AOL username that was a combo of my first and last names: CatAzz. But it was already taken!
So I switched it up (a decision made late in the evening) to last name part + first name part: AzzCat. And so it began: azzcat(@aol.com).
I loved the simplicity. When we switched to comcast, I was able to be azzcat@comcast.net. By the time the web matured and I purchased a domain, azzcatdesign.com made sense and was available. Plus, it’s a whole lot catchier than AzzarelloDesign.com.
Sure, I’m a one-person studio. But AzzcatDesign works. There’s room to grow. It’s simple–and at the beginning of the alphabet (bonus points).
Bottom line…the name just ‘evolved’.
My name is Graeme but when I was a little kid my friends couldn’t pronounce it so they called me Gramma (I thought it was a fairly common name but apparently not around here since people still call me everything from Grant, Greg to horrible mispronunciations like Greymee). Gramma stuck and somehow as I started making art I ended up signing my pieces Gramma Jones. I have been signing my name this way for so long that it didn’t make sense for me to call my business anything other than Gramma Jones Illustration.
I use my full name, Madeline Carol Matz and M. C. Matz. My handle in most places is mcmatz.
I chose to use my full name because after doing some googling, I found there was another Madeline Matz working in the film archives of the Library of Congress of some note. There is also another artist named Madeline Carol so I thought my best bet was all three names.
I started using mcmatz instead of madelinecarolmatz as a handle just because it is shorter and perhaps catchier. I have to say though, I have been beaten out of that handle on several sites, eBay being one of them.
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. I have multiple names I’d like to use but as someone previously said it seems the best name would be my REAL NAME. But I do still have these other business names I’d like to use hrmmm…what to do, what to do!?
I have a nondescript name but it is registered for tax reasons. Elkart51 came from elk my nickname and 51 my date of birth. I managed to get elkart51 as a domain name and I am at the moment setting up a website to run alongside the blog.Basically I find it easier to direct people to the blog rather than have them sift through hundreds of Graham Howards lol.
I have been Studio Anjou for years. It started as a kind of nickname (the Anjou bit) because it’s a bit like my name (Angela, Angie) and because I like wine (a lot) and there is a famous wine region in France called Anjou. I thought it flowed nicely sound-wise and I registered the name even before I had a business. I’ve had compliments on it. For a long time it felt a bit silly and fake but it’s slowly become established in my mind as a proper business!
Loved reading about how you all came up with your names – fascinating.
I’m just begining as an illustrator. One thing that has always stood out about my name all my life is that no one pronounces it right the first time…not even my main professor at school, after many corrections!
I think it was mainly from his constant botching of my last name, and the fact that it does not roll easily off the tongue, that I adopted the moniker ‘VERWHO?’.
I feel like my business name is more memorable, and is curious enough to get people to look at my website. It’s short and precise, unlike my six-sylable given name. Yikes!
I use my full name – Lou Simeone. The url for my site though is Samalou.com. It’s a combination of my two kids’ names. But I make sure that my name is everywhere on my site so people know who’s site it is. And of course my name is prominent on my bus cards and mailers, ads and such. I’m a big believer in promoting your name along with your work. In my experiences as an Art Director I hired a good amount of photographers. I took notice that most of them used their names rather than business names. I liked that because to me it seemed more intimate and personal that way – and easier to remember – especially once you’ve worked with them. I lean toward Aaron Miller’s comment above.
I use my name. I’ve been using it for years so ton of my stuff already comes up if you Google or search for Michele Melcher or Michele Melcher Illustration. I also think that while some alias names can be interesting and impactful, for example, “The Heads of State”, others can be a bit to cutesy and border on sounding unprofessional IMHO.
I use my name too, i think is the clear way to remember and fix that you are the same person as your brand.
I use…
Robert Snyder Illustrates
Because that’s who I am and what I do.
My Business Name is “Eine Der Guten” (german) which means as much as “One of the good ones”.
I realized that Clients can easily remember this phrase and find my website via google because my last name is a bit difficult to spell.
Great comments to this post, have enjoyed reading them. As for me, I decided to use my name and add the service at the end. My main focus being photography I went with Chris Lane Photo but always worried that would limit my scope in client’s eyes (as far as also being a designer and illustrator). I don’t think it has been (or really will be) an issue, but I do also own chrislaneillustration.com just in case. Unfortunately, it is a quite common name. So that has affected me in search results. I like the personal aspect of using a name and I don’t ever plan on growing it ‘as a business’ – meaning I always plan on being a one-man shop and if I need more people for a larger project I would just sub-contract that out.
I came up with mine 10 years ago or so… I’ve been debating whether I should separate design from illustration & also break & just use my name for illustration. The Red Ant Art evolved late night, basically from wanting a cute little icon/mascot for my business(es)… red for my red hair… bugs were ‘in’ and red – ant – art all had 3 letters… just worked for me. Friends know & associate me with Red Ant Art… but working world probably wouldn’t know the difference.
I know this topic is sort of old, but I’m struggling with it myself lately. A few months ago I was completely content with Sarah Pecorino Illustration. No one else has the name so everything I do under this name comes up in Google, which is great. But I have been thinking about opening up a store to sell prints and shadow box versions of my illustrations. I came up with Pecora Studios (Pecora means Ewe, or female goat, in Italian, and Pecorino is the cheese made from Ewe’s milk). So I guess my situation is do I stick with Sarah Pecorino Illustration for my illustrative work and then run Pecora Studios as a separate sales driven business, or can I be Sarah Pecorino, illustrator of Pecora Studios? I’ve got my blog and facebook page under Sarah Pecorino.
Any insights?