what's up guys thank you for joining me
for a new video in this one i'm feeling
inspired
to talk about something that you've
heard me talk about before
i want to talk about
one thing that i think the majority i
don't want to say majority but that a
lot of people
that sell print on demand products or
that want to sell print on demand
products but are struggling to lock in
maybe that first sale
that you can change that you can do
differently to increase the likelihood
of making that sale it's
probably the most common i don't want to
say problem you know it's kind of
subjective all right and we're going to
talk about what it is in a second but
it's something that i see commonly that
i know can be improved upon and i don't
know what it is that's like inside of us
that makes us want to
do too much in my mind i think of it as
we want to do too much
when it comes to
designing t-shirts yes we're going to
talk about design
designing is not my expertise yet i
still manage to sell quite a few
print-on-demand products uh you know
daily really i guess you know it's
subjective again how much do you
consider quite a few but i do decently
well for myself let's just put it that
way and i want to show you how i do it
without being a good designer alright
that's what i want to show you but it's
not just going to be about how i do it i
was thinking about how i wanted to prep
this video and i think what i want to do
is kind of like organically
show you my process of kind of finding
a listing maybe not a shirt maybe
whatever product it is finding one that
i'm going to show you what i don't like
that they did that i think is more
common than we would
imagine and how i would go about fixing
it how i would go about redesigning that
that product all right so let's get
started
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if you'd like to join all right we got
that business out the way let's get to
this uh design review okay so in real
time what i'm going to try to do because
i don't want to over edit this i want to
you know pretend as if it's almost like
a live stream we're not live but like i
want to show you kind of an example of
what i see a lot of people doing that
i'm not in agreement with as far as it
being a good
design strategy
relative to the approach that i would
normally take and if you can just make
your designs like i always say with air
quotes good enough
at a minimum you'll remove a barrier to
making a sale because in my mind like
a design that isn't good enough like
maybe you'll find somebody that likes it
enough to buy it but like generally
speaking
the flip side of that is having a design
that appeals to people right not that
they have to kind of
you know talk themselves into buying it
mentally but like to actually want to
buy it because the design is good stuff
like this i see a lot of all right i
didn't want to spend forever prepping a
bunch of design styles that i don't like
my plan is after i show you this we'll
go kind of browse through different
designs and talk about what i think
works what doesn't work and then i'll
kind of show you how i go about making
designs myself on the fly that actually
sell even though i'm not a good graphic
designer all right so what i don't like
about this and i see a lot of people
that do this guys
is like
just and this is all of course
subjective and it's my opinion all right
we got that out the way i'm just a
youtuber i'm a talking head on a screen
so if you disagree hey you're welcome to
it's no big deal at all uh i welcome it
all right i don't like when we're
putting text in print-on-demand designs
and we feel the need to add a stroke you
know like we have like a one-line stroke
of like orange it looks like
wrapping the white text now white text
contrasted against a black background
like a black hat
works do we need to get cute and over
complicate things uh these the designer
of this product was doing the orange you
know stroke
and then did rainbow underneath that and
it's just like to me i see this and i
just immediately think like doing too
much you know unless this is
of course unless it's like a part of a
niche a cross niche or a sub niche okay
in that case
fine of course it's fine you know um but
like still i'd probably go about like
just putting a rainbow above and across
the hundred
rather than putting rainbow text i just
don't like i don't like when text is
warped and hard to read i'm not i'm not
a fan of that i like bold big easy to
read text not crazy colors going on
complementary colors you know or even a
color palette you can make each line of
text its own color and you know do
things like that
alright let's check out some
some existing products on redbubble you
know i like redbubble looking for this
more than i like going to you know maybe
flying research or amazon because
when you come to places like this you
know you get typically the best sellers
at the top you know i guess actually we
could do some some research here if we
wanted to go to
um like get inspired mba maybe or
uh some of these tools have like new
designs so you can actually just kind of
scroll through the newer designs
seller trends maybe
you know a lot of these are typically
newer shirts
um although these all at a glance look
like they're
pretty pretty good looking shirts like
something like this is like what i'm
talking about that i really like
all right i'm not talking about dislike
here i'm talking about that i like this
so what they ended up doing here guys
and you can see behind me i got the zoom
they have some big bold easy to read
white text against a black background
right i'm not telling that we all have
to be like robots cloning each other's
approach to designing products i'm just
saying
that you can do such a simple approach
that we know works
and it's done
quickly efficiently there's no guesswork
because we know it already works it's
validated
and it saves time so you make good
designs that don't even take long to
make right and then they got a football
graphic and you know you can make your
own game day graphic
with or without a football like just to
show you guys like if i come to
photoshop here this is my merch template
that i always start out with i can just
turn on my big text layer i can say
game day right i already have the font
selected i can do this
make it big um although of course i just
messed it up
do something like this make it as big as
i want you know i mean i know sometimes
things are just like too big and they
look ridiculous but
i've done videos in the past where i
share like i think when we're selling
online
it's okay to be like ridiculous in how
big we present the design versus if
we're in a store and i've even gone to
stores taking pictures and been like
this is what they're actually selling in
retail stores and i bet you it sells
extremely well here in person but it
wouldn't translate necessarily
as well online digitally you know given
the landscape you know it's different in
the store
closing clothing is hung and you can
grab it and touch it
and you're there in close proximity to
see it
and there's not a ton of competition
being shoved in your face all at once
like amazon with 40 44 products or 48
products per page and redbubble with
like 100 some per page
you know here it's like you know game
day boom white text black shirt um i can
distress it if i wanted to stress it
i've done tutorials on that a long time
ago older youtube videos on my channel
um you know like they did a distressed
here
and doing an effect like that's not that
hard you know what i mean or you can
just literally like flip the text to you
know admin texture
and i'll drop a link in the description
there's actually a um
deal going on in the month of february
that you can take advantage of and it's
for both first-time users of creative
fabrica where you can get this font this
is one of my favorite distressed fonts
uh because you saw that i mean i didn't
have to actually go out of my way to
distress it i just switched the font to
admin texture um but yeah it's like you
can join for a dollar if you haven't
joined before and then if you have
joined before
i don't know if you can still do the
dollar but it
cuts a discount into your monthly
renewal so i'll drop a link to that in
the description it's like a month of
february special that they uh emailed me
about
um let's go back to redbubble though i
feel like we'll find
better you know bad-ish designs on
redbubble so here's an example that's
easy to pick apart really quickly
you know i
mean it's not easy to pick apart but
it just to me like
it's it's easier illustrated i guess
when you're here like look at all these
products in search results and when you
have like the black shirts and the light
colored foreground i just feel like it
pops like it
it's easier in my mind at least in my
subconscious when i look at 10 things at
once
the the ones that are popping are like
the black shirts with the light
foregrounds to me um the white shirt
with like the lighter foreground
elements it's almost like they blend
together
you know like if i was just scrolling
past that i wouldn't even know what it
said for a million dollars i wouldn't be
able to tell you what the text said
whereas like a shirt like this one right
here i survived 100 days of school like
i read that immediately like i know what
it says i can you know scroll past it in
milliseconds and my eyes still pick up
what it said you know or 100 days
unlocked that's an easy one um this one
right here the hundred days with my
nomi's
it's no fault of the designer you know
but they designed it on a
kids school t-shirt and that's actually
a pretty good idea to set that as the
primary product display
the downside is redbubble's mock-up
for kids shirts
isn't that good and it's not really like
prominently displaying
the um the design on those products all
right
uh what else can we do though like
i don't want to get too specific in
saying what i don't like
uh and in this case like the stroke on
there the letters it works but
it's just certain design styles maybe i
have to go down towards the bottom i
don't know
of course like they're going to put like
the best ones on page one so
god i'm trying to find the bad designs
that i want to try to make better
something like this is what i like
you know without me even having to kind
of illustrate it like when i think of
designing for print on demand i think of
flat design
you know me as a web developer like
and like i was a web developer a
front-end web developer from when we
kind of transitioned
into
i don't even know i hate like assigning
like a web 2.0 web i don't know what to
call it right but when we started
transitioning into utilizing more like
functionality built into web browsers as
opposed to like needing to go find
plugins to do
things like make a web page look cool
you know like all of a sudden we could
use code to add animation and add you
know drop shadows
and
do things like that
i think of adding effects like that like
like drop shadows for instance are a big
one that stand out in my head as like
hey i'm building a web page i'm gonna
add a drop shadow you know or you know a
stroke like we could do
a stroke kind of sort of there's ways uh
in css like in encode in in being a web
developer those are things i would do on
a website and they would look great
but i don't want to do that in a t-shirt
it doesn't translate very well to
printing and i just don't think it looks
good
in the mock-ups whereas like this right
here is an example of what i like to do
this is what i recommend doing
what makes this like a lot of times like
i feel like
as we're becoming better and better
designers and even experienced people in
my opinion
fall victim to
doing too much like oh i don't like you
know what's what's wrong with my text
why isn't it popping the way that the
best sellers text pops you know and then
we like get into photoshop and you know
adding effects like
i don't even know what people do like
maybe like drop shadows or i mean i
guess against a black background it's
not going to show but
like you definitely don't want to do
like glowing the glows aren't going to
translate into print um doing like a
bevel and emboss you know stuff like
this i
i
you know that's i guess you could it
depends on your what you're going for
with your design but these are things
that i like never do like do you guys
see the difference between like
text like this that you see here
you know and um you know i could
illustrate maybe a drop shadow of like
yellow and make it um
solid you know stuff like this like
even though this is just an example of
what not to do and it's like very
blatantly not an attractive design but i
see people trying to make attractive
designs doing variations of this
too often you know and what i think the
best approach is
is like this right here this is honestly
like a perfect example
because they just found the font that
works they made the top font big they
alternated colors that are all very
complementary
to the black background
so it's optimized for a black background
and the colors also work together as a
color palette with each other
and they're not doing anything other
than just those flat colors like the
t-rex is flat green
the one in the number 100 is a flat red
the zero is orange the zero is blue
it's so simple but it works right am i
the only one that thinks this is a good
design
and it doesn't require some crazy
ability here you know like that's a you
could literally get a t-rex like png and
just apply a color overlay
okay and
you know that your graphic is solved
right you know what i'm talking about
like go go find a t-rex png color
overlay
maybe you make some other transformative
edit like maybe you put the 100 inside
the t-rex and cut it out i don't know
things like that
this by the way this video wasn't about
the 100 days of school it was just kind
of an easy low hanging fruit for a niche
but i hope that this video wasn't awful
um if if you agree please at least leave
a like on it so the youtube algorithm
knows what you think
um but this is kind of i just wanted to
get like a little preachy go off the
cuff a lot of times my videos are
pre-planned and this one i wanted to
kind of treat it like a conversation as
if you were here next to me and i'm like
you know hey this is what most people
are doing
i don't want to say wrong but like could
do better
and hopefully that came through you get
what i was saying
um
you know there's no need to do too much
with your print-on-demand designs and
sometimes like a more minimalist
approach
good color scheme stick to the
fundamental principles that we know work
and you you'll be on your way to making
sales alright guys that's all i really
wanted to cover thank you for watching
this video till the end i do appreciate
your time please like and subscribe if
you haven't already and i will see you
tomorrow with a new video
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you