What is self-promotion? Probably its best described as a way of branding oneself or selling one’s talents/skills etc to the outside world, in this case a prospective employer. Self-promotion can also be seen as narcissist, or too obsessed with oneself. But the aim of this project is not to talk about I, myself and me. In a few months I will be entering the big bad world of graphic design, and I would like a piece of something to send to people to tell them who I am and what I do without their even meeting me.
During a discussion with my guide these issues came up, at the core of it, how do I want to project myself to a prospective employer, and what are prospective employers looking for. All of us have an existing image. People think we are something. Actually we may not be that at all. Or we think we are something, and actually people don’t perceive that at all. So maybe one wants to fill that gap during promotion.
Each individual has layers to their personality. There’s something on the surface that everyone sees. There’s an inner layer visible only to a few. And there’s the very core, or soul, which maybe no one ever sees. What is personality? What is image? What is perception? These are things in that get built into people’s minds over time largely through our actions and behaviour. This is true at all levels of society, whether the individual, corporation, community, team, state, or nation. Branding happens, consciously or unconsciously. And once an image is hard-wired into peoples’ brains, it’s hard to remove or even alter.
One way to begin tackling the project is to read up on how different companies, countries, institutions, events and people promote themselves. And to learn about semantics, semiotics and gestalt, how things get grouped together, and signs and symbols in different cultures.
