Posters T-Shirts Badges and Shopping Carts

23Nov06

I’ve just added two personal posters to my portfolio. They are entitled ‘Life: For a Limited Time Only. Use it.’ & ‘Soul Surfer’. They are four and two years old respectively and have been gathering dust on various hardrives over the years, so I thought I’d share them… There is of course an ulterior motive:

Motive

I’ve decided to add more personal work to my portfolio, after reading on various design blogs that some designers hire freelancers purely on their personal work. I’ve read quite a few high ranked designers talk about this: Jason Arber & Andy Budd, to name but two. So I thought what the heck.

Awoken Monster

Now that I’m adding personal projects to my portfolio, it has awoken a monstrous itch in my mind:
I’ve been wanting, or maybe a better adjective would be yearning, to have a small but high quality internet shop, where I could sell postcards, posters, limited run t-shirts and other things like badges, toys etc for bloody ages. I know that the market is already saturated with designers selling ‘unique’ products, but it’s something I have to do, so that I can just say; ‘I tried it, I did it and it was a… 1) success 2) failure 3) was worth the effort.

So I’m going to do it…
My initial thoughts were be to sell just my own work, but I think this would be limited in it’s reach and success.

Question & Participation

Would any of you fellow designers / readers be interested in starting up a unique and beautiful shop to sell yours and other designers’ creations? It’s going to happen, so if you’re interested and would like to come on board, the more the merrier! Drop me an email, or leave a comment.

Advice

I need to do a lot of research before anything can become reality. If anyone has got any advice on the following topics, please share your thoughts & views… I will really appreciate them.

• Advice & Thoughts on these topics
• CMS & Shopping Carts (Would prefer to use WordPress as I’m familiar with it)
• Manufacturers and Suppliers (blank t-shirts, screen printing, postcard printing etc)
• Type of products you think are necessary / unnecessary
• Links to your favourite quirky / unique design shops
• Any addition views or ideas that you think would be relevant