Shell Royster
Who printed it?
Magcloud
Who designed it?
Kat Slade, an AD I worked with on the Moe’s Southwest Grill account.
Tell me about the images.
The images were a selection of travel and food experiences blended with food shots from studio work, to tell a larger story as a whole about my style and skill set.
How many did you make?
It’s a weird story, but this was just pre-pandemic, I had this prescient feeling that something bad was going to happen. I got a proof and printed 12 copies to target travel and food editors. And of course, due to the circumstances it was bad timing. So I only sent out 6 to a selected audience.
How many times a year do you send out promos?
Generally, I print 1-2 promos a year, as I strongly believe in the printed promo, especially if it tells a story or is simply a stunning photo. I’ve been on the other side of the aisle and I always kept the work that stood out, and pinned them on a cork board for future reference. And I actually hired a few of those individuals.
Do you think printed promos are effective for marketing your work?
Yes, I do, for the reasons above, and emails are so ubiquitous-that I feel they are often times relegated to spam, or ignored. But if you receive a beautifully crafted, printed promo, who doesn’t enjoy that? It’s like a small gift. It also creates an awareness for editors who are not familiar with my work.
How did you intimate your personality aside from the images and the story they told?
I love humor, it comes in handy on set and puts people at ease (I’ve also performed stand up comedy in NYC, but I digress) so we brainstormed and came up with the idea of these pithy quotes from famous authors (most notably Dorothy Parker, a huge fave) and inserted those as breaks. The quotes were carefully chosen as they had to speak to my life philosophies.
Literature and visual arts go hand in hand, and I love the marriage of the two, so I sought to achieve that marriage, as opposed to visuals alone.
The back page with the quirky ads was another collaborative effort. How did we end with a bang? I wanted to take a slight risk, because, why not? We looked at graphics and decided on these retro images, with a snarky element to them. They channeled the spirit of the quotes, and that sense of sardonic humor.
