Thank Sponsors with a Custom Photo Collage Recognition Award

Custom photo collage recognition award commissioned by Special Olympics Atlanta for Publix.

In addition to the four Special Olympic images collaged together, the sky, stadium

floor and filled-to-capacity bleachers were added in by the artist.

Say, you’re the Director of Marketing & Special Events. Or you’re in Philanthropy or the Development Department and in a couple of months you’ll be wrapping up your big annual event. How will you thank your corporate sponsors? You’d love to find something that looks expensive, but isn't -- something that will stand out from all the look-alike awards we see all the time sitting inside a company's Glass Case of Achievement.

Does anybody ever really stop and study a football or bowling trophy? Naaah. The last guy who took a closer look was the guy who won the trophy. As for those walnut boards with the brass engraved plates – maybe they satisfy requirement number one in terms of the shiny brass, but none even come close to meeting requirement number two: artistic design.

Fine Art in a Made-to-Order Award
This is where the magic of a custom photo collage award comes in. Remember the photographer you hired to take candids the day of your sponsored event? Remember how much fun everybody’s having in those pictures? The only problem is, 9 out of 10 photos show people having lots of fun, but one third of those photos are spoiled by somebody scratching their nose or somebody else running in front of the camera.

What if you had an artist cut out the best parts of each photo, optimizing them in terms of color saturation and sharpness and then seamlessly combining all these elements into One Perfect Print? And even if there were missing elements, say an upbeat, blue sky for example, the artist could just retro fit it in! In the end, you’d have an awesome memento with everything your sponsor could possibly want, caught in a single take:

• Performers caught in unforgettable attitudes
• Crowds brimming with excitement
• Your sponsor’s corporate banner fluttering perfectly in the breeze

Good Feelings, Good PR
When a made-to-order recognition award is composed of pictures, what a difference thT makes. Suddenly a newsworthy photograph of a sponsor's special day is elevated into fine art, and it rivets their attention. The custom photo collage award starts to have real personal meaning for the recipient.

There’s another reason why custom photo collage is such a powerful corporate thank-you gift. It’s great PR. Think about every visitor who will pass your sponsor's Wall of Achievement and spy your award hanging there. Nothing quite catches the eye (and the heart) of a visitor like a photograph, and that translates into good corporate relations.

Framed Prints or Photo Sculpture?

Whether you decide to frame your custom photo collages awards or give them as 3-dimensional photo cutouts, either way your thank you gift will stand out from the pack.

You see, if a wall plaque is 3-dimensional, then custom photo collage cutouts are 4-dimensional - the fourth dimension being emotion. At the awards ceremony, the minute you present your custom collage gift and say, Mr. Sponsor, without you, none of this would ever have been possible ... well, everybody is going to be in tears, including the Board of Directors. A brilliantly conceived photo collage award says more about an event, winner, program, donor, or milestone than anything off the shelf.

Next time you’re planning an awards ceremony and want to do something special for the sponsors of the event, think about this:

• Why not have a digital artist combine the best parts of your event photos into a single collage gift that looks like a professional photographer took the picture (and not just like an unsophisticated photo puzzle)?
• Why not make a 3-D photocutout of this wonderful photomontage made by a digital artist, instead of stuffing all my event photos inside one giant costly frame that will look awful in the sponsor's boardroom?

To get your sponsor photomontages in time for the awards ceremony, contact me, Nancy Gershman, at 773-255-4677 or email me at Nancy@artforyoursake.com.

Hire a Real Artist to Make Your Personalized Photo Collage

Eleven photos from Curtis's family collaged together by digital

artist Nancy Gershman and then set against a brand new sky.

Behind every artistic product is an artistic mind, not a web-based graphic service advertising "personalized collage art." Look a little closer and you’ll see that what these services are actually promising are art effects, not art.

If you want original, custom artwork and not a stock photo image you've seen on somebody's coffee mug, stick with real artists, not designers paid to offer off-the-shelf effects with photo collage or mosaic-making software. Employees, afterall, are not paid to be artists who think freely, out of the box. That's why you want to find a digital artist for hire who can:

• critically select photographs on the basis of quality, not quantity
• extract elements, re-juxtaposing them for aesthetic/conceptual reasons
• give special thought to hierarchies of lighting and scale
• search for fresh images for geographical/historical accuracy
• inject meaningfulness and a goal into the artistic composition

Digital Artists Who Do Art For Your Sake

Let's say you want a custom photo collage made from your personal photos. You've got three options. If you go to a graphic service company, they'll take your order (as long as it’s listed in their website drop-down menu of special effects). If you go to an artist who only does art for art's sake, they'll want you to leave them alone so they can create their own idea of what's art (but at your expense, and in their own sweet time).

But if you're lucky enough to find a digital artist who takes commissions - who does art for your sake, you're in business! She'll ask you questions that go above and beyond the call of duty:

Is there a special message you want to convey? Or a take-away impression you want to leave with the person you're making it for? Should the collage concentrate on the past, present or future, or all three? What about adding some wishful reality to the piece, creating a landscape that’s rich in meaning? Do I have permission to look for a better backdrop that would make your images really pop?

The digital artist for hire who creates custom artwork for your sake is serious about the images she selects and combines for you, because she is always raising the bar for herself and the art world. Commissioning an artist specializing in custom photo collage to make you a personalized photo collage portrait or custom photo gift is kind of like hiring a world class artist, photographer, curator and confidante, rolled into one.

Is Hiring a Custom Photo Collage Artist Costly?

When it comes to personalized digital photomontage, my advice is to always hire an artist who 1) has a considerable digital photo collage portfolio; 2) who takes the time to look at your photos and talk with you before you take out your credit card, and 3) who lets you pay in installments if you have to.

Then when you're ready to order your personalized collage gift like a portrait or a popout made from your photos, it may cost you a touch more, but your labor of love is going to be worth a fortune!

To get an idea of what I mean by artistic photo collage, stop by my online studio, Art For Your Sake. Or let's brainstorm over the phone: 773-255-4677.