How can you become successful in the world of custom merchandise? There are a lot of ways to make success happen for yourself. But when you get to the nitty gritty it comes down to a partnership between great designs and great products. Print on demand makes it easier than ever to provide awesome products. While leaving the stress associated with inventory, sourcing, testing, and placing big expensive orders in the dust of their wake.
Yet, even with so much being done for you, the design process is where most people end up losing steam and failing. By lacking inspiration, not being able to come up with original ideas or execute great designs you may feel unmotivated and find yourself losing momentum. Without quality designs, your products are just empty fabrics and clothing. Blank canvases ready to have the next hot-selling design printed across them. If this is something that you’ve experienced, then this article was written for you. I’m going to give you 6 design tips that you can use when creating your next hot selling design.
1.) Get a never-ending flood of ideas from Shopify’s Free Slogan Maker.
Coming up with new ideas can be the most frustrating part of the design process. Looking at an empty shirt and trying to visualize a clever quote or design can make a grown man run and hide in the corner. Luckily with tools like the Free Slogan Maker, you’ll have a great starting point. All you do is enter a keyword that’s relevant to your niche or products and hit the “generate” button to get hundreds of suggestions. The results of which are created to fit on most available products. From my personal experience selling the best sellers are usually accompanied with a clever slogan or quote, so this is a great way to get started.
2.) Hire a freelance designer Now that you’ve got a few ideas of a slogan or design you want to use you need to hire someone to do it. But how do you hire someone without spending an arm and a leg for quality work?
Freelancer sites like Fiverr and Upwork have been used for years by eCommerce businesses. From everything to graphic designers to virtual assistants, they can be a real lifesaver for a business on a budget. You can browse the sites by the task you need to have done then look at the prospect’s work history; as well as reviews, portfolios, and detailed information of their skill sets. After you find someone you’d like to work with, send them an offer and task them with creating your next big selling design.
3.) Start collecting illustrations for references
Having a slogan to give to your new designer is a great start, but as far as the design itself, the more references you can give them the more accurate they’ll be able to create what you’re looking for. When you’re on the site, click on “images” and select “vectors” from the filter. It’ll give you a ton of design templates and references to use. They are all pretty awesome and have been made by super talented designers. So you shouldn’t have any trouble finding some that you like. A simple keyword search will pull up thousands of options that you can edit, redo, and apply to your products. So long as you have the right license you can take your pick. (Each site is different so make sure you read the rules on what goes and what doesn’t fly.)
4.) Get even more inspiration from photography
Just like Shutters hock for designs, there are a ton of other places where you can access royalty free images taken by professional photographers. If not to use them as inspiration, you might also be able to incorporate some into your designs. The two that I use the most are Unsplash and Pexels. Both offer you excellent high-resolution images that are free to download. Not only can you use them for inspiration, but Unsplash also allows their images to be used for promotional purposes. Though, you may want to edit the images a bit if you’re planning on using them just to be safe. You can never be too careful when using someone else’s content. Even if you’re given permission. Better safe than sorry, right?
5.) Run a design contest to get the best version
If you have the means, and a little extra money, 99designs is an awesome way to get the best design work possible. Crowdsourcing is rarely considered when people think about design, but it definitely shouldn’t be overlooked. Designers ‘compete’ for work and you pay for the winning design. It’s that easy. You can also make requests and vote for the style you’d like to see more of in the other designs being made. Designers will take inspiration from the highest voted style as well as your personal input to make sure they create exactly what you’re looking for.
