Transforming Doodles into Designs:
A Guide to Turning Doodles into Marketable Products
I want to share my process of taking one of my sketchnote doodles into a final physical product to sell. I don’t typically have an idea of a product in mind when I’m drawing. I just draw. Funny thoughts and images will collide in my brain and spill out onto the paper. I’m really just trying to capture something that makes me smile, in the hope that it will make other people smile as well.
Rough Beginnings
In a sketchnote from last week about reasons to take visual notes, aka doodle in your notes, I wanted to illustrate the concept of enhanced creativity and innovation. While thinking about the concept, I remembered Einstein and his thoughts about play, creativity, and imagination leading to new discoveries. My brain latched on to E=MC squared, which morphed into E(Einstein), the MC spinning records and dropping science on a club full of science-friendly dancers. You may be laughing hysterically with me or at me at this moment. Meh, I’m ok with either.
Refinement with a Vector-based tool
Even when I begin the sketchnote, I don’t really have any idea if anything will come out of the drawings worth putting on a T-shirt or some other physical product. You just never know. And when you think you do know, you still really do not. Regardless of this uncertainty, I chose to create my sketchnotes in Concepts.app because it is a vector-based application. Vector software will allow me to scale my illustrations to fit any number of sizes and dimensions. Flexibility is really what you are looking for when you want to transfer a drawing and print it on physical products. This is not to say that you cannot have flexibility with raster-based software, but it will present challenges based on image size and scalability.
I often draw in Concepts with a felt marker pen-style brush (technically, it is the gel pen brush) to replicate my pen on paper for analog sketchnotes. When I decide to use an illustration for merchandise, I will often switch the brush to a fixed-width pen to give smoother and crisper lines. Changing brushes after the fact is easy with most vector-based art tools. So minor adjustments might have to be made to make sure stroke ends line up and gaps are not introduced, but it is unusual that the illustration would have to be completely redrawn.
Colors and Product Design
It is a good idea to keep your line work and colors on separate layers. By separating elements of your design, it will allow you to change colors easier and try out different color palettes. When you start adding color, start thinking about what background colors you will want to print on things like t-shirts, mugs, bags, etcetera. Some designs may look great on one color but not on another. Just because a print-on-demand service offers 30 t-shirt colors does not mean you have to allow your design to be printed on colors that would not look good.
Let's talk about print-on-demand services. There are many to choose from, and they all have pros and cons. Most let you upload your designs for free. Everyone else can upload their designs for free too, which means there are a huge number of designs on these platforms. Getting traffic to your designs will always be the toughest part, but it will happen. Remember, it is better to have a design listed rather than in a folder on your desktop or in your sketchbook. I occasionally get sales from designs that I posted over five years ago. You never know what will resonate with someone.
Put your doodles and illustrations out into the world, even if it is just for yourself. If only one person ever buys your design, it is pretty cool to know that you made a sale. One sale is a happy moment. I hope you find many happy moments with your creativity.
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