Design This - Custom Etsy Shop Cover Image

You may recall that I shared some changes that Etsy made to shop layouts during April in a previous blog post. Prior to the change I was approached by a fellow Texas Friends teammate asking if I would be interested in helping her design a shop cover for her shop, JackrabbitFlats, in advance of the changes going live. I was happy to oblige.

At the time there was a thread on the Etsy forums where shop owners shared their new shop covers that I had her look at. We discussed what we liked about some of them that caught our eyes, whether to incorporate her old shop banner as part of the new cover photo and more. JackrabbitFlats' shop owner sent several product photos over for me to work with. I made a rough mock up incorporating her old shop banner with representative items and sent it over as a starting point for discussion. (See above.)

Eventually she decided that she wanted a cover image that was only a collage of representative items from her shop. (Shop names are prominently displayed just below the cover images in the new layout.) I played around with various layouts and finally arrived at one that I really liked. While I had been given more items than were in that iteration, I felt adding more of them made the image too cluttered. I sent the second rough mock up to my customer and not only did she agree with my assessment but she also loved it. Now that I knew what the final layout would look like, I edited each photo for color and brightness before sending the proof for approval. (See below.) After getting approval and subsequently payment, my custom creation was uploaded and ready to grace the shop JackrabbitFlats when the new layout became live during April 2016.

Design This - Volunteer Buttons

While most of my “Design This” series of posts describe how I turn someone else’s ideas into reality, this post is about another graphic artist that helped me more than I expected in creating volunteer buttons for an event that I coordinated last December. At the time, I knew the artist behind HotDogCrafts on Etsy had the materials and equipment that I didn’t want to invest in to make custom pin back buttons. What I didn’t know was that she was also a talented graphic artist.

I fully expected to get the dimensions that this crafter needed for the graphic and send her a ready to print jpeg for her to use to create the volunteer buttons that I wanted my volunteers to wear at the event so that they could be easily identified. When I sent my initial custom request inquiry, I sent along a graphic of the logo for the event (above) just so that she would get an idea of what I was describing. I was pleasantly surprised when I got back a graphic that she adapted to the round button format using my original photographic art and adding some elements of her own. I liked the font that she chose for the text and the addition of the snowflakes that were color coordinated with my artwork. Another aspect that I loved on her initial work up was that she also color coordinating the text with the graphic. This is a design element that I have found in my work often makes the difference between a good graphic design and a great one.

I only had a very minor change that I wanted made to the placement of the text and top two snowflakes, so I made it and sent the updated graphic back to have it used for my buttons. (The 3D mockup of the finalized button design is the second image in this post.) I was very pleased when I received my order. The printing was excellent and the assembly of the buttons was perfect. I definitely recommend HotDogCrafts for any custom set of pin back buttons that you are in need of.