i distinctly remember designing this. for over a year i spent tons of time designing products: pillows, tote bags, cellphone covers, prints, beach towels, cutting boards, mugs, travel cups, coasters, cards, shower curtains, side tables, leggings. i would study david’s paintings and extract morsels and execute the process – with great joy – of the choosing of the product lines i wished to represent and the designing of those. it was our intention to sell these pieces. i would have absolutely loved to fill a brick and mortar store with these pillows and mugs and journals and tote bags, but the sheer outlay for merchandise and stock and the overhead for a physical store made that impossible. but online – at an online storefront called society6.com, which would manufacture the pieces as they were ordered – it was possible. it was a good premise. so we opened five storefronts online (listed below in case you want to stop by with a cup of coffee) to represent each day of our studio melange postings.
only it didn’t really work.
hundreds, literally hundreds, of designs and thousands of products later, we decided it was time to stop putting the hours of effort into these designs. we had some sales and it is truly a delight to see someone carrying a tote bag i designed or a laptop cover or to hear from someone who is enjoying their purchase. the sales trickle in still, $4 here, $2.10 there. the mark-up, as you would expect, lists mightily to the side of the host company, but we dreamed of great volume – so many pillows that earning a few dollars for each-one-of-many would be a big help to our working budget.
only it didn’t really work.
every now and then i visit these sites and am astounded at how actually cool the products are. the designs aren’t so bad either, if i do say so myself. (tee-hee) there are some really beautiful pieces out there, like this PEACE. EARTH. PEACE ON EARTH. morsel. simple and profound. timely. if you click here, you can see it as a pillow. if you scroll way down on that linked page, you can see all the other products that we designed and made available with this image. it was within the painting INSTRUMENT OF PEACE that i found this morsel.
even though it didn’t really work, i suppose it worked. because i can’t begin to tell you how much i learned. maybe that’s the point. maybe that’s always the point.
for more morsels of david’s paintings, click here:
www.society6.com/davidrobinson
for various designs of mine, click here:
www.society6.com/kerrisherwood
for products with photographs or graphic designs or inspiring messages, click here:
for products with our beloved cartoon chicken marsala, click here:
www.society6.com/chickenmarsala
for products that make you laugh, images of our flawed cartoon, click here:
www.society6.com/flawedcartoon
and for david’s online gallery of paintings, click here:
read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY
INSTRUMENT OF PEACE/PEACE.ON.EARTH © 2015 david robinson
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