Over ten years ago, when I had been learning about web design and had been running a forum for a couple of years, I decided to build my own websites. I registered two domains, illusio.net and illusiocreative.co.uk. The first, illusio.net was to be my hobby domain for my writing and art, and the latter for web design. I chose a user/brand name because the culture of the web was different back then. It was more common for people to use nicknames, as anonymity was encouraged and the use of ones own name was not favoured, for many reasons. It was mostly about guarding ones privacy. At that time, I had still not considered selling myself as an artist online or creating a portfolio. I did blog however, and had an account on Live Journal. Later on I decided not to use the illusiocreative.co.uk domain for web design and use it for my art instead. Continuing with the brand name, Illusio Creative still seemed a good idea at the time. However, in the last year or so, I have come to the conclusion that this is maybe not the best way for me to move forward in terms of marketing myself as an artist/illustrator. I have noticed that very few artists and illustrators use branding, and most use their own names. I don’t feel comfortable with it any more, and in fact a couple of years ago, I did register a domain with my own name.
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