Lemme tellya a thing or three
Names are vital in how you present yourself. I’m not getting into how important it is to name work (I’ve yet to meet someone for whom Untitled is an accurate reflection of the subject of their work – it’s a lazy argument for a lazy solution – but that’s another post) but rather your file names when you submit work. Think I’m being glib? The other day I sorted through over 50 discs of artist submissions to an upcoming show, and I can not stress enough how a little effort on your end will endear you to the lowly peon tasked with presenting your work to the higher-ups in the arts food chain.
Imagine you’re applying for, say, a popular group show at a local arts institution that requests a disk with 5 images and a resume, statement, and slide list. Your cd is going to end up in a pile with potentially hundreds of other artists, then most likely, all of your images will be gathered together for presentation. Let’s start with when I put your cd into my computer. The icon pops up. And what is it called? In my real world experience I’ve seen unnamed (implies you don’t understand how to perform basic computer tasks) the date the disk was made 12/14/09 (hmm, finished a day before the deadline – don’t think this is important, eh?) cutsy names that have nothing to do with the work PurpieX (seriously?), the name of the show being applied for Show Title (great for you, but I already know that I’m working on this show, so not the best choice.) So what should it be? Your full professional name (not Jo or Kitty, Joseph M. Smith or Katherine Cooper) the name you would like to have associated with your work and then if there’s room, the show being applied for or the body of work. Ah, I see you’ve named your disk properly. I have high hopes for you. Then I open up the disk.
I was doing this with bated breath, anticipating who was going to be well organized, and who was going to make me do extra work to rename their files. Rather than astound you with the many, many poor choices I’ve seen, I want to tell you what you should do and why. All files should be named your full name – title of work – dimensions – material – year, although I don’t think the order really matters that much after name and title. That’s the only thing images should be called. Secretly, materials and year may only be warranted on a slide sheet, I find that information of secondary importance. But it’s far more complicated than just using that formula for your image names. You, as a talented, professional artist must keep in mind formatting concerns. Do not use “quotation marks” & ampersands. I know your work is 25.5″ but you can’t have the ” or the . in there. Why? Because, depending on who is viewing your files and how those symbols may render your work un-viewable. For PCs whatever follows the . indicates the file type. / for some computers indicates file directories. My Name “title” 25.5/27.jpg may open fine on your mac and be broken for whomever is reviewing your work for four different reasons. Now, I am aware of this, and go out of my way to rename images before passing them on, but before I took on my job my boss would just delete anything that couldn’t be opened. If you are in a pool of a hundred other artists, why should anyone make any effort to fix a problem with your image when they can just toss it into the reject pile? Proper naming and formatting means your work actually gets seen.
Dealing with an FTP or e-mailing images? You may need to remove all spaces in your file names. Yes, I know they open perfectly well on your computer, but whomever is receiving your images is not opening them on your computer. For safety’s sake, I use either _ or – in all file names, no spaces, and of course no symbols. I’m no scientist, but I know that my webhost hates spaces, and anything I download from an ftp client that was improperly named comes broken and unusable. So you have to think about how you name your files, but the small effort ensures that your work can be opened. Better safe than sorry.
Back to your disk. Did you make sure all the files were nicely sorted before you burn your disk? No? Well, when I opened your disk it was a jumbled pile of stacked icons. And I was irritated with you. So your images are nicely named, all with the proper extensions, what about your resume? It’s called resume.doc. and your statement is artist statement.doc. You, in this theoretical popular group show at a local arts institution, are one of hundreds of other artists whose files are being pooled together for review. At least 50% of you have named your files the exact same. Now, files can’t exist in the same place with the same name, so I now have to rename your documents. Your resume and statement should always be Full-Name-Resume.doc. Now they will match your images, and there is no confusing you with any of the other artists resumes. Do not use a nick name and do not use your working title for the document when you were sprucing it up (novworkingresume, resume for popular show, etc.)¬† and of course, the name should indicate if this is the artist statement or resume. Do not be vague about these just being your documents; different files may need to go to different locations. All of this dithering on about the importance of names is so you appear organized and professional, so all someone sees when they look at your submission is your work, and that you are an artist who is competent and easy to work with.
I understand that it can be daunting to manage your digital image and file system, especially when it comes to renaming raw images. This is Name Mangler. Download it. Use it. Love it. You can batch rename large sets of files, number sequentially, add prefixes, and so forth. So simple, and yet so vital. Now that you have heeded my unsolicited advice, your submissions will be actually judged on their merit, rather than being shaded by perceptions of apathy/incompetence. Yay! Everyone’s a winner.
Tags: babbling, file names, mac/pc, Sequoia, submissions, Unsolicited Advice
excellent advice!