Those two words; “business” and “creativity” don’t seem like they should go together, do they? This is because art and design are about expressing oneself and you really don’t want to be thinking about the business end of things while you’re trying to let your creative juices flow (that’s a creativity killer for sure). Unfortunately though, unless you want to be a starving artist (and who wants to be that?) you ARE thinking about what is going to sell. It’s a fine line to walk and sometimes leads us to a creative rut.
It happens to all of us. After months of being on a creative roll, we suddenly find ourselves coming to a complete stop. Maybe because our latest design didn’t sell that well and we end up at a standstill. What follows is difficulty focusing on our next project; questioning our ideas because we’re too busy thinking about selling the product as opposed to creating it.
Here’s a tip I had to remind myself of recently; First create it, then sell it.
Here’s a tip that I had to remind myself of recently; First create it, then sell it. Sure, trends are important and if you want to make money then you do have to consider creating designs that are going to sell…but not at the expense of your creativity.
I’ll give you an example. A lot of us designers sell on marketplaces. Because we want to get featured (as that can bring in sales) some of us tend to focus more on the marketplaces preferred trend(s) than on our own style. It comes out pretty good, maybe even very good, but then the marketplace never picks up on it and it goes unnoticed. Now a lot of that is because some marketplaces have their favorite sellers and rarely stray from them. Other times, the product they did choose to promote may have actually been better, even if it didn’t fit the current trend. This leaves you to question your own skills and choices and now you’re not sure what you should be doing. Here’s a tip: Stop trying to please the wrong people. Create for yourself and your customers. That’s it.
Stop trying to please the wrong people. Create for yourself and your customers.
The marketplace in itself is not your customer, it’s a platform to sell on. You do want to adhere to their guidelines but if they accepted you to sell on their site that means they liked your work already. A trend isn’t your customer either, it’s just a trend. You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. Think out of the box, design what you like. You’ll not only design it a lot better (because your heart is completely in it) but your customers already like your style…so why fix what isn’t broken?
Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take risks. Nor should you be afraid to stray out of your lane a bit. There can be much reward in both. What it does mean is that you should stay true to yourself. Who cares if you don’t get featured? Who cares if you’re not the top selling designer? If your work is good, it’ll sell and the rest doesn’t matter. There’s nothing worse than creating something you weren’t 100% into because you were trying to follow an idea you thought was popular, only to find people have moved on. If you’re going to “fail” (and I use that word loosely) it may as well be on your own terms. You can learn a lot from failure, most importantly what not to do in the future.
Once you get your mind clear on what YOU like creating and WHO your customer base is the creativity rut goes away. I mean, creative ruts will happen – that’s part of the process – but staying true to yourself and remembering WHO you’re creating for (your customer base) is generally the best way to go. THIS is the business of creativity.
