At some point I thought paying for my own avatar picture was a good idea

Ah, where do I start with this. Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

I don’t have any good pictures of myself. My mother was the one that photographed me the most, as it should be. Then I moved to the US for grad school and there was no more mummy taking my picture. Thirteen years later, I still don’t have anyone taking my picture. As a result I don’t have anything I can use as a profile picture.

Now, I could just take a bunch of selfies. The thing is that I don’t much like the way I look. So even if I do take a bunch of selfies, I cannot really pick one I can use as a profile picture. I tend to scowl or look awkward in pictures, mostly because I haven’t spent much time perfecting a photo face. You know, that face you make every time you pose for a picture. Not the duck face, that’s just you trying to be stupid - admit it! I am talking about that face you make when posing together with your friends or by yourself. You say you don’t pose? Take a look at your pictures. If you do not have the same look in all of your pictures, I will concede you do not pose for a picture. The best pictures of me are taken by people I love and who love me back. My young son takes great pictures of me. He’s still not old enough to take one that I could use for a profiile picture though. So in the meantime, I don’t have a profile picture.

And so here I am, looking for a picture to offer to the social media gods and coming up short. You could say, so what, just use a random pic off the internet. That was what I was doing until several things (the taking up of a job that required me to be more public facing and several decisions on my part to start working towards creating products) made me consider the repercussions of using some random pic off the internet for self promotion. There are licensing and copywrite issues with using random pics off the internet and that isn’t a path you want to be on if the owner of the picture was not meaning for you to start using it as your identity (beyond your twitter account anyway).

After much thought I decided that I would get an avatar picture that is uniquely me. I ended up having to pay for it. I have to say I am very pleased with the results and it gave me some appreciation for the creative decisions graphic designers need to make in order to create a unique work. I thought I would write a little about my process and what I considered when working with a graphic designer to create the avatar picture.

I suppose I spent some time thinking about what my avatar would be before I reached out to a graphic designer. I have always been facinated by cuttlefish ever since I saw them on the Discovery Channel. I tried listing out all of the things that make cuttlefish so awesome but there were just too many and, of course, I have always maintained that I am lazy. So if you want to learn more about cuttlefish, you can google the word, or, if you are 13 and over, you can watch Frank Ze’s video. Anyway, I have always fancied myself like a cuttlefish - fat, short and very colorful when provoked, or excited.

Once I decided that that would be my avatar, I contacted a graphic designer. Perhaps it was my good luck that I already knew one, and she was willing to do this for me. We went through a consultation session where she gave me a price range based on the hours that she would have to put towards the project. Of course I was looking for something affordable, and that required me to do more research. I ended up looking for examples of cuttlefish on the internet and sent her some pictures. I had to find a color scheme that I liked. For that I used this website where I fiddled around with the “analogous” setting until I found a set of colors I could send. We then decided on a pattern that is not too complicated. This was something I had to compromise on as I felt a fancy pattern on the body of the cuttlefish is what makes a cuttlefish so attractive (or intriguing depending on your view of cuttlefish).

In the end I spent $240 on an avatar picture of different sizes. I have already started using it on various social media sites that are visible to the public and on this site. I now wonder whether the money would have been better spent on head shots. I go back and forth on this as I don’t think I would have liked any head shot of myself. But I can completely see myself using this avatar for all kinds of business. There is also the danger of someone else using it. I am not sure how I would feel about somebody else using a picture that I paid for. It makes me think about all the pictures I used that somebody else probably paid for. I don’t think any of the pictures I used made any money, but still, it probably feels the same way as if you had baked a bunch of cookies and some random person for whom you didn’t intend the cookies for, ate a few.

It’s not that I don’t like the results. I infact love it. I feel like this is something that has been in my head for a long time and it has finally materialized. It is a good feeling. I am curious to know how I will feel about this investment in a few years. I can only wait and see.