Design

Space Botanica

You’ve probably heard that you should choose a niche for your store and that all your designs in that store should be thematically consistent. If you want to make designs with a completely different topic or style, then you should create a new store for them. When customers visit your store or see your logo, they should know what to expect.

When I was starting with designing t-shirts, I heard that too. I had a separate store for my designs with ducks — somehow that store never got popular. And another store with monsters, it didn’t get any traffic either. I also had a store named “Fox Shiver” that was supposed to be about little foxes in frozen lands. I didn’t know it was going to be as popular as it is, so I kept adding different designs to it — a lot of cats and space art. Now my store is a mess, and I might need to fix it one day. Or maybe I will leave it as is.

Here’s one of the designs that should not be in my store. It’s plants and space combined. When I made it, I only had a separate store for ducks and another one for monsters, but not a store for space designs. So I added it to my Fox Shiver store.

When you decided on a niche and know what you want to draw, then that’s good. You are probably a more organized person than a lot of artists and definitely more than me. If you can’t decide on a niche, don’t worry about it. You can add all your designs to one store, and after a while, you will see what’s popular or what you like to draw the most. You can always move some designs to another store if you want to. The important thing is to create.

There’s always tomorrow

See the whole design on Threadless 🙂

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.

Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1216219-adventure-time

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.

Cozy and Despairing - by Justyna Dorsz — Little cat in a fluffy blanket. Cozy and despairing.

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.

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:

"Existing" by Justyna Dorsz — One of those days

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.

Last design of 2020

I was thinking that you have to reject what others want from you and do your own thing.

Increase sales of black and white designs

This is a simple trick to have a few more sales. Maybe you know it, but frankly, this trick hasn’t occurred to me until after a few years of designing t-shirts. I’m going to write it down here, in case there’s someone else who hasn’t thought of it.

Some people really don’t want to buy dark t-shirts. And some people won’t buy light t-shirts. Let’s accommodate both those groups.

I made a lot of cat designs. This is one of them:

"Existing" - cat design - by Justyna Dorsz — “Existing”

When I made this design I checked if it looked good when colors were reversed:

It did look fine. Turns out this design works well both as a white design on a black t-shirt and as a black design on a white t-shirt. So now both versions are for sale in my shop.

If you have a white design and you sell it on a black t-shirt, then invert the colors and check if it looks good too.

However, don’t just submit every design in two color options, it doesn’t always work. For example, this one looks good on dark but wouldn’t make sense on a white t-shirt:

"Saturn the Cat" - by Justyna Dorsz — “Saturn the Cat”

What is this madness?

One of my designs has been added to the Threadless store. Yay! I received an email a few hours ago.

Now, what exactly does it mean that a design is added to the Threadless store?

First, what you need to know is that there are two ways to sell designs on Threadless:

One way is to simply create your own Artist Shop. For example, I have my Fox Shiver Artist Shop. You can add any design you want to your shop. You can have hundreds of designs. But, at least in the beginning, those designs might not be visible in the main Threadless store.
The second way is for Threadless to select one of your designs to add to their own Threadless store. Every time there’s a design challenge, a few of the best entries are selected. And sometimes Threadless might select a design from your own Artist Shop.

My first design that they selected was “Not Today” and it was one of the seven designs selected from the Black and White Design Challenge.

When your design is selected and added to the Threadless store, it means better visibility and a higher chance that someone is going to see it and buy it.

That’s why it’s so important to add all your designs to your shop. The more designs you have, the better chance that one of them is going to be selected. Same with challenges — submit your designs to challenges and you get a chance that Threadless likes them and wants them in their store.

And remember, you never know what is going to be popular, so submit every design. I very nearly deleted one of my best-selling designs because I thought no one was going to want it.

Oh, and one more thing, usually when your design is selected to be added to the Threadless store, you get a $250 gift code to be used in the Threadless store on anything you want.