November 8, 2007

Etsy Banner Workshop Review


Yesterday I attended an online workshop at the Etsy Virtual Labs on how to create banners. Now, I have photoshop and know how to use it to make a banner, but I always learn something at the workshops so I was there ready to take notes!

Here are a few pointers:
*A good banner can be graphic, all text.
*It's nice to have an image of your product in your banner, so shoppers see your work right away.
*For branding, your avatar & banner should match.
*Make sure your banner fits in with the theme of your shop.
*Use the banner and avatar to brand yourself, this is very important when you are starting out.
*Play with the scale of your images for the background of your banner. (like I did for my holiday banner)
*Gimp is a free photo editing software that works like photoshop.
*dafont is a great source for free fonts.

Here are a few of the shops they showed as examples of effective banners & avatars:
MaryInc. - used a close up photo of silk-printing screens with a simple logo, that cleverly ties into their silk-printed items.
Megan Auman -used her jewelry and graphic lettering, keeping things clean and bold, just like her shop.
Savor - used a close up of her packaging.
Your Secret Admiral - drew her own lettering and illustrations with a sharpie marker.

My old avatar and banner:

2 comments:

Angie said...

I really like your new banner and avator; and I'm sad that I missed that Etsy workshop *sob sob*

I really think it's cute how you used a snowman for winter / Christmas....good way of targeting! :o)

Melissa J. Lee said...

I love your new banner and avatar as well - those snowmen are so cute! Thanks for posting this. I use gimp and went into conniptions trying to put together my simple banner for the new store. Clearly I need to start looking into the Etsy workshops...