Studio Craft Brands: A Concept

  








   My thoughts about the modern craft economy center on making handmade craft as easily accessible as the big corporate brands, by strength in numbers and a common marketing strategy. One idea to this goal is organizing individual artists into a group of four or five, which forms a studio craft brand. The name is the common alias the artists go under, just as musicians use their band name. Like music bands, artists will sometimes leave their studio craft brands, and can go on to establish themselves under their own name. At other times, an individual artist who has been working on their own may join a joint project, and thus participate with a studio craft brand.

   My goal in expressing this idea is to explain the versatility of a modular system; we don't want artists to just get lost in larger and larger anonymous brands, so we need a way of focusing on specific people, as well as zoom out by establishing brands. We need to act at both the smallscale and largescale levels. Like a venn diagram, the goal is to make a structure where groups can join easily to cooperate on big projects, and then go back to being more individual after the project is done. The goal is a craft economy with flexibility, so it can accommodate change, expansion and contraction.
   Studio craft brands are similar to artist cooperatives, but the idea is to package complementary artists together to sell a look or a style that can be associated with the brand. Because of contemporary advertising, people associate an image with a big corporate brand, a lifestyle which is sold along with the jewelry or clothing. Studio craft brands are a way of both pooling resources and trying to establish handmade craft artists as alternative images to the big brands.

   Whether one is an individual studio artist or part of a group, creating a "look" that people can attach to is giving them something to imagine about. Social status is one reason why people purchase jewelry and clothing, like
designer shirts, dresses

and jackets. In this case, people are just buying what is most popularized in the media and seen as showing their wealth.

   However, there are also people who have some experience with art, and have their own aesthetics. These people aren't interested in a popular brand, but unique, interesting, or beautiful work. This demographic is the main market to start with for studio craft artists and brands.

   Also, just as the slow food and organic food movement have made people think about handmade food or cooking, an alternative craft movement, focusing on handmade products, could market itself as a brand identity in itself, with all studio craft artists falling under that umbrella.