PoD 1.1

So time for launch is nearly upon us, some research done,  more to do, and some products and designs to create. For Cafepress, Zazzle and Amazon Merch I’m thinking of a few themes. Firstly 80s retro, Lucky Number 7, a sort of brand I’m trying to create (the theme is the number 7 but with 2 horizontal bars through the centre, making almost a currency symbol and therefore ‘lucky’), something to do with race cars, especially retro styles and colours. This appeals as the sky blue and pale orange racing colours of the seventies, plus British Racing Green with yellow stripes all evoke a nostalgic feel that I connect with. I’m sure there are many people out there about my age with similar feelings of nostalgia for items created with this evocative style

So for CafePress and Zazzle the designs are quite easy. I create large PNG files and then adjust them to the size required, obviously they don’t fit all products so you need to adjust them slightly depending on whether a square, landscape or portrait design fits better. I create PNGs as they have transparency, this is very important as different backgrounds can cause havoc with your design, so if they have transparent backgrounds they will fit more products easily. You still may have to change the design, such as text colour to stand out more (you can’t pout black text on a black T-shirt easily)  but usually black, white and a mid grey text suit most products. For Merch by Amazon the size is (currently) a very specific 4500px x 5400px, no other size is permitted so don’t bother trying it will be rejected, again a PNG is the best option to retain any transparency. Other formats are accepted but to save on duplicating storage and work I just create everything as a PNG by default when creating images for POD sites

Another thing to bear in mind is that your Merch by Amazon invite expires 120 days after you receive it, if you haven’t submitted a design that is. As I had applied many months before expecting an invite shortly I wasn’t expecting it to arrive when it did and I wasn’t ready. The only reason I wasn’t ready was just pure procrastination and a little bit of nerves, I don’t know why I’d done some CafePress designs before but for some reason because this was by Amazon, the big boys, it took me by surprise and I was a little in awe, it seems silly but it’s true. So by now I only have about 3 weeks left of the invite so it’s definitely time to get those designs uploaded and see what happens, it might be nothing, all the nerves and waiting all for nought, but we’ll soon see