In this episode of the Design and Shine podcast, I have the pleasure of speaking to Nerida Hansen about a topic that I know a lot of people will be interested in and that is marketing strategies for surface artists.

Nerida Hansen is the founder and creative director of Nerida Hansen Fabrics. Through her business, she supports and collaborates with independent artists and illustrators and she’s just launched a brand new app PatternField App which connects surface artists and designers with art buyers from all around the world. Which is super exciting.

Nerida’s background includes working for a major retailer where she licensed designs with major companies such as Disney. She left her job after pitching ideas to support independent artists and designers to the retailer she worked and found it wasn’t something they were interested in doing. From there created Nerida Hansen Fabrics and started supporting, licensing and representing independent artists.

One of the areas that I know designers often really struggle with when building their creative businesses is marketing.

Nerida and I discuss her views on what surface pattern designer need to think about when marketing their designs including:

• What the most important elements are for surface artists to think about when putting their portfolios together
• What Nerida looks for when she looks at artists portfolios
• The importance of having a social media presence and website for surface artists
• Nerida’s top recommendations for which platforms are most important to start with
• What a great overall marketing strategy looks like for surface pattern designers

And Nerida has created an amazing tool to add to your marketing tool belt. Her Patternfield App connects designers with buyers in a really easy and streamlined way to make the process of marketing and selling their designs so much easier for surface pattern designers.

You can find out more about Nerida here

You can find out more about the Patternfield here