Stuff I had my designs printed onto, 2022
My artwork morphed into print-to-order products, 2022
For a few years, I operated an online store as Decoration Dogma. As a design process, it is very easy now to translate your art into products. In my case, I opened a store on the Shopify platform, which has apps you can embed into your store that print to order. I was using Printful and Pixels for products such as T-Shirts, Long Sleeve Shirts, Tank Tops, Mugs, Pouches, Prints, Greeting Cards, Mouse Pads, Puzzles, Yoga Mats, Shower Curtains, and more. Once I set up a store listing, if any orders came in, they went directly to those apps for fulfillment.
However, there is another step necessary for this to be a success. You must do marketing. In modern times, that means channeling your stuff either by ads or social media posts over to Facebook, Instagram, Google, or various other online media where your followers might either buy or repost to other people who might buy. I am interested in making art but I'm not interested in marketing, so what ended up happening here is that I was my only regular customer, with occasional orders from family. All the stuff you see above is the stuff I ordered for myself.
Another problem is that the prices I would need to charge in order to clear so much as a dollar are really too high for most people to want to pay for mass-produced art. Then there is the tax filing and other tedious aspects of owning a business.
So, last year I closed the business. I'll keep ordering print to order stuff for myself or for gifts, which is the fun part. There is a rude saying that artists hear a lot: "Don't quit your day job." I'd like to reframe that into something more positive: I've viewed every job I've ever had as something that would help me fund my passions, which are art and technology and the intersection between them.
