Becoming a Pattern Designer Stage II - Summary
The second stage of my plan to become a surface pattern designer is finally completed! To see the whole roadmap check out my post My Pattern Design Roadmap.
The time estimations that I made at the beginning turned out to be unrealistic. Or I would rather say it would be doable in an ideal world but the world is far from perfect. Life happens and we need to work around it. We had a never-ending story of colds and viruses in our family so I wasn’t able to work as hard as planned. I also had a very lovely visitor for a week - my younger sister came to meet her new niece! And of course, I wanted to spend time with her instead of sitting in front of the computer. My amazing Sis helped me to improve my website (thank you again Sis! <3). In the end, it took me ten weeks instead of four to complete this stage but in the meantime, I also crossed out some items from the upcoming stages (more on this later).
Creating a Newsletter
Choosing a newsletter provider was not easy. There are so many options on the market! In the end, I decided to go with mailer lite (link). It can be used with Squarespace, although the easy integration is not yet available with the new version (it requires a bit of coding). Mailer light has different triggers - there is for example an option to send an automated welcome e-mail when someone subscribes to the list. Most importantly though it is free up to 1000 subscribers. I'm at the very beginning and it will take a while to build a subscriber base so I don't want to spend too much on a newsletter. It's even questionable if it is necessary to start a mailing list so early. However, the first advice of any marketing guru is to start gathering newsletter followers from the beginning. So I gave it a try.
There are two separate newsletter options on my website. The first one is a professional mailing list for brands and clients interested in collaboration. I plan to send quarterly updates about my new designs via this newsletter. The second one is for fans and fellow creators and it's to share my process, blog post updates and tips and tricks. Why did I decide to split it like this? I believe that brands may not find value in my blog and it would look unprofessional to send them this kind of update. Similarly, people fallowing my blog may not be interested in what patterns I have available for licensing.
If you would like to sign up for my newsletter you are more then welcome! You'll find it on the bottom of my website.
Reading
“Art Inc” by Lisa Congdon
This book is perfect if you look for basic information about EVERY aspect of building an art business. It goes through topics like using social media, building your website, art exhibitions, craft fairs, different ways of selling your art and so much more. Some information like legal requirements depend on where you leave (it's written by US author), and other chapters may not be relevant to the art you’re making. I would recommend having a physical copy of this book so that you can easily skip irrelevant parts and mark fragments that have information you want to implement to your business. I bought an audiobook because this form of books is the easiest for me to consume right now. I found it really hard to go through it and make notes. I had to listen to each paragraph of the book even when it was not applicable to my current stage. It would be hard to go back to a specific topic in the audiobook so I made notes from the entire book and it took me ages.
“Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon
I read this book a few years ago so it was not new to me. It is short but packed with so much valuable advice for artists! It's not surprising that it became a best seller. It's a must-read for any creative person. I plan to write my review on this series of books at some point (Austin wrote two more books about creativity “share your work” and “keep going”).
Additional Read
The book of the month at Pattern Observer LAB was “the Creative Act” by Rick Rubin (more on LAB later). I really like the idea of reading a book and later discussing it in a group. So I listen to it on audible.
Creating a Potential Clients List
I created an initial data base in Notion as it seems to be the best solution for me. I use Notion on the daily bases for so many things and I like the idea of having everything in one place. My pattern database is also there. I dumped the ideas for clients that I had for some time now into this data base. A while ago I made a trip to my favourite card shop to look for local brands that have similar style to mine. I put them into the client data base too. Filling out all the contact info is one of the steps in the next phase.
a notion data base with Potential Clients and mail calendar
Creating the First Collection
This took me much longer than I thought! At first I wanted to create a large collection of ten or more patterns. It was very intimidating and I still haven’t finish it. In the meantime however I designed two mini collections: “Treat Yourself” and “Pop of joy”. It’s a good equivalent of one big collection I guess. I find it more beneficial to work with smaller collections for now. This way I can iterate through ideas and experiment with the art style and techniques more quickly.
Working on My Signature Style
In this stage I focused on lineart style. During next stage I'm going to experiment more with painterly art style. More about my art style exploration here.
Creating and Posting Regularly (3 times a week)
I managed to create 3 times almost every week (excluding when I was on holidays).
I must admit however, that playing social media game is not really my thing. I procrastinated this task till the very end. Finally I created a social media calendar were I have posts planed for few weeks in advance. The plan is to dedicate one whole work day every month to plan and create posts for upcoming weeks. Hopefully it’ll work for me. I also need to engage more no social media. I have to build in creating contract like short videos into my creative routine.
I'll share a fun and a bit embarrassing story with you here. At some point I shares a post (link) about myself on Instagram. I pined it at the top so that anyone who visites my profile can learn more about me. Later that week I got messages and praises from some friends and family even though I haven't advertised or shared with them my new professional Instagram account. It turned out that I unwillingly shared that post on my privet Facebook account at the same time. It seams that my friends know more about my social media than I do…
Starting Working on the Next Stage
I run out of businesses tusks quite quickly so ticked off some items from next stages. Here is what I did in advance:
Spoonflower set up - There were some issues with tax form and it take more then I expected. I'm glad I did so early - I was able to take part in Spoonflower challenges, add many of my patterns and already started gathering likes and followers. There was even some traffic from Spoonflower to my website.
Spoonflower challenges
I planned to do my first spoonflower challenge in the stage 4. However, one of the themes was just perfectly aligned with a pattern I wanted to create! The subject was “A Trip to the Beach” and I made a tossed patterns of shells on a sand. It was the first pattern for the Coastal Dreamscape collection.
I have submitted my artwork for 4 challenges so far and I added a total of 14 unique designs to my shop (34 designs counting different size options). My best result so far was place #57 out of 1509 submission in “Party Wall” design challenge. It may not sound too impressive but having you design in the fist 100 means being featured on the winner page. That means more exposure on this crowded platform.
RedBubble
I set up a new RedBubble account. It was classified as ‘Standard’ which means higher fees. I consider sticking to my previous one that already has some traffic and is a ‘Premium’ store. However, changing the store name is impossible, so I can’t be consistent with my branding there.
Joining Textile Design LAB on Pattern Observer
I found out about this group by chance while I was reading one of articles on Pattern Observer site. The membership is 50 USD a month so I decided to give it a try. And oh my, it is so good! It's such a welcoming and nice community! There are a ton of articles, classes and videos available for members. Every week there is an online feedback session and each month there is a book club meeting about a creativity book (like mentioned above). I try to show up at feedback sessions every week as it's extremely helpful! I'm so grateful that I've discovered this group!
Austin Kleon in his book “Show your Work” emphasizes the importance of belonging to a supportive group of fellow creatures (scenious). When I read it last month I didn't know I would find it so quickly!
