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You can call me Al (A.I. stole my name!)
Life changes triggered a rebrand for my art business - leading me to question not just what my professional name should be, but even what my "real" name is. And A.I. complicated things in a way I had not expected.
7/1/20264 min read
So, here's the thing: I've never really liked my name. Neither part of it. "Alice" has never felt like it suited me, and frankly I got bullied about enough things in school (being too fat, being a girl, being not girly enough, etc...) without all the Alice in Wonderland / Alice the Camel / Alice Cooper / Who the **** is Alice / etc references (the only association that wouldn't have ever bothered me would have been Alice in Chains, but funnily enough that one never came up).
I should preface the rest of this article by saying I mean no offence to any other Alices out there. Alice is a fine name, I'm sure, it's just never fit me. Have you ever coveted a pair of fancy shoes you saw on someone else only to try a pair on for size yourself and realise they don't feel comfy and make you look stupid (and for them to look even slightly less ridiculous on you, you'd have to upgrade your entire wardrobe to suit them)? It's that kind of feeling.
Even before I went to school, as far back as I can remember, my close family have always called me Al. Al feels more like my "real" name; a name that reflects my personality far better than Alice does. For a long time, I kept Alice as more a professional name - using it at work, but asking friends and family to still call me Al. When I moved to my current job, I resolved to ditch Alice at work too and go by Al at work too. I have to say, this has benefitted me greatly and I wish I'd done it sooner. Rightly or wrongly, I feel way more confident using Al in a professional context, partly because I can feel more genuinely myself, but also it's less gendered than Alice and it's a sad fact that throughout my career people just respond differently to me when it's less obvious that I'm female (and I'm even sorrier to say that this, in my experience, has been as true if not even more so of women as of men).
At this point, you may be wondering, having read the title of this piece, what A.I. has to do with any of this, but you may also have noticed my deft use of punctuation when writing the acronym A.I. This is not me being quaint for the sake of it (who bothers with the full-stops in acronyms nowadays?). The unfortunate fact of the matter is when written in a sans serif typeface (as most digital platforms and corporate bodies do largely for accessibility reasons), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Al (short for Alice) are basically indistinguishable from one another.
This is a mere irritation in my day job (of which A.I. does actually pay a big part, making the confusions an almost daily occurrence), but nothing more than that. Meanwhile, in my art career, I have spent years either going by my initials or, more recently when I rebooted my life as an analogue artist, using Alice as my professional name.
All fine and dandy until this year, when I knew my then fiancee & I were going to be tying the knot and I was already looking forward to legally changing my surname to my husband's family name. But when your name is also your brand, changing your name triggers a whole rebrand - a new insignia, a new signature not only for documents but for my artworks. And a whole new domain name, url and professional email address, online presence, etc. Such things cannot be considered lightly.
And here's where A.I. creeps back into the picture and banjaxes me. Initially, I intened to start going by Al professionally in my art career just as I had been in my digital one, but here's the snag: my new name, had I kept it as is would have been "Al Schular Art", which might not look too bad when you first look at it, but any occurrence of "Al" alongside "Art" will inevitably morph into readers' minds as "A.I. art".
And this coming at a time when the rise of A.I. art in mainstream platforms was partly what drove me back into the arms of analogue media in the first place! After much soul-searching I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't going to be possible to use my "real" name (Al) in a professional context as an artist, especially when pretty much ALL my marketing has to be done online, via social media and YouTube. The danger of association with A.I. art (however erroneous) was just too great.
And so I have rebranded (softly, I should say) as "Alice Schular Art". The Alice bit still jarrs with me a bit, but ultimately it is my legal name, whether I like it or not, and as for those people who look down on me as Alice, but give time of day for Al, I have always believed it it they who are the problem that needs fixing, not me.
Have you ever navigated a name change and/or a rebrand? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments for this post.
Practicing my new signature and insignia after many, many iterations!