Designing for printed products

We are often asked by designers “How can I monetize my designs?” and you may have thought about it several times as well. Ok. At Tostadora we’ve thought about it and we’re here to give you a few tips on this.

Instead of asking yourself “How can I monetize my designs?”, maybe you should be asking “How can I design to monetize my artwork?”.

At Tostadora you can create designs to be printed on different products, not only on T-Shirts, but also smartphone cases –and more to come-.

Despite this, our recommendation is that you always have in mind the preferred product for your design to be printed on.

It does not mean that your designs cannot be printed on other products, but having this focus will help you create better product-oriented designs.

Designing for t-shirt printing

Let’s look at an example by one of our top artists, Olipopart. Here’s the design:

This design is highly popular for T-Shirts, as it includes quite a lot of phrases and images. Taking this into account, it would be better for such designs to be printed on T-Shirts rather than on any other smaller products, especially iPhone cases. Why? The reason is not that these kinds of designs are unsuitable for smartphone cases, but they are better for T-shirts, because they contain a lot of intricate details.

Designing for mobile phone cases

If we think about a design which is really suitable for a smartphone case, we can have a look at this one:

As you can see, it is absolutely not that this drawing is unsuitable for T-Shirts, but maybe it goes better on a mobile device due to its shape and design being similar to a retro camera, which the artist has kept in mind.

Being able to think this way will provide you with an idea of segmentation that can be really useful for your store.

In fact, we have noticed that some of the artists in our community have opened stores using not only thematic categories in one store but also multiple stores for different products.

For instance, let’s look at this example by one of our artists, Moseisly:

This is the header of a store which is entirely dedicated to TV series and movies (thematically) and which is totally focused on T-Shirts. So, for this store Moseisly designs with this in mind. This is an example of one of the designs that you can find there, which is about the film «Life of Brian» (1979):

Keep in mind that you can create multiple stores using a single account. If high quality content is king, segmentation is queen.

Designing for bags, bodysuits and kids T-shirts

On Tostadora people can also buy bags, bodysuits and kids clothing (especially T-Shirts). So, these products can also be considered by designers and illustrators in our community when creating their designs.

This is an example of a perfect design for a bag:

Again, it does not mean that this design by Pendientera is not suitable for T-Shirts (it totally is), but it is absolutely great for a bag. Here you can see it printed on a bag.

As another example, if we focus on little kids T-Shirts, you should consider the two sides of the coin: on one hand, the design that you create must be great for kids, meaning that it has to be related to something they like, but on the other hand -and equally important- it should appeal to parents. Remember that parents will buy it, not their little ones. You can find an example that matches both sides of the coin, parents and little kids, here on Tostadora.

New products are coming on Tostadora

Over the course of this year more products will be available on Tostadora. Canvas, art prints and mugs will also be online so that people can buy them. This will be another huge opportunity for our community of artists and creative people to showcase and monetize their talent.

We suggest you to start thinking about this, having in mind that this will bring new options for designing. Do not miss this chance!