Cartoonists: Why Signage Matters
For the past year, I have tried peddling my comics in a new venue: the craft fair/art market.
BCR contributor Matt Reidsma on craft fairs and effective signs:
Part of the decision is financial: with tables at MoCCA going for $400 next year, (!!!) I simply can’t justify the travel expenses, the exhaustion, and the outrageous cost for a tiny table in an overheated room when I’m selling comics for $3 a piece. But the other motivation has been my wife Wendy; since we’ve been collaborating more and more on books and zines, we thought it would be fun to share tables. And so we hit the art fair circuit. Why didn’t I do this sooner?
For one: it’s the market I always SAY I am looking for. Comic conventions are full of people who already love comics. You just need to convince them to like yours. Art markets have a wide array of people who may have never read a comic in their lives (except perhas Garfield or Dilbert). Those are the people I want to meet. Because if I can convince those people that comics are worth reading, that’s better than selling 5000 comics at SPX or MoCCA. On the business side, one crafter asked me at a show in Indianapolis last month, “Why go to a show where ALL of your competition is in the same room with you?” I do comic shows for more than just sales, and I do think that comic shows are important. You need to be connected to the industry, you need to keep your name out there, you need to drink too much with other cartoonists that you don’t see often enough. But at the same time, I want to reach new people with my comics, to show them that comics aren’t just superheroes and disgruntled office workers. If you make comics, I bet you feel the same way. So sometimes it’s great to get out of the comic show circuit.
But here is what I have learned about art markets: signage matters.
At a comics show, pretty much everyone will lay their books flat on the table, and the shopper is expected to peruse them. Since everyone is selling the same type of item, and everyone displays it in pretty much the same way, this works well. But at an artist market, people are selling all kinds of stuff: finger puppets, handmade soaps, paintings, t-shirts, posters, jewelry–and the displays are all different. The goal of a good display is to bring people into your tent to get them to look at the goods. And laying comics flat on the table wasn’t doing it.
I’ve made a pretty brisk business at recent markets, and I had recently created all new signs to go with the books and sketches I have out on display. But the signs were designed around the principles I learned doing comic shows. The sign is small (table real estate is valuable), the type is small (let the comics talk for themselves). People who came into the tent and looked at the comics appreciated the signs, But the trouble was getting them in.
One aspect of my business I’ve been trying to grow is caricatures. Earlier this year I launched a website, Cartoonify Me, that lets me create caricatures for people across the internet. It’s been fun, but business is quite slow. A few months ago I added a line to my “Big” sign, announcing that I did sketches. At a comics show, everyone knows what this means, but people at Art Markets think a sketch is something you draw on a napkin. No one was prepared to pay me for that.
I added a small sign that I kept next to a pile of sketches I had out on the table. If people got close enough to see the Big sign and learn about the sketches, and then happened to spot the small sketches sign, they would generally understand. But everyone still assumed that the sketches I did were the ones on the table. No one realized that I would draw them right there. I needed a bigger sign.
This past weekend, I printed this sign at Letter size and attached it to the back of my Studio2Go so that it faced out at the passing crowd. Whereas at my last 2 shows I did a total of 2 caricatures, this time I did 16. (not bad for a pretty slow market that only lasted 5 hours).That is a 700% increase in business for the cost of a sheet of paper, a little ink, and some glue, and a backing board. I could SEE people spot the sign, smile, and make a beeline right for me. Unlike Cartoonify Me, I charged the same price no matter how many people I drew on a single sheet. Some families came back for multiple sittings, and all of them spent time looking through my comics while I chatted them up and drew their picture. I didn’t sell many comics (although 2 of Wendy’s customers bought Complete Cat Collections) but I talked to a lot of people about comics who wouldn’t otherwise have come to my table, and hopefully, convinced the, that great comics are still out there and more importabntly, that ANYONE can make comics. Next time, I’m going to make up fliers for our fledgling group, the Grand Rapids Comics Roundtable. I was kicking myself for not having them this time!
Matt Reidsma is a BCR contributor and founder of the Grand Rapids Comics Roundtable. His work can be found at reidsrow.com