See the whole design on Threadless 🙂
There’s always tomorrow
A note on promoting your art
Yesterday someone asked me for tips on marketing and getting traffic to your store. These questions come up often. Too bad, I can’t help with that.
My strategy has always been to create good designs. I assumed that people would find their way to my designs somehow, even if I don’t promote them in any way.
And they did!
If what’s stopping you from opening your store, is the fact that you have no followers on Instagram and Twitter, or that you know nothing about marketing — then stop worrying about that. Create designs, upload them, do your part. Trust that if you create consistently, then people will notice and buy from you.
Along the way, post your art on social media of your choice. The most important part is to create something and add it to your store.
Repeat it 50 times and you will get sales.
How to protect your art
If you create designs and submit them to online stores like Redbubble or Teepublic, you will soon find out that there are a lot of thieves. They will steal your designs and try to sell them in their own stores.
Luckily, there’s an easy way to deal with them. You have to send a Notice of Copyright Infringement (or DMCA Notice) to the website that stolen images are sold on.
So, let’s say you notice your art being sold without your permission in someone else’s store. All stores have dedicated email addresses for reporting copyright infringement.
- Redbubble: [email protected].
- Teepublic: [email protected].
- Spreadshirt: [email protected]
- Etsy: [email protected], but they prefer you use their form for reporting: www.etsy.com/legal/ip/report
You can find how to write a notice of copyright infringement on the Internet so I won’t repeat that here. But I will show you the template that I use for reporting stolen art. You can copy it, supply your links where indicated, and send it.
My DMCA Template
Hello,
<–Short intoduction, e.g.: My name is…, My website/porfolio … –>
The material being infringed upon:
<—Here you provide the title of your artwork that was stolen and a link to your design online, it can be on your website, or any of your stores. –>
The material that is infringing upon my intellectual property:
<— Here you provide links where your design is sold illegally –>
My data:
<–Your full name –>
<–Your address –>
<–Your phone number –>
<–Your e-mail address –>
I have a good faith belief that the content described above violates my rights described above, and that the use of such content is contrary to law.
I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the information contained in this notification is correct and accurate and that I am the owner of the rights described above.
Best regards,
<– Your full name –>
End of DMCA Template
So tragic, so funny
We all get sad, we all have doubts, we are demotivated, confused. But we don’t necessarily want to wear it on our t-shirts for all the world to see. That would be like telling everyone you meet that you are depressed or endlessly complaining about your life.
But if you can make a bad situation funny, you create a distance. I keep it in mind when designing. I touched on this subject when I wrote about “Not Today” and “Overthinking and Also Hungry”. Designs need to be relatable — overthinking and not feeling motivated are things that everyone deals with.
But sometimes I take it even a step further.
I wouldn’t wear a t-shirt with just the “despairing” word, unless maybe in an ironic sort of way. But that’s the thing, I can only show my emotions when I create some distance: if it’s either somehow ironic, or humorous. I don’t really want everyone to see that I am in my “despairing” mood, but I can wear a funny t-shirt that encapsulates this mood.
Working on our book #2
Work on our book continues. It doesn’t look like much yet, but it will be so pretty 🙂
See how it looked before: Working on our book #1
January is for resting after Christmas
This is something that no one understands.
I visited my mum for Christmas and spent over a week there. On one hand, we are all obviously very lucky that we are healthy and that my mum and grandma just had Covid-19 so we could meet without worrying about putting them at risk. On the other hand, spending a week in a house with so many other people and animals and constant noise is so tiring that I don’t know how to even explain it.
It’s been 5 days since I returned to my own apartment and only now do I feel that I started recovering. Slowly.
I remember that last year I met with my friends in the last week of January and I told them that I was still tired after Christmas. They said that I was exaggerating.
Just now I talked with another friend and I had to insist that I need more time alone and don’t plan on meeting people anytime soon.
And it’s not like Christmas was bad. We played Pictionary every day and had so much fun that we didn’t even watch any movies, we played some computer games, drew, baked a cake. I tried to find an opportunity to work out wherever I could, so I got to throw coal into the basement.
But after a week of that, I very much needed to stay away from people, and rest.
Is it truly only me? Does no one else need to rest after Christmas?
Vaguely Aware of Social Norms
Before the pandemic there used to be parties and gatherings. It’s not like I miss them because I didn’t really use to go to that many. I like spending time alone, in my apartment, working on things and drawing. So I didn’t go out often, but every now and then I went to meet my friends. Sometimes, if there were a lot of people or loud music, I would get tired of the noise and the talking. I can’t count the number of times that someone asked me if I was feeling alright or “why are you sitting alone and did something happen, you seem sad“.
It often seemed to me that others are better in social situations, more cheerful, know what to say, how to behave, they can talk with others for hours, and not get tired. That is, sort of, what inspired my design “Vaguely Aware of Social Norms”.
I must not be the only one feeling this way because when I posted this design on Threadless, people loved it. I like drawing something personal and then finding out that it’s relatable for others too.
Existing
Recently Threadless added one of my designs to their store. I wrote about that here.
Now, Threadless selected another one of my designs:
It’s a cat that has no motivation to get up. So, it’s relatable.
It has already been for sale in my Artist Shop. Threadless adding it to their own store means that more people see the design and more people buy it.
It’s good to have as many designs as you can create in your Artist Shop so that Threadless can browse them and select something for their store.
Also, when your design is selected, you usually get a $250 gift code, which is a nice bonus. I keep spending them on hoodies and t-shirts for my friends 🙂
Get “Existing” here.
Overthinking and also hungry
When my “Not Today” design suddenly got so popular, I created more cat designs, like this one here:
Cat designs are popular because a lot of people love cats. But it’s not enough to just draw a cat, you need to add something relatable to a design.
I always try to think of a story for a design. That’s why I add texts that reflect feelings that all of us have. I sometimes lie on my bed and don’t feel motivated to get up, I overthink stuff I said or stupid things I did. From what I know, a lot of people sometimes feel like that too.
You can never predict what will be popular, but you can sort of see why a design like the one above was so well received. We worry, we overthink, we don’t feel like moving at all.
You can get this design on Threadless or Hot Topic.
Make your first 100 mistakes
Quality doesn’t matter, quantity does. It’s better to do 100 drawings than spend all that time on a single drawing.
Starting a blog is scary, but I knew I would only get better if I wrote a lot. The first 100 designs are going to be awful, get them out of the way as soon as possible. Same with photography:
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
This reminds me of the story about a pottery class. Students who practiced a lot made better pots than the ones who were focused on creating one perfect pot.
Quantity over quality. This is the sort of thing that I need to remind myself of.