Impressions - January/February 2024 - 42

t hink .
mak e .
d o.
graphics & design
Like this article? Read more better business articles
at ImpressionsMagazine.com/build-your-business.
All Together Now!
Get more out of your art and increase your profits with design collections
BY DANE CLEMENT, CONTRIBUTING WRITER
So, your customer returned again this year
asking you to reprint their usual spirit-wear
design for the upcoming football game. That's
great. But why stop there? Think of all the
potential that exists for increasing your sales
by taking that one design and using it to
create an entire collection.
The idea here is to take the initial image
you've been working with and either resizing
or modifying it to create any number of other
layouts and products. Now you have a whole
host of additional options to present to your
customers in a bid to further increase both
profits and sales. What follows are a few
things to consider when trying to flesh
out a new collection.
Go Beyond Apparel
The most obvious way to create a collection
is by taking an existing design and simply
printing it on any number of different products.
Let's say there's a new restaurant in
your area, and they come to you asking for
some T-shirts. Why not create some additional
samples of the same design on other
products as well-aprons, bandanas, napkins,
hand towels, caps, you name it. What about
hard goods? Think things like mugs, water
bottles and cutting boards. Imagine all the
things that can be used in a restaurant, either
for decoration or by the staff as they're
going through their daily routine. Imagine
as well all the items that can be sold to the
restaurant's customers.
Don't have the necessary equipment to
provide certain decoration methods on
certain products in-house? No problem.
Contract it out. Look for one of the many
wholesale printing companies online or any
companies you may know of in your immediate
area that can do the work for you.
Maybe try and find someone who doesn't
do the same kind of decorating as you and
work out an arrangement between the two
P.42
Taking a single image or logo and then
modifying it for placement on a variety of
products is a great way to increase sales.
Image by Dane Clement
of you to provide complementary services
for one another on similar jobs in the future.
Size and Placement
When printing on different products, size and
placement will naturally come into play. A
full-front design that's printed on a T-shirt, for
example, will obviously need to be reduced
to fit on a mug. Something to keep in mind:
if you know you are going to be creating
a layout that will be used as part of a wider
ImpressionsMagazine.com Jan./Feb. 2024
collection, be sure and create it for the largest
piece first. Also bear in mind that while
size doesn't really matter for a vector image
because it can be resized without affecting
quality, that's not necessarily the case for a
raster or bitmap image. It's always better to
start a raster image at the largest size needed,
as opposed to enlarging it later. Otherwise,
quality will deteriorate.
Along these same lines, there are a few
other things you need to consider when
resizing artwork for different decoration
http://www.ImpressionsMagazine.com/build-your-business http://www.ImpressionsMagazine.com
Impressions - January/February 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Impressions - January/February 2024
