Justyna Dorsz

Marketing

I’ve realized how little I know about marketing and how to promote my designs.

I sometimes post my designs on Instagram or Pinterest. Lately I’ve been posting to Tumblr too, and every few weeks I tweet about my store or my designs. This is all a minimum effort. I feel I should do more. Many successful artists promote their art more consistently.

Once I started reading and watching YouTube videos about marketing, I realized how little I know about the topic.

For example, I watched a lot of Wholesale Ted videos – gave me a lot to think about. Particularly their analysis of niches and what sells best has been useful.

Other artists told me that it’s good to promote on Pinterest and that they get sales from there. I’ve tried that but had no success so far. And then I watched this Pinterest Guide, and I realized I was doing everything wrong and not really doing enough, anyway. Go watch it, you might learn something too.

Mountains

I create a lot of my pattern-like designs when I talk on the phone. I just can’t sit still and do nothing. I always start doodling on whatever’s available. And since I have my reMarkable tablet with me at all times, I usually end up sketching on it.

This is a simple pattern of mountains that I made recently:

It all started with this absentminded sketch:

Then I uploaded it into Photoshop and cleaned it up. Added grey backgrounds. Made some mountains lighter, and some darker. Then I applied some distress textures that I bought on Creative Market. And the effect is a pattern that looks nice on home decor and some apparel.

Mountain Walker on Threadless

Watched Walker

Lately, whenever I have boring repetitive tasks to complete, I watch Watched Walked on my second monitor. Watched Walker is a YouTube channel where someone posts videos from their walks in various cities. It’s, of course, no substitute for actually going to those cities and walking around, but I won’t be going on vacation anytime soon.

Here’s a walk in Barcelona:

Google Alerts

I set up Google Alerts with the titles of my designs to be notified when they are put on sale illegally. For example, one design that gets stolen a lot is “Overthinking and also hungry”. When thieves try to sell t-shirts with that designs, they don’t even change the title so I created an alert for phrase “Overthinking and also hungry”.

This way, I get Google Alerts as soon as Google finds out about the infringing listings. And as soon as I get notified, I can send a DMCA takedown notice so that it’s taken down immediately.

I learned about Google Alerts from Michael Essek’s blog. There are other useful guides there too.

Overthinking and also hungry - by Justyna Dorsz

A note on motivation

I’ve been thinking lately, I am very lucky that my family and friends are not very supportive. Most of them don’t believe in my success. My mom used to tell me I couldn’t draw — and it was after I’d been working as an artist for years. My friend said that I will probably not make a successful game, ever.

I also have friends who believe in me and tell me so. Maybe all those unsupportive and supportive comments cancel each other out, and that’s why I am never discouraged.

I know there’s a lot of talk about how important supportive environment is for achieving your goals. But I think this is wrong. For me, having only supportive people would not be a good thing. The best people to have around are people who are a bit like adversaries — you need to show them you can succeed, you compete with them, you want to prove them wrong,