Tag: design inspiration

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Creators

How Sanne Vander built a successful merch brand on YouTube from her bedroom

Lifestyle YouTuber Sanne Vander is passionate about creating health and fitness content for her community. Sanne’s wellness–focused channel educates and inspires viewers with beauty tips, healthy living and fitness plans.

Continue reading to discover how Sanne built her brand (VNDR), created a dedicated community of fans (a.k.a. her “Vander family”), finds design inspiration, promotes her products, and more.

Building a relatable brand

“I fell in love with the concept of being able to create video content, upload it from your bedroom and share it with the world. Whether you are making videos or merch, all creative processes start with a story. What message do you want to get out to the world? Don’t be afraid to change your direction along the way.“

Sanne’s brand VNDR official has rocketed since growing her following across YouTube and Instagram. The secret behind her success is being able to engage with fans on a personal level. On Sanne’s YouTube channel you’ll find the “girl chat” playlist, discussing her personal struggles—covering everything from mental health to periods and shaving. Opening up in such a genuine way helps her connect with viewers, building trust around her brand. Fans are able to join Sanne on her fitness journey too, following her work–out experiments and transformation challenges. Her engaging, relatable video content has enabled Sanne to establish a large, loyal following of people who are proud to wear the products she creates.  

Designing products fit for ‘Vanders’

“Creating merch with Spring is super easy and efficient. I use the launcher to create designs directly without using other software like Photoshop or Illustrator.”

By creating her own sleek storefront, VNDR official merch, Sanne joined a network of thousands of influential, young entrepreneurial women using Spring to grow their personal brand.

As well as making design concepts personal to her story and identity, a lot of Sanne’s merch inspiration comes from her fans directly. Sanne’s products include not only variations of her branding, but uplifting messages on her clothing and accessories. For example, her Let’s Glow hoodie features two dragons on the back, encouraging Vanders to “become the strongest, most powerful” versions of themselves. 

Selling a range of products from athletic wear to hoodies, Sanne motivates followers to get #vanderfit and wear them while following her workouts. Take note–she’s successfully integrated top trending loungewear and is seeing promising sales from new products like fanny packs, sports bras, socks, and beanies. 

‘Glowing up’ social media to promote merch

Sanne excels at promoting on social media. She’s got Instagram totally figured out, taking full advantage of the platform’s full range of useful tools and features. Sanne follows promotional techniques on Instagram like highlighting her store link within her account bio, using Instagram stories to feature fans wearing VNDR products, as well as posting photos and videos wearing her own products too.

“My Vanders share a lot of photos of themselves wearing VNDR official merch on social media. It makes me happy seeing how amazing the designs look on them.”

Sanne also effectively promotes her products on YouTube. She’s set up the Teespring x YouTube merch shelf integration to showcase products and increase sales. She’s also optimized her channel banner to feature merch images and most importantly, wears her products in her video content too. As viewers watch her content they’re able to preview and purchase the same product from her merch shelf below the video.    

Thank you to Sanne for sharing her story! You can check out Sanne’s merch on her VNDR storefront, join the #Vanderfit club by subscribing Sanne’s Youtube Channel or check out her VNDR official instagram.

Get started on building your brand and designing your merch below.

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Creators

PLASMA Magazine: Earth Day designs

Earth Day will be celebrated on April 22, 2020 by millions of people around the world. This year is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and this year’s theme is “climate action”—the pressure is on to take action (and fast) and combat climate change! Earth Day aims to increase awareness of the planet, pollution, climate change, endangered species, and many other environmental issues to drive transformative change. 

With the recent launch of our Conscious Collection, now is the perfect time to create eco-friendly products in line with Earth Day 2020. PLASMA Magazine is an international publication that combines art + science to inspire curiosity and appreciation for the planet and the space that surrounds it. PLASMA have just launched their own Conscious Collection, so we caught up with them to learn more about their publication and how it inspires their designs.

Diana Wehmeier, CEO and Creative Director of PLASMA Magazine

Creating product collections

The team at PLASMA was initially drawn to Teespring’s sustainable business model, where products are only produced on demand. After seeing trusted companies use the platform for merch needs they decided to give it a try for themselves. 

After the success of several product collections, PLASMA has incorporated new items from the Conscious Collection into their store, which aligns perfectly with Earth Day. These products give buyers the chance to purchase apparel and accessories with reduced environmental impact while supporting environmental non-profits.

“Researching space exploration and planetary studies only bring us closer to our own planet and helps you appreciate everything a little more. There is no other place like earth (as far as we know). This planet is precious and the only home we have, it is imperative to save and protect it for future generations.”

PLASMA Magazine’s Conscious Collection

Finding design inspiration

The magazine’s content is designed to engage younger people and communicate science and technology in a more fun and appealing way. Each issue is jam-packed with stories, behind the scenes sneak peeks, photo series, posters, nerd guides, all things art + science, plus interviews featuring scientists from diverse fields  talking about their personal motivations and passions.

The magazine’s content is also what inspires the unique design featured on their products. 

“The latest science news and events is what influences and inspires our merchandise designs. For the focus of our eco-conscious collection we selected a few fan favorite pages that create an awareness not only for planet Earth, but also other celestial bodies like the moon and Mars!”

A page from PLASMA issue 5 that inspired one of their top selling product designs.

Promoting products

PLASMA successfully launches new products using a combination of promotion best practices. During the pre-launch phase they generate hype and interest by sharing ‘sneak peek’ sample photos with their online following.

“First we test with a teaser or sneak peek, by ordering samples and taking photos we can see the products firsthand and gauge the response on social media.” 

PLASMA also asks fans to share photos and videos with the products once they arrive. This enables them to collect social proof which can be used in the future to drive more sales. 

“We often get mentioned in stories or tagged in posts or people send us lovely messages about their merch, that’s always very sweet and motivating.”

PLASMA fans and readers repping their merch

Categories
Creators

Margaux’s tips for turning political passion into a successful brand

Margaux Pepper is a Chitown-based, Southern spitfire with a penchant for good food and bad puns. By day, she’s a brand strategist at a PR firm, and by night she’s a feminist lettering artist and clothing designer. For her, International Women’s Day is not only a moment to celebrate the progress made toward equality, but also a reminder of the work that’s yet to be realized.

Continue reading to learn more about Margaux and her personal brand, where she finds design inspiration, promotional tips and more.  

Building a brand

Margaux is one example of the hundreds of thousands of fabulous females building their own personal brands and businesses on Teespring. Following her role as a contributing artist for a feminist clothing collection, Margaux decided to go independent create her own personal brand, Pepper vs. Patriarchy. Teespring’s on-demand business model meant Margaux could create 50+ products instantly without any upfront costs or risk—she was able to combine her love of feminism and art, and turn her ideas into a full range of products to sell online. 

“I love the wide range of styles, colors, products, and extended sizing. It was important to me to offer my designs with the most options possible so that customers felt included and like they could find something they love!”

Finding inspiration

Margaux says design inspiration comes from friends and family sharing their ideas or making requests on what they’d like to see or wear. For example, her Women 2020 design was an idea her mom came up with, to support female candidates at all levels! This same technique can be used by other Teespring users who are designing for an existing audience—some of the most successful designs sold on are inspired by a creator’s fanbase.

Promoting products

Keep in mind using real samples in promotional content can increase sales by 50%, so it’s no surprise featuring product samples are Margaux’s preferred promotional method. She incorporates images of herself, friends and customers wearing products into her Instagram feed, stories, and highlights. These images not only create tons of engagement, they’re also examples of social proof which can influence other followers to purchase too. 

“It’s great to be able to order samples and take photos of myself in the products, but it means so much to me to see other people wearing and enjoying my designs in their everyday lives…One of my friends from college wore my Good Bi design as part of her coming out journey, which basically made my heart explode. It means so much to me that something I created could be part of a moment like that.” 

Margaux’s fans repping her products 

The future is female

When Margaux isn’t growing her brand on Instagram, she works as a brand strategist at the second largest Public Relations firm in the world. One of the main reasons she chose to explore a career in PR was because of the opportunities she saw for women at all levels of leadership within the agency, both in Chicago and globally. 

“When women are given a fair shot and a chance to succeed, the work they make, the teams they lead, and the culture they create ultimately benefits everyone.” 

This is the core message of Margaux’s personal beliefs and brand…and it’s the perfect mantra to celebrate International Women’s Day 2020. With that in mind, we’d like to take a moment to recognize all of the inspiring female and female identifying users on the platform—we’ve selected a range below for you to discover and get inspired by! Of course, we couldn’t include everyone, but don’t forget to check out our Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook where we are always featuring our amazing users.

Top row (from left to right): Moriah Elizabeth / Quiet Cool Kid / Shawna Lynn / Allison Bickerstaff

Bottom Row (From left to right): Ava Pearl / Jessica Kellgren-Fozard / Lehua Superfina / Sanne Vander

Categories
Insights

How to create product designs with Placeit

Want to create products to sell but don’t have a design? Not to fear! Teespring has teamed up with Placeit to help sellers create quality product designs, lifestyle mockups, and even promotional assets too!  Also, you’ll get 20% off your monthly subscription for life with Teespring (use the button below to sign up). 😉

Why do Teespring sellers like Placeit?

  • No graphic design skills required
  • You get unlimited designs, mockups, videos, promotional assets, and more for under $15 per month

Get placeit

Create product designs

Create custom product designs in minutes using Placeit’s pre-made, customizable templates. Save and download your design to apply to multiple Teespring products. Make sure to select a transparent background too so it’ll look great on any product you add it to.

 

Create lifestyle mockups

After you’ve created your product you’ll need images to share! You can use Placeit to create custom lifestyle mockups featuring real people and a variety of product positioning. These images are perfect for sharing on social media. You can even create custom video mockups too.

Create promotional assets

Choose from thousands of stunning, professionally designed ad templates and assets to promote your products across all social media platforms. They are ridiculously easy to modify and the generator lets you take one design and with a single click, download images formatted for every platform.