Justyna Dorsz – Page 26

How to spook an artist

I have been an artist for a while and I know a lot of artists. Sometimes, instead of making art, we do what other humans do — talk. Every now and then a topic of this one scary thing comes up and everyone chimes in with methods on how to deal with it.

If you are an artist, then you already know what I am talking about. If you are not an artist, then you must have googled “how to spook an artist” and now you are here. Worry not, you will find out soon enough.

As you may know, the first company that accepted one of my designs was TeeFury. It was in 2012 or 2013. TeeFury was then at the precipice of huge growth and the profits rose year by year. Around 2015 they must have run out of ideas on what to spend money on because they introduced a new incentive for artists to send in their designs. It was called an artist pack and it was a bundle of a few various gifts: markers, Lego bricks, pencils, stickers, gift cards, and so on. Every time your design got accepted for print they mailed you an artist pack and you never knew what you were going to get.

One time they sent me a small sketchbook. It was by a company called Field Notes, which I hadn’t heard about before, but it looked fancier than my usual sketchbooks, so I always remembered the name.

I’ve kept hearing about Field Notes over the years because every now and then they run a limited series of Field Notes notebooks. I’ve just checked their website and I can see that the previous series was based on National Parks.

Recently Field Notes did something new — they made a limited series called “Snowy Evening” and this one is truly unique.

Take a look at the picture below. Here are 3 sketchbooks, each with a unique cover:

Here’s the description from the store page:

Field Notes’ 49th Quarterly Limited Edition for the winter of 2020 is Snowy Evening, which features 99,999 unique cover designs created by artist Brendan Dawes. Just like the infinite shapes of a snowflake, no two notebooks are identical. Inspired by the physics behind how ice crystals are formed in the atmosphere, Brendan crafted an algorithm that produced and rendered 99,999 lovely snowflake illustrations.

There are 99,999 covers, every cover is unique, and the covers are NOT designed by artists. Every cover is made by an algorithm. An algorithm replaced the artists! Soon we might all be redundant when AI robots roam the earth and make art. That’s not what scares artists, by the way, I am just setting the context here.

Well, maybe some artists are scared that they will be replaced by computers, but no one’s worried enough to talk about it. Yet.

Now, there’s this thing that scares artists, which I mentioned at the beginning. And it’s this:

Blank sketchbook - or how to scare an artist. — Photo by Mike Tinnion on Unsplash

Yes. A first blank page in a new crisp sketchbook. The moment when you are about to start drawing the first thing in an empty sketchbook and you know that you will mess it up. The anxiety is so prevalent that there are “Conquering the first page” videos on YouTube and tutorials on overcoming the fear of the first page.

Now, starting a new sketchbook is scary, but let’s imagine something scarier. Here’s an idea. How about making the first drawing in a sketchbook that is special and one of a kind and so unique that among all 99,999 sketchbooks ever produced, there are no two identical ones? How about that? Would you draw in such a sketchbook? I can tell you that I would not, that if I ever got the Field Notes sketchbook from their “Snowy Evening” limited edition, it would sit on my shelf until I withered and died, and my grandchildren would inherit it, and they would keep it on their shelf until there came a generation that didn’t remember that the lonely sketchbook on a shelf was one of a kind, and they needed to make a grocery list.

How 50% off sale punishes an artist

It doesn’t. But we will get to it in a moment. First, let’s see why so many artists think that it is wrong and unfair when there is a site-wide sale and items with their art are sold for a discounted price.

Every few weeks every website that sells clothes runs a sale. And when that happens artists complain about it on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Why? Well, when there is no sale, an artist gets, let’s say, $4 or $7 in royalties from a t-shirt sold with their design, but when there is a sale, an artist gets $1 – $2.

Let’s take Threadless as an example. When there is no sale an artist gets around 25% of the price of an item. But when there is a sale they get only 10%.

Now, you may ask, “Won’t artists make more money when there is a sale since more items are sold?” Yes, they do. More t-shirts are sold so artists make much more money during the sale, even though they get paid less per item.

How is it possible, then, that artist complain about it even if they make more money?

I am going to explain it with a story about “World of Warcraft”, which, on the off chance you don’t know that, is a video game. “World of Warcraft” developers didn’t want players to play too many hours in a row. So they devised a system where players got fewer experience points the longer they played. To get the usual number of experience points players needed to take a break and come back to the game later.

Players hated it. Gaining fewer experience points the longer they played felt like a punishment. To fix that, the developers changed it and implemented a resting mechanic. This means that when players are not playing the game, they gain a resting bonus. Then, when they finally come back to the game, they get more experience points based on the bonus they accumulated. The resting bonus gets used up over time, so after a few hours, players need to take a break again to restore it.

I haven’t played “World of Warcraft” but I heard this story here:

Those are the same systems, of course. The developers themselves even stated that those were the “same numbers seen from the opposite point of view.” It makes such a huge difference to think of something as a reward instead of punishment!

Now, back to designers. Designers think that the base price is the price when the item is not on sale. Then they get 25% of the price. If there’s a sale, designers get only 10%. It feels like a punishment and artists complain in Facebook groups about being treated unfairly.

What’s wrong with this situation and how to make artists see the situation from a different point of view? Can the solution from “World of Warcraft” be used here? Here are two things that any website working with artists should realize:

First, the base price of an item is not the same for a customer and for an artist. The base price for a customer is the full price, so, when there’s a sale, they feel they are rewarded for buying an item for less money: they get the item AND save money.
The base price, in an artist’s mind, should be the discounted price, not the full price. Why? Because the sale period is when artists sell the most items.

Second, don’t hide how much artists earn. Any website that advertises to artists that they make 25% of a price is guilty of making artists feel punished when they inevitably earn only 10% from items on sale.
I love Threadless, I do, I make a lot of money there and amazing people work there. However, look at this table, where Threadless claims that you get $7, or around 25%, per t-shirt:

From blog post: “Announcing a massive increase to artist earnings”

There’s no mention of the 10% profit that an artist makes most of the time when their design is bought.

Of course, it’s not surprising that Threadless advertises the $7 that an artist makes from a $25 t-shirt. Threadless wants to pay artists a lot so that artists publish artwork on their website. And in the case of Threadless and Teepublic and a few other websites, I actually do believe that they want to pay artists fairly and support them.

The table looks nice but overpromises. Artists expect a 25% profit, but instead, when there is a sale, they earn a lot less than they thought they would, and so they feel punished.

How should this table look to make an artist feel rewarded instead of punished? There should be two columns:

one column with a 10% profit for when an item is on sale,
and another column with BONUS PROFIT for when an item is not on sale.

Threadless does an amazing thing here, which they don’t advertise at all. When an item is not on sale, they give artists a disproportionate percentage of additional profits. This is an opportunity to make artists feel rewarded.

Lulled

What would happen if you were fired today? Do you have a plan? — Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Matt worked at a large company producing branded fruit juices. He was a marketing director, one of the four marketing directors there. But when the profits decreased the company restructured, laid off hundreds of people, and fired 3 of the 4 directors. Matt was one of them.

They let him keep his business car. I met Matt when I took an Uber and he was the driver. He’s been trying to find a new marketing job for the past 3 years. He said there were no marketing jobs for guys his age, and at least he had his car but he worried about the wear and tear on it. He had to bide his time until retirement.

I talk with all the drivers that want to talk so I hear stories like this often. I used to worry that I would fall into this trap too — that I would be good at something and get comfortable but then somehow lose it all and not be able to earn money anymore. Every time I heard about someone being fired and not having any other skills, it was scary because I could see myself following those same steps.

A regular paycheck lulls you into a false sense of security. Most people feel safe when they are employed and then when they lose their jobs their world shatters.

“In times of peace, prepare for war.”

Does it sound dramatic to you? What would happen if you were fired today? What if no one wanted to hire you for a similar job? Do you have a plan? More importantly, do you have the skills to earn money anyway?

You will not starve

Be an artist, you won't starve. — Photo by Kon Karampelas on Unsplash

I watched Brandon Sanderson‘s keynote speech “Ten Things I Wish I’d Known as a Teen Author” and one thing stuck with me. When he was young people discouraged him from becoming a writer, they thought he would be unemployed. They told him that it was a one in a million chance.

It’s the same with artists!

When I was a kid my grandma told me that I should become a teacher because it’s’ a safe profession. No one took drawing seriously and people told me it was a waste of time. Maybe because in their mind they have this picture of a lonely artist making one painting after another and then trying to sell them on the street, and failing, and then dying poor and unknown.

It’s so at odds with what it’s really like to be an artist.

There are now hundreds of opportunities. Sure you can paint oil paintings, but artists are also sought after to illustrate books, design covers, work on video games and movies, make fabric patterns, design art for clothes, household items, tattoos, posters, greeting cards, and hundreds of other things.

Brandon wished someone had told him that being a writer was a viable job choice. I wish I had found out sooner that being an artist is a completely fine job. Only by, sort of, an accident, I found out you can earn money by drawing things and printing them on t-shirts.

Will this post be useful to anyone? Maybe an aspiring artist reads this and it will be a counterpoint to the people in their life insisting that they choose a safer job.

I almost deleted my best selling design

When you work on something for a long time it’s difficult to say how good it is.

This is a design I made 3 years ago and it’s titled “Get your own pizza, human!”

"Get your own pizza, human" - design by Justyna Dorsz — “Get your own pizza, human!”

It took me a while to make this design. It has a lot of details and colors, and the cat is more complicated than I usually draw. I could not get the cat’s butt shape just right. And I kept changing his fur color until I finally settled on blue.

“No one’s going to like it,” I thought. I was sure no one would buy it and that people would complain about the blue color and wrong cat anatomy. But I had spent over 5 hours on this design so I didn’t want to just delete it. I was too attached. And there was one thing that I liked about this design — the cat’s serious expression, not angry or scared, just serious as if the pizza was the most important thing in the world.

So I published it. It’s in my top 10 best selling designs of all time. Shows what I know about what people like. Now when I look at this design I really like it and the blue fur too.

I wanted to share with you this little story because we often forget that we are our worsts critics and we judge our art too harshly.

Let other people make their own mind about your designs. Publish them and see what happens. You might be as surprised as I was.

Designers give up on passive income

Passive income from digital designs — Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash

Two years ago I talked to a fellow designer. She told me that she opened her store on one of the websites where you can sell your art. If I remember correctly, it was Society6. But she stopped uploading her art there and I think she might have even closed her store. She said that she didn’t get any sales and that she mostly earns her money by doing freelance work.

Which is all good — you definitely can earn your living like that. Designers are very needed now, it seems everyone has a project that they need designers for: to design websites, apps, marketing materials, infographics. The problem is that if you earn money for freelance work, you only earn when you work. So there’s a limit to how much you can earn and it’s defined by how much time you have for work.

You probably don’t want to spend all your time working.

That’s why it’s so important to find other income sources. And one of them is earning passive income from your designs.

The easiest way to do that is to upload your designs to one of the websites that will sell your art and you won’t have to spend any more time on that. You will simply get paid royalties every month.

In the beginning, my royalties were $2 or $3 a month. So I get it, it’s easy to get discouraged and stop publishing your art. Or even to close your store as my friend did. I told her that a significant part of my income comes from Society6, TeePublic, Redbubble, Threadless, and convinced her to give it another try.

When you upload your designs to Society6 or anywhere else you might not get any sales at first. Just wait. And upload more art. If you keep at it, it’s only a matter of time until you get your first sale.

Put it on a t-shirt

There’s a funny design I once saw that I now spent 15 minutes searching for. Here it is:

It makes me think about how I approach designing for t-shirts.

Some of the designs I made are just funny things people said that I simply wrote down or happened to remember. And then I put them on t-shirts.

A few years back I was renting an apartment with my brother. I ordered pizza at noon and knocked on his door to tell him. He woke up and said “wake me when it arrives” and went back to sleep.

A while later when I was designing t-shirts I vaguely remembered that. I drew a sleeping dog and experimented with different texts and finally shortened it to this:

"Wake me when pizza" - sleeping dog design. — “Wake me when pizza” by me

Now I write down everything that catches my attention or is even remotely funny – you never know what might come in useful.

Blog Stats after 4 weeks

3 weeks of nothing – that’s the best summary of my blog visitor stats after the first month. Here’s the graph provided by WordPress on which my blog runs:

Blog Stats: first 4 weeks for justynadorsz.com

I like it a lot because it means that you simply have to keep doing what you are doing to get results. It’s consistent with what I expected when I started this blog and with my experience with other projects like my design stores.

This graph is specific to my blog, but it’s the same for a lot of other blogs. In fact, everything you start will get almost no feedback or views from anyone at first. That’s why it’s so important to not give up in those first few weeks.

There is no shortcut here. If you open a store at Teepublic or Threadless, then your first 30 designs will likely bring next to none traffic to your store. And if you make an Instagram or Twitter account, then no one will see your first few dozens of photos or tweets.

It takes a while but consistency does create results.

No sales? Read this.

I belong to a few Facebook groups for designers and there’s one topic that keeps coming up, though it’s usually asked in various ways:

“No one buys my designs. Am I doing something wrong?”
“How to get customers?”
“I uploaded 5 designs already and no sales! Why?”
“Is it even possible to sell anything? Does anyone earn any money?”

I already answered that last question, but now it’s time to address the general issue here.

This is how it looks in the beginning: you make a design and publish it, then you make another and publish it too. Then maybe you make a few more. And then you wait for sales. But not only does no one buy anything, no one even sees your designs, they don’t show up in search results. You try to promote them, you post on Twitter or Facebook and you get no feedback, no likes.

At that moment we can divide designers into two groups:

Designers who get discouraged and upset and give up.
Designers who keep creating and publishing regardless of how their designs are doing.

There is only one key to success here. Ok, yes, there are a few important things that will impact how successful your store will be and whether you make money: you need to create something people will want to buy, you need to make your designs possible to find, and finally you need to put effort into marketing.

But there’s one thing that is more important than all that. Consistency. Yes, consistency is key. If you want to have a successful store on Threadless, Teepublic, or anywhere else, then you have to make a lot of, and I mean A LOT, of designs.

It’s not enough to make a few designs and hope someone will buy them. And you definitely should not complain about lack of sales just yet. First make sure that you:

Have at least 30 designs uploaded. Better yet — 50. I have over 130 in my store.
Add new designs consistently. Try to make a new design every few days or, if possible — every day.
Make sure all your designs have tags. I add 10 tags to each.

Only after you fulfill these conditions and there are still no sales you might start to worry and you might be entitled to a little complaining. But it’s a very unlikely scenario because consistently creating new designs will result in 2 things:

you will have a lot of designs in your store and a much higher chance that someone will see something they like and buy it,
after making a lot of designs you will improve. This is actually the only way to improve your design skill — make a lot of designs. So even if your designs are quite bad at first and, understandably, no one wants them, then it’s even more important for you to make designs. You will be much, much better after another 50 designs.

It’s very difficult to do something for a long time and not improve. To be successful, be consistent.

Learn from the best

I just stumbled on a 6 years old thread on the Threadless forum: Top 20 best selling designs. And if you scroll down the thread, you will see another slightly newer list of designs.

This one caught my eye:

It makes me want to paint something colorful too.

But what surprised me most is that they all are so different. So many various themes: games, animals, retro, movies. That’s a good thing because it means that every designer can find their own niche.

Another thing that I noticed is that only two designs are with cats and I always thought that designs with cats sell best. So I checked the most popular designs right now and among the 48 designs on the first page, just two have cats and one of them is mine! I thought there would be 10 cat designs at least but I was wrong.

This is the first cat one: