Justyna Dorsz

Video

Idea Factory

An Idea Factory is a system for generating ideas. Those ideas might be, for example:

  • ideas for blog posts
  • ideas for new videos
  • ideas for podcast episodes

Basically, if you create things, you need ideas. And sometimes you might feel like you don’t have anything to write or talk about. But there are ways to deal with this problem.

I’ve just watched “Building an Idea Factory” where Ali Abdaal and David Perell explain how they find ideas:

The most useful part is around the 50th minute when Ali shows his method. But the whole video is worth watching.

It’s funny when David mentions that it’s rare to find an artist who is also a software engineer because that is such a natural combination of skills to me.

Copyright

Every week I visit online stores and report all the listings with designs stolen from me.

Sometimes, the sellers who had their listings removed contact me. They claim they didn’t know that the image that they sold was copyrighted. If you are an honest person and want to learn about copyright so as not to make the same mistake again, then watch the Wholesale Ted youtube channel. I stumbled upon it yesterday and I watched 3 videos so far. I can already tell that the content is well researched, and you can learn a lot.

Awesome t-shirt advertisement

Check out this video:

It’s of course an advertisement. But so well done! The key point is not the t-shirt but the idea that thinking of yourself as the Main Character can impact your life and mental health.

I like both the video and the concept that I am a central character in my story. I would buy the shirt if not for the fact that I already have too many t-shirts — being a designer means that you get A LOT of free t-shirts.

Here’s the link to the t-shirt: Be A Main Character. I am not affiliated with them, I just really like it and I think it might even be helpful to see the reminder that you are the Main Character every time you see yourself in the mirror.

Design Challenges

I was looking for a topic to write about and noticed that Threadless published a new video in their “Your Art, Your Shop” series, this time about design challenges.

I have participated in many challenges but have never won any. However, my “Not Today” design was one of a few designs selected for printing in the Black and White challenge back in 2016, so maybe it counts a bit like winning. Besides that, a lot of my designs were selected in the Threadless main challenge, where you can submit anything. But I haven’t yet won any of the themed challenges.

Even if you don’t win anything, it’s still good to participate. Thanks to the fact that I submitted my designs to challenges, I got a few hundred followers on Threadless. And now, when I publish a new design, people who follow me are notified about it, and some of them probably end up buying something from me.

That reminds me that Woot has challenges too – they are called derbies. I used to participate a few years ago. Again, didn’t win anything but some of my designs got printed anyway 🙂

10 time management tips (not mine)

I’ve been trying to get better at managing my time because I can see how bad I am at it:

  • I am busy all day, but nothing substantial gets done.
  • I don’t prioritize, and so I complete minor tasks and I leave the most important thing for last.
  • I keep putting off doing things I don’t like.
  • I get distracted, so tasks take more time than they should.

The only thing I have gotten better at recently is actually deleting tasks that are neither important nor urgent.

Today I watched Ali Abdaal’s “10 Time Management Tips” and it gave me some ideas. Maybe you will find it inspiring too:

The main takeaway for me is that I should have a daily highlight — the most important task that needs to be done even if it’s the only thing that gets done. And I should time-block which I haven’t really done before, but I am going to give it a try.

Steam Store Page Optimization

This video is full of useful information on how to optimize your game description and tags to get more sales:

The main takeaway about tagging is that you should remove generic tags and only leave tags specific to your game. So, for example, remove the tag “Indie” as it doesn’t say much about your game and there are hundreds of games that are “Indie”.

I went through all our games: Hidden Paws, Hidden Paws Mystery, Summer Paws, and Sandmade, and fixed the tags.

The same applies to tagging designs. TeePublic has a post about optimizing tags. Don’t use vague tags like “Art” or “Design”, look instead for words that describe your specific design.