From chefs, cartoonists and vloggers to scientists, influencers and photographers, Spring is for all creators. You don’t need to have design experience to create the perfect products for your community. Keep reading for our tips on how to get started.
You’re already a brand…
You have a community behind you, whether it’s a small following on TikTok, a handful of listeners of your podcast, or 500k subscribers on YouTube. This is a great starting point—now all you need to do is understand what makes your online presence unique and translate that into your next design. If you have a logo already, then this is a great place to start. A logo design works well to unite your fans and is good to have available as a staple in your store.
Community-driven ideas
The most successful designs are inspired by great content, trends, slogans and inside jokes that resonate with your community. Do you have a catchphrase that your fans can’t get enough of? Was there a fan comment that really stood out? Think about the kind of content you share with your fans and what gets them talking. Think of moments or phrases you’ve shared with your community that are unique or memorable. Not only does involving fans in the design process make them more likely to support you, but it also builds hype prior to launch.
Catch phrases that resonate with fans.
Memorable channel slogans.
Run polls to get your communities feedback on ideas.
Have fans suggest ideas. Ask on a live stream for suggestions or feedback.
Dive into comments to see what fans are talking about.
Calendar events
Don’t forget to release products for calendar events like Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day—you can get really creative around these moments and make them your own. (Sometimes these moments are just a good excuse to release a new collection at a time when fans are expecting to buy something new) See how Moriah Elizabeth took her most popular character, Pickle, and gave him a seasonal twist for Christmas, Halloween and Valentines Day.
Collab with other creators
If you’ve got the following but don’t have the creativity or vision (or you have tons of design ideas but are still building your community), consider collaborating with other types of creators from different industries. Share each other’s skills and values and work together. Not only does this enhance your opportunity to come up with an amazing design, it also means you can widen your fanbase through joint promotion.
Once you have an idea, it’s time to bring it to life.
See our range of design resources and tools to help you get started. We’ve also partnered with 99designs to provide you with an extra layer of design support. This service allows you to collaborate with world class designers to create custom, quality designs for your products. Find out more.
You can sell designs you buy online, provided you have permission from the intellectual property owner. For example, you may hire a designer to create something for you or you may have a license to use a particular design. Please be aware, however, that there are many different types of licenses. In addition, each platform likely has its own policies and terms, which you should read carefully.
Spring is not able to offer legal advice. If you’re not sure whether your content infringes on someone’s intellectual property, you can contact the intellectual property owner or consult an attorney. If Spring receives proper notice of intellectual property infringement, we will comply with our policies and remove the infringing material.
FAQ’s
1) If my design is removed for copyright infringement, would I just send the IP team my licenses to get reinstated?
If you believe your listings have been removed in error, you can submit a counterclaim or write to us at policy@spri.ng. Correct. However, if you or the claimant (or both) have an exclusive license, then it is possible that only one of you is entitled to use the licensed design. In such instances, Spring will typically allow you both to sell the design on Spring and it will be up to you to work out any such dispute amongst yourselves (and with the original designer).
2) Can the original designer file an IP claim on Spring?
Yes, it’s possible that the original designer you purchased your license from could file an IP claim on Spring. We intend on responding to this as we would with any other IP claim.
3) Someone copied my original artwork that I used in conjunction with purchased design elements. Can I file an IP claim?
Correct, if you’ve substantially modified the purchased design and someone copies it pixel for pixel, you can make an IP claim and we will look into this for you.
Remember, there are lots of free and affordable tools out there if you prefer to create your own designs. Many don’t require design experience. 😉
After landing on a design idea, get designs ready to apply to your products and prepare promotional content. You don’t have to be a design professional to create products for your community, and there are tons of helpful tools online, as well as expert designers who can help. Below are some helpful tips from creators as well as some step-by-step guides.
Quality of design is important. You want to launch something that will excite your fans, not just the idea, but how it’s visually represented as well. But don’t let that scare you, it’s super easy to create or source a cool design and It’s ok to keep things simple – slogan and typography-based designs are all the range at the moment.
Free design tools
We’ve listed the most popular tools used by creators to come up with effective designs. Whenever purchasing pre-made artwork or a design element, you should research the design’s license limitations to ensure your design complies with IP laws. See our guide for selling purchased designs here.
Placeit: Create designs within seconds using Placeit’s 10,000+ on trend templates. UYou can also use Placeit to create lifestyle mockups to share with your community on social platforms. Spring creators have access to unlimited features at a discounted rate of $12 a month. Click here to learn more.
Canva: This popular app is amazing for creators to choose from premade templates, stock photos, cartoon images, shapes, icons, and more when creating a design. Similar to Spring’s text tool, Canva also has a text generator with over 100 different fonts to choose from. Canva is great for creating designs for digital products.
Creative Fabrica: This platform offers a full license for creators who want to use purchased designs to sell on products. It’s not uncommon for people to purchase design elements instead of creating a design from scratch.
Video tutorials
Spring creator and leading YouTube art channel Jazza [5.43M subscribers] created a really helpful video offering tips and tricks for creating designs using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Jazza covers useful topics such as how he comes up with design ideas and a step by step guide to creating files ready for print.
Another creator who makes incredible content focused on graphic design tutorials specifically for products, is Charley Pangus. Spend some time checking out the full range of useful and insightful tutorials: https://www.youtube.com/c/charleypangus/videos
Here’s one of our favourites:
Specific Spring resources
Specialty product templates
Follow the video playlist below for guided tutorials on applying your designs to specialty products. Download templates to start using once you have access to the product here.
Once you’ve unlocked specialty products, you’ll see them in the launcher. Find design templates here to help you create product designs and check out these video tutorials for tips.
Take advantage of these free design patterns all creators can apply to all-over print products such as leggings, phone cases, blankets, pillows, and more.
Our creative team here at Spring have kindly shared with us their 2021 Pinterest board, which houses an ever-growing collection of different design styles and pieces of inspiration for you to help inspire you. Check it out here.
Collaborate with 99designs
Providing you an extra layer of support, Spring has partnered up with 99designs. This service allows you to collaborate with world-class designers, to create designs for products beyond your expectations (without being a design guru). With this design sourcing service, you will now be able to transform your vision into a fully-fledged design, simply by submitting a brief and letting the 99designs algorithm match you with the best suited designers.
You have the safety and comfort of knowing there is a money back guarantee if you don’t receive the design you’d hoped for.
Transfer of copyright. Any designs you have created are now yours to sell.
99 designs have collaboration tools in place allowing creators to provide feedback easily as well as work closely with the designer seamlessly.
All for a price that won’t break the bank
Spring’s design services
In addition to our partnership with 99designs, Spring also offers a free in-house design to any new creator with over 100,000 followers on any social platform. To apply for our design services, please fill out the form here, and our support team will be back in touch soon.
Social media tools
As a creator, you’ll know how important it is to get your social media platforms looking flawless and consistent with your branding. As well as this, the promotional content you share with your community linking to your products and social store should catch your fans’ attention. We’ve collected a few easy, straightforward apps for doing this.
GifLab is perfect for creating .gif videos and it’s super simple. Use it to show off all color options for your products, or highlight all products available in your newly dropped collections.
Layout is a great collaging app. It’s integrated with Instagram, so you can share the image directly to social media.
Splice enables you to create videos quickly and easily, with a unique zooming function too. Generate close-up shots of your products creating amazing promo videos and showing the details of your products.
Videoshop is another great app that offers a variety of features to create quality videos. You can combine photos and videos, add slow-motion edits, create animated titles, and more.
Legend is ideal for creating animated text. You could use this tool when sharing special promotions and discounts for example.
PlaceIt enables you to choose from thousands of stunning, professionally designed ad templates to promote your products across all social media platforms. They are ridiculously easy to modify and you can download images formatted correctly for just about every platform.
Canva makes it easy for everyone to create professional-looking graphics. There are hundreds of templates available with beautiful layouts for text editing. Each template is designed for a specific purpose like sharing on Instagram, Instagram Stories, Twitter, or Snapchat in newsletters, etc.
Creative Fabrica: This platform offers a full license for creators who want to use purchased designs to sell on products. It’s not uncommon for people to purchase design elements instead of creating a design from scratch.
