200. 5 Expert Design Tips to Outsell AI Shirts on Etsy & Amazon w/ Kittl, Mystic POD & More

Summary

Podcast Summary: Crickets to Cha-Chings Episode 200 – 5 Expert Design Tips to Outsell AI Shirts on Etsy & Amazon w/ Kittl, Mystic POD & More

In Episode 200 of Crickets to Cha-Chings, hosted by Julie Berninger from Gold City Ventures, guest Juna from Detour Shirts joins to share his extensive expertise in the Print on Demand (POD) space. This episode delves into leveraging AI tools for creating standout apparel designs, particularly focusing on Etsy and Amazon platforms. Below is a detailed summary capturing all key discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. Introduction & Guest Background (00:00 – 01:32)

Julie welcomes Juna, an experienced POD seller with over two decades in the industry. Juna outlines his journey, highlighting his transition from platforms like CafePress to Amazon Merch (now Merch on Demand), Redbubble, Teepublic, and recently Etsy. Having dedicated himself full-time to content creation after quitting his 9-to-5 job last year, Juna brings a wealth of practical knowledge to the conversation.

Notable Quote:

"I'm a trained graphic designer. I've been designing T shirts for over 30 years now." – Juna [00:41]

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2. Navigating AI Tools for Print on Demand (05:32 – 11:20)

The discussion shifts to the integration of AI tools in the design process. Juna emphasizes the value of AI in accelerating design creation, especially when producing a large volume of designs quickly. He recommends three top AI tools tailored for POD:

• Ideogram: Best for photorealistic designs and handling readable text, making it ideal for large batch creations.
• Mystic Pod: Specifically crafted for POD sellers, offering features like upscaling and background removal without a credit-based system.
• Playground AI: Offers a broad range of product-specific designs, suitable for sellers with diverse product lines.

Juna mentions he experimented with 20 different AI tools, ultimately endorsing these three for their effectiveness in creating market-ready designs.

Notable Quote:

"If you can put in 10 designs a day and get at least to a thousand, you don't have to get into a thousand a day, but, you know, get to the make that your end goal." – Juna [12:36]

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3. Maximizing Design Output & Quality (11:20 – 15:14)

Julie and Juna explore strategies for managing the balance between design quantity and quality. Juna shares his approach of creating a large pool of designs using AI and then meticulously selecting the top performers to list. This ensures that while AI facilitates bulk creation, the final listings maintain high quality and market relevance.

Juna also addresses the ethical considerations of AI use, acknowledging concerns about environmental costs and the importance of staying adept with emerging tools to remain competitive.

Notable Quote:

"Don't just focus on quantity, it's more about quality." – Juna [14:09]

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4. Five Expert Design Tips for Selling on Etsy & Amazon (16:54 – 36:37)

Juna presents five actionable design tips aimed at helping sellers create apparel that stands out in a crowded market:

1. Add More Details to Your Design (16:54 – 21:38)

   • Incorporate intricate details to make designs appear premium and engaging.
   • Example: "Have big and small, have other things on there that create interest." – Juna [18:42]

2. Make It Unique (21:38 – 23:18)

   • Differentiate designs by mashing up elements or altering common themes to avoid generic looks.
   • Example: "Take one of the elements and mash it up with something else to make it unique." – Juna [22:16]

3. Use Great Typography (23:27 – 25:51)

   • Leverage unique fonts and creative text arrangements to enhance visual appeal.
   • Juna sources fonts from platforms like MyFonts, DaFont, Creative Market, and Yellow Design Studio.
   • Example: "Great typography will make your design stands out." – Juna [23:27]

4. Good Use of Color (29:18 – 33:07)

   • Employ contrasting and complementary colors to ensure designs are eye-catching and clear.
   • Focus on color balance rather than merely using multiple colors.
   • Example: "Complementary colors, contrasting colors, colors that kind of stand out. Red's always a good one." – Juna [29:34]

5. Create an Interesting Layout (35:22 – 36:37)

   • Experiment with unconventional layouts to differentiate designs from standard formats.
   • Incorporate diverse elements and text arrangements to maintain visual interest.
   • Example: "Get creative and change up your layouts. People love designs like this." – Juna [35:22]

Throughout these tips, Juna underscores the limitations of AI in certain creative aspects, advocating for a blend of AI-generated and manually refined designs to achieve optimal results.

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5. Conclusion & Further Resources (36:37 – 38:08)

As the episode wraps up, Juna shares information about his YouTube channel, Detour Shirts, where listeners can find more in-depth tutorials and insights into POD design strategies. Julie encourages listeners to explore these resources to further enhance their own Etsy and Amazon shops.

Notable Quote:

"Pick one that you feel familiar with that doesn't feel like a pain to you, like you know what you're doing and keep going." – Juna [27:23]

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Key Takeaways:

• AI Integration: Leveraging AI tools like Ideogram, Mystic Pod, and Playground AI can significantly boost design output, but it's crucial to maintain quality by selecting top-performing designs.

• Design Differentiation: Adding intricate details, unique elements, creative typography, strategic color use, and innovative layouts can help designs stand out amidst AI-generated content.

• Balanced Approach: A hybrid strategy combining AI efficiency with traditional design craftsmanship ensures both volume and quality, leading to better sales performance on platforms like Etsy and Amazon.

Listeners are encouraged to implement these expert tips to enhance their POD businesses, utilizing AI as a supportive tool rather than a complete replacement for creative input.

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For more insights and tutorials, visit Juna's YouTube channel Detour Shirts.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Crickets to Cha Ching's podcast. I'm Julie Berninger from Gold City Ventures and I'm here with Juna from Detour Shirts. Welcome.

[B]

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

[A]

We have an exciting episode planned for you all today. It will be part of our Hidden Gems segment where Juna is going to come on and introduce a concept that might be new to many of you. I know some of you are starting to branch into Etsy, Print on Demand. But what about selling T shirts and apparel throughout through Print on Demand? And Juna is an expert in this space. He mostly focuses on merch, but he also sells on Etsy too. And he has a bunch of tips that we're going to go through if it's something that you're interested in learning more about. So, Juna, let's kick it off. Can you give us a quick intro on yourself?

[B]

Sure, sure. Yeah. My name's Juna. I've been doing Print on demand since 2005. If you can believe it. I've been selling on CafePress since then. And then in 2017 I started selling on Amazon Merch. Merch on Demand. But at that time it was called Merch by Amazon, but now it's Merch on Demand and I've been doing really well on there. It's probably my top pod site that I make the most on. I also sell on Redbubble and Teepublic and Etsy now. So I'm dabbling in Etsy. I'm not like one of the top sellers there, but I'm learning and trying to put the designs that I know that works on there that I've tested with other Print on Demand sites and see how it's going on Etsy. So it's, it's a long journey. I just recently quit my 9 to 5 last year, so I'm a year into this full time content creation journey. So it's been great.

[A]

Well, congratulations. It's always exciting. As someone that used to listen to podcasts on my lunch break from my 9 to 5 to finally be like living the dream. And this is my 9 to 5 now, which actually doesn't have to be 9 to 5. I feel like it's a big accomplishment. So congrats on that milestone. That's huge.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you. It's been great.

[A]

So just to provide some context, I know many of us have bought T shirts on Amazon Merch or Etsy, but also we noticed they sell other things like sweatshirts or tank tops, various stuff and a lot of People in our community, they've taken Emily Odio Sutton's the Gift Lab course, which teaches you how to do print on demand for mugs and tote bags and ornaments and kind of more giftable things versus apparel. So when you're saying you're selling like apparel and shirts specifically, what are you selling?

[B]

Well, I mostly sell T shirts, but I put my designs on all the products that I can. So on Amazon merch on demand, there's a lots of apparel, like you're saying, T shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, and so on. There's also tumblers for on merch on demand, there's popsockets, pillows, tote bags. So I put it on all of it. But I design it for T shirts. The very few times I design it for the other products. If it's a phone case, sometimes those T shirt designs don't work on phone cases. So I design specifically for phone cases in that case. Or if it's an overall print that works better on a pillow and a tote bag, then I do that. But for the most part, I would say 90, 95% of the time, I'm designing specifically for the T shirt and it works on almost all the apparel options that are out there.

[A]

Cool. And I'm just curious because there are many ways to do this with different technology. In the tech stack, are you using like Canva and Printify, for example, or what does your technology stack look like?

[B]

There's lots of different places that I like to do my design. I like trying all different things. So I do use Canva and I export it as a png. Now, these three right here are redbubble, Merch by Amazon and Teepublic. And some of the other ones, all you need is the PNG and you can upload it to that POD site. But if you're selling on Etsy or on Shopify, you need to kind of go through Printify for the. For that. So I do use that. I use apps online like Kittl. I don't know if you've heard of Kittl AI. It's really great. It's kind of like Canva, but I don't know. I hate to say, a lot better, but different. It. It looks. It looks a lot more like vintage T shirts. And they have a lot of different things there. They started as a font foundry, and so their type and text effects are really cool. I like to use Vexels. I like to use Creative Fabrica. Sometimes I get the designs and stuff on there, so I subscribe to all the different things. And lately I've been using a lot of AI. So IdeaGram, Playground, Mystic Pod, all of those are AI apps that you can get online and that can create amazing designs for you. And they already start with templates, so if you can't think of anything to design, there's already things on there and that you can just go and tweak a little bit. So all of that and. But I started before all of those things. I started with Illustrator and now I use Affinity Designer. So I'm a trained graphic designer. I've been designing T shirts for over 30 years now. So I do it all. I try to dabble in everything.

[A]

And I think a lot of content creators are very similar in that they like to learn all the things. And for anyone that's getting started, it can actually be overwhelming. And I think this is awesome that you're speaking from the perspective of a YouTuber content creator, because sometimes if you follow someone on YouTube, it's like every week there's kind of a new tool that they're using and it can be like, all right, I just mastered this one tool and now moving on to another one. So for what we're going to talk about today, we're going to kind of break this down into two specific tips. We're going to talk about design second. But first, we're going to get into some of these AI tools and are they worth it? What do you use them for? Like, how much are you using them? We would love if you could break us through some of them because we know the names, we've heard these names, but we don't know whether they're truly worth it and what they could do for us.

[B]

Yeah, I do think they're worth it. Depending on how much you want to do. I think it can really kick start your designs up there. If, if you're stuck and don't know where to start and you want to put up 100 designs really quick, I think AI is a really powerful tool to do that. And my top three recommendations right now for Print on Demand, if you want it to do everything, the graphics, the text and everything, my top three are Ideogram, Mystic Pod and Playground AI. So those, those are the top three right now, as far as I can tell. I. I did a. A video where I tested like 20 different ones to see how it worked specifically for T shirts, but I think it would work on any, anything Print on Demand, because most of those have designs not only for T shirts but for other. Other products out there as well. So the main thing that all these three do is they have a big list of templates. I call them templates. I think that's what some of them call it. It's basically designs already made out there. And so they. They look like T shirt designs or they look like things or designs that you would find on mugs or on posters or whatever you're selling. And you can go in there and type into the AI what you want changed. So if you want the word change or if you just wanted it in a different style, it does that for you. And you can do four or five, sometimes more at a time. On Ideogram, for example, there's a batch where. Where you can put in a CSV file, a table, and create hundreds at a time. So you can really scale your designs. Now, not all of them are perfect, and a lot of times you have to upscale them and remove the background. So there is that. And sometimes, like AI, it's like it's hit and miss, but it's getting better and better, and it can really help you create lots and lots of designs and scale your business pretty quickly.

[A]

Okay, so starter designs bought into that idea. And by the way, anytime we talk about AI, we have to mention the ethical implications of AI environmental costs, because I know, I always get emails when we bring it up and thank you. And we don't have a great. I don't have a great solution or answer to that. What I'm doing as a human right now is just trying to stay on top of the tools and learn the tools, because I think that that's the direction that the world is going. It is whether anyone's opinion other way or not. But I want to make sure that I'm personally independent and know how to use these tools, because that's the future that I see. Awesome. So getting into the AI tools specifically, a lot of us are familiar with Playground.

[B]

Okay, great.

[A]

Because a lot of the content creators that we follow maybe in this space, have started to use Playground.

[B]

Yeah, I love that.

[A]

For the other two, I actually have no idea. Like, do you have. In terms of the differences between the three that you mentioned, could you describe, like, this one's good for this or I use this one for that.

[B]

In fact, I just made a video about this, so this is a perfect question. So Ideogram, I think, is more geared towards, like, more photorealistic stuff. They. They do it all. I think Ideogram is at the top for a reason. They. They were the first to create designs with text that was readable. Like before Ideogram, when you tried to put text in there in AI, it just would mess it up and wouldn't understand it. Now most of the AI apps can do it, but Ideogram was one of the first ones to do that. And it's just gotten better and better. Their library is huge. They're the ones that have that batch tool that I told you about where you can put in prompts for like 20, 50, whatever, just a long table CVSV file of it and send it to Ideogram and it will just crank it out quickly. I've done, you know, 50 at a time, 100 at a time in a day. So that's one difference with Ideogram. And they, I think their library is a lot more broad. It's not like product based. Like Playground has a lot of different product ideas. Right. When you go into Playground, you see, look at all the T shirts, look at all the posters, look at all the mug designs and all of that. Where Ideogram isn't that broad, but it's more deep. It has a lot more photorealistic stuff, posters and products and stuff. So I think that's the difference with Ideogram. You all know Playground mystic actually is Mystic Pod. It was made by. It's made by a person who is a Pod seller. So he understands all the things that are needed for print on demand. So it's really based for that. And you have upscaling and removing background for free on there once you have a subscription. It's not credit based like some of the other ones. The difference with. The difference with Mystic Pod is they're a little more. What did I say? It's not as broad as Playground. So there's specifically just T shirts, mugs, posters and I think one more stickers or something like that. So it's not. Doesn't have as many product selections as Playground, so that's one of the difference. But it's specifically made for the Pod seller and it's really new. It doesn't have as much years as Playground and Ideogram on there, but I think it's one to watch because it's made by a Pod seller. We're going to see some things in there that I believe are going to happen specifically for Pod sellers. So keep an eye out for Mystic Pod.

[A]

Okay, good to know. So it sounds like right now and just let me know if I'm wrong, but if you sell multiple things, maybe Playground is a good start.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I think if you sell some of the things that are not on on Iogram or Mystic Pod. If you're in one of those product categories that they don't serve, then yes, Playground probably is the, the one to go because they have, you know, just a lot more product selections or designs for specific products. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

But if you're like apparel and shirts.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which one do you use the most? I'm just curious, like, can you give me a percentage of it? Okay, 50% of the time I'm using this, 25% I'm using that.

[B]

I probably use 50, 50 ideogram. Well, I probably use Ideogram slightly more than mystic, but Mix is up there too, so. And I don't use Playground as much because they're, they're kind of similar in all of that. So mystic, 40%, ideogram, probably 45%. And then playground, the rest, something like that. It's not, it's, it's kind of tight, but it kind of goes ideogramistic. Playground for me.

[A]

That's good to note. And, you know, one thing I noticed just with merch sellers, they put up a lot of listings compared to regular Etsy sellers. Like in our course Gold Study Ventures course, we've seen 20,000 people start Etsy shops. Most people in the first couple months, maybe they'll get like 10 listings. And it's just hard. But for I noticed print on demand people can like put up ten in a day. They just really, really rock it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'm just curious if you have any, like, numbers around that, whether it's your own numbers or just what you've seen in the community, like giving people a benchmark. Like, hey, when you're doing print on, you need to, I don't want to say move faster, but you probably need to go after a wider net of designs in order to really make a dent correct.

[B]

Yeah, I would say put as many designs as you can up at a time. Especially if you're on these right here. I don't think it's as much for as Etsy, but just to give you an idea, on Amazon, Merch on Demand, I have about 14,000 designs, so I've been doing it for a while. And I think if you can put in 10 designs a day and get at least to a thousand, you don't have to get into a thousand a day, but, you know, get to the make that your end goal. A lot of people, you know, put up 10 designs and wonder why they're not getting any sales. I would say start with a hundred minimum and then kind of learn from There see what's working for you and everything. Another thing on the AI that I forgot to mention is I would go in and go through all those three and kind of look what style is working for you. Because like, let's say you're doing back to school designs and I would go in there and look like, who has the back to school design templates that you like? Right. That matches your style, your, your niche and whatever. So that's another way to find out which one's the best for you.

[A]

Okay. And I forgot to ask you, just AI versus non AI at this point, when you're talking about your listings, like what percentage are you using the AI tools versus you're just designing them yourself?

[B]

I'm trying to do about half and half. Whereas, well, I would say AI is faster. So maybe it's a little more AI if we counting designs, but I spend half my time doing traditional designs and half my time doing AI. So.

[A]

And do you have any sense of performance between the two? Like which one is actually? Because sometimes with these tools, like, oh yeah, you can create 100 designs, but if they're not actually great quality.

[B]

Yeah, that's the thing. I, I would say don't just focus on quantity, it's more about quality. So I really like to look at my design. I don't just crank out a hundred designs and put them all up for sale. I, I crank out a hundred designs and then pick like these are the top ones that I think will sell. Then I put those on there. So for me it's like I'm using AI, but I'm using AI in a way that works for me. I'm not just using it to mass put massive amount of designs on print on demand. I'm using it in a way that like helping me create things that aren't out there right now, creating things that are unique, that stand out and things that I think that are going to sell that I think people would want to be interested in. I'm not interested in putting up designs that nobody wants to buy. Right. Because that's, that's a waste of time. So yeah, I think AI can make some bad designs, but they can make some good designs. And it's your job as the seller to pick out which ones are the winners and then put those up on print.

[A]

So you haven't, because you're doing that extra due diligence, you haven't necessarily noticed a performance trade off.

[B]

No, no, yeah, sorry. To answer your question in the long way, you're right. Yeah, I noticed That I get sales with designs that I make with AI and I get sales with designs that it makes naturally. So it doesn't really matter that much. But I like the skill of creating something, you know, myself too. So that's kind of why I'm not using AI Totally. Because a lot of times they're like, I just want to try and make this, see if I can do it. So the challenge.

[A]

Okay, that's good to know. And I mentioned this because we have a coach on our team, Sasha, for the printables and digital products side. She is the coach for people that buy plr private label rights, principle and templates, because they bought these templates thinking that it would help them make sales, but then because they weren't doing that due diligence of like, hey, here's. Here's even a good template to buy to begin with. Here's how you take that into your own thing. And this layout, this aesthetic is not going to work. These pages are off. She's someone that can kind of help coach them into what they should do with it. The same type of concept and conversation should be had with the print on demand space about these starter AI products. Because if you're just editing what you see based on like a 30 second IG clip of someone editing, you're not going to make something that's going to work. And I think that helps us transition to the next set section where we're going to talk about the five tips. You have five design tips for us, because just like the digital product space in the shirt space, the design is everything.

[B]

It is.

[A]

And it's so hard too this at the beginning if you're. I know you have a lot of graphic design experience, but for those of us who came from other backgrounds, we jumped into this without having that design experience. So we may not actually naturally notice these things. So let's kick it off with tip number one.

[B]

All right, let me share. I actually made a thing for it, so I'm going to come in here and share all of it. We're going to share all five here. All right, can you see that? Five tips to create designs that stand out. By the way, I made this. I know we talked about AI, but a lot of these tips are ways to stand out ahead of AI or in front of AI because AI can't do everything. AI is great, but there are some things that it's limited to. And I think if you follow these tips, you can create designs that are better than AI and stand out right when everybody's Doing AI pivot and do some of these things. So here's one. So adding more details to your design. So take a look at these. These are top sellers on Etsy for T shirts. Now these would work on other products as well, but AI has a hard time with all these details. They can't. If you try and put a prompt in there for the one on the very left, put all these animals with the names of the animals and small like it can't do that and they can't do it correctly. But look at this one in the middle with the stamps. Look how many details there are in each of the stamps. The reason why this works is because one people perceive that this took a long time. It just looks like, you know, this is a premium shirt. This is really cool. And it's looks cool, right? With all the, all the different things. The last one here, you don't actually have to have a bunch of different things. Just having more details in the, on the right, there's stars, the cactus, the color of it, the, like it's everything, right. All the details in this kind of make it stand out. So tip number one, create your design, add more details. Have big and small, have other things on there that create interest that people want to need to kind of look at your design and like, wow, what does this say? What does this say? Right, that's, that's tip number one.

[A]

Can I ask a double click question on that?

[B]

Yes, yes, please.

[A]

Something that I hear a lot and I can run into this too. So somebody will, they'll, they'll get their design and then they, they just actually can't think of what else to add. Like, what are you practically doing? I mean, I know for you, you probably have such a knowledge bank of other designs that you've seen, so it just might come into your head. But do you remember even when you were starting out, like, how would you even know that it generates you. But you needed like, you actually needed like 16 mooses to be a good designer, whatever that is. Wildlife. Sixteen pieces of wildlife.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, good point. I think as long as it's filling the space, if you're filling the space. So if I try to make it so that there's not a lot of white space now there is some white space, like, you know, here and here you don't have to fill all the white space, but you're filling in some of the white space. So in this case, like I didn't need to put a thing here. So it's, it's cool. It's just you. You want to play around with negative space as well as filling the space and kind of giving both that kind of a balance. Like here in this. Howdy. One. You know, I. I probably could put another flower here or whatever, but there. There's. There's some points where you. You can fill it up enough like that you can see that they added some stars to kind of fill the space here, and I think. I think that's great. But, yeah, I think having. Just make sure that you have some big things, some small things, and you're filling the space, but then leaving a little bit of space for some white space. You don't have to fill every nook and cranny, but as long as you're filling most of it, hopefully that helps. All right, the next one here is make it unique. So these are top sellers on Etsy, but they're unlike when you. Because one of the things you want to do when you're on a marketplace is you want your design to stand out. That's what this whole thing is, right? And one way to stand out is to be unique. There's not a. This is way different than any design that I've seen on a T shirt. Like, look at the things that they're using. It's a guy in a suit of armor, right? And it's just. Usually the layout is without this frame here. And so they took this frame and made it different. This one right here, these eight balls have letters in it. Usually there's numbers in it, and they're making a word that's really different. You don't see this design all the time. So that's standing out. And this one is in a different style. Like, it's. It's really different. Usually the. The style right now is kind of one color vintage, and this is kind of just filling the space with lots of color and. And ducks and everything. So there's different ways to make your design unique. These are just three ways. I'm not saying to copy this, but if you're looking at a marketplace and you make your designs the same as everybody else, you. You might get passed over. But if you make something different than everyone else, then yours will stand out and hopefully get lots more sales.

[A]

So double click into this. I also hear this as a common question people have, and we're going to be covering it on the digital product side in our printables group for printables about how do I. If I see something's a bestseller and I want to make my own, like for example, dost thou even hoist? You see the guy doing the squat there?

[B]

So funny.

[A]

Yes. I feel like my husband would be into that. He likes lifting. But I saw that now most new people in their brain, they just can't get that out of their brain. So they're going to make one and think, oh, well, instead of doing the border that it has here, I'm going to put like a sword of arms on the four corners.

[B]

Oh, interesting.

[A]

But that's like it. They're not going to. It's going to be the same guy. Like, they just can't do it anymore. So do you have. I'm just curious in your brain if you're like, how do I. If I see something as a bestseller and I want to make my own, you know, Or. Or do you say, you know what, I'm gonna let the AI kind of do it? And that's where the AI fills it in for you. How do you wrestle?

[B]

I think you could do both. I think you could do both. But I would mash up different things. So you notice here we have a suit of armor, right. And we're doing lifting. So I would take one of the elements, let's say the suit of armor, and mash it up with something else. So maybe the suit of armor with back to school, instead of lifting weights. Right. So that's how you kind of differentiate it. You don't want it to be exactly the same, but maybe you want to do the lifting weights thing. So you take out the suit of armor part and do it with something else that's maybe vintage or something like that. So that. That's how I would. I would change it up. I would take an element of it, but not everything of it, and mash it up with something else too, to make it unique.

[A]

Got it. And even apply it to other times.

[B]

Other niches, other topics. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Okay, cool. Those are great, great points.

[B]

Number three is great typography. Now this one's an interesting one. This is hard to do, but if you can find really good typography, I think that's a way to stand out. You can see all of these on here. Like, look at this font right here. This is a very unique font. Maybe someone even hand drew it. This one right here is a pretty cool vintage font as well. And I don't know if you can see in here, but this is all font. Like, this is text. This rainbow is made out of text. So you don't have to actually have like a typography that's really different. You could use typography in a different way. You could use typography to make something, in this case a rainbow. So great typography will make your design stands out. And this is one way to stand out from AI as well. Because AI right now doesn't have the ability to create just random text. It uses a lot of simple Helvetica, sans serif, serif, serif text for the most part. You'll see when you go on AI and try and create stuff, a lot of times when you say create fancy text, it doesn't know what that means and doesn't have the that skill to kind of know like what's really cool looking typography. Right. It's really hard to explain that in a prompt. So if you can find these cool fonts and kind of put it in a way and kind of almost use it itself as a graphic element, I think that that's one way that you can stand out.

[A]

Where are you getting your fonts from anyways? I know it's always the biggest question and since Canva improved, a lot of people have been just using Canva versus buying. But I'm curious, for the majority of your designs, where are you getting the fonts?

[B]

So I get my fonts from myfonts.com so I look for some really fun ones there. There's some actually some really good ones on Dafont. If you look for 100% free, you can find some fun ones there as well. Creative Market has some good ones as well as my favorite is Yellow Design Studio has some really good fonts to buy. And if you're on the app called Kittl, like I said, they were made by a font foundry and now they're kind of like Canva where it just does everything. But they, if you're on Kittl, you have a access to a ton of great fonts and text effects as well. So they. That's all built into to kittl. So lots of different ways.

[A]

So are you just to talk about your technology flow so you're making the design. Actually you did give a percentage for Kittl. What about Kittl versus the other ones that you listed?

[B]

Yeah, so if I'm comparing Kittl to Canva, I probably use. Those are very similar to each other. I use those half the time. I man, I don't know if I, I can say percentage wise because I'm depending on the day. I'm just like, I just want to dabble in Kittl. I want to dabble in Canva. So I don't Know, if I keep track, I just, like. It depends on the design. So if. If there's graphics that I'm looking for, specific graphics, I may go to Canva because they have a lot of different graphics. If there's fonts and a vintage feel, I might want to go to kittl, because they're really good at fonts. If I want to create something new and test out AI and see what they have, what's new on there, I may go and dabble in Ideogram and Playground and Mystic Pod. And if I just feel like, you know what, I want to do something on my own, then I bust out Creative Fabrica or look for some art or draw my own art and just dabble in Affinity Designer. So it really depends on the day and what topic I'm trying to do.

[A]

So, you know, that's how your brain works. And I know we have many people listening that that's them, but then we have this whole other group that they're like, what, you just listed 100 different tools.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Well, I think what's so fun about doing something like this is that you can choose your own adventure.

[B]

Choose your own adventure.

[A]

You do not have to use seven tools, but for some of you, we know you like using seven tools because it's fun to try these different things.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, that's me. But you can. You can definitely make. You can just using Canva or just using kittl, you can definitely make a run for it and make a lot of sales with designs on Pod, you don't have to use all of them. Pick one that you feel familiar with that doesn't feel like a pain to you, like you know what you're doing and keep going. The idea is to just keep creating new designs, and you may want to dabble in another one if you want to try it out. But the idea is to use something that works for you and keep going. Don't let the technology or the different apps overwhelm you and stop you from creating designs.

[A]

That's great advice. So I guess just to close in, I started asking you a million questions.

[B]

But no worries.

[A]

My understanding of what you do, unless it's kittl, it sounds like you make the design in one of these AI tools if you're using those, but then you go into another tool and that's where you apply the. The actual text, right?

[B]

No. So the AI apps, Ideogram Playground and Mystic Pod can do the text for you, but if you're. If you wanting to do this kind of special text this kind of typography, yes, you definitely need to do it outside of those AI apps. But if you're just using it, which.

[A]

You personally do, I'm just curious if it's like, yeah, you can do it in the tool, but I want it to be special, so I pull it out and I do it in Illustrator or Canva.

[B]

A lot of times I just let the AI do it. If I'm using AI. If I'm just using AI for the graphics, and sometimes I do use that just for the graphics and not the text, then I specifically leave out the text in my prompt, or I let the AI know that I just want a graphic note, not text, and then I put the text in later in Affinity Designer.

[A]

Okay. And thank you for answering that because I know the workflow pieces can get confusing across multiple tools. So it can.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Good to know.

[B]

I should make a chart or something.

[A]

Yeah, I know. I feel like we need a whiteboard. Forget about my floral background. I need a whiteboard. All right, let's go to number four.

[B]

Number four is good use of color. I think this is a great way to stand out. And color is hard, which makes it why a lot of times right now we're seeing a lot of throwback to the vintage designs where there's one or two colors. But if you can create a design with good color in it, I think it's great way to stand out.

[A]

I think my kids would love the pink on the left that is very in the Good day sunshine. Now, one question about the colors.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We always struggle sometimes, as on the digital product side, with picking a good color scheme. And I know, for example, sometimes we direct people to the Canva. They have a lot of palette tools where you can auto generate palettes and it will help you or you can upload a picture in Canva and it will tell you what the colors are of the picture. Like, for example, if you upload a bedroom that you found on Pinterest that you like because you like the way the colors all look together, then you can find matchy, matchy colors and you can not be making up your own. And another tip we say is don't do like five different versions of red. I'm just curious for you, like, how does that translate to shirts? Like, when you say good use of color, like, what do you think these people did to come up with this color pattern?

[B]

Well, one way is contrast. So you definitely want some dark colors on some light colors. So you see the middle one, there's a light T shirt and Then the colors are darker. So it stands out on there. You don't want to use unless it's your intention to be all muted colors, but you want it to kind of stand out and make it clear for the person to see. Good color doesn't always mean lots of color. So the ones on the right here, you can see it's only using two colors, really. And the. And the T shirt as the third. I guess so. But it's a good use of color because I think that red makes it stand out. Right. And on the left here, I think what they're going for is some complementary colors. So we got the kind of. The light a lot of times, yellow and blue and purple, purple and yellow and orange and blue. And those kinds of colors kind of complement each other. So I think that was helpful. And then you have like a lighter color of the T shirt in there as well. So I think those complementary colors, contrasting colors, colors that kind of stand out. Red, Red's always a good one. Or pink, you know, those. Those kind of really help. So that's my go to.

[A]

I'm curious. I was kind of surprised to see the left and the right examples versus the middle because in the. The shirt space, I usually see a lot of text. Are you seeing what's selling? A lot of shirts that don't have text at all. And what niches are those in?

[B]

Yes, there are a lot of. A lot of the best sellers on Etsy as well as some other places are just graphics, believe it or not. So that's kind of the trend going forward. I wouldn't say all the. All of them, but it's definitely a way to stand out. One reason, I think, is because it can appeal to everyone. Another is it doesn't need translation, especially when we're selling internationally. And it really. It's the main thing. It's. If you have a really good graphic, it can really sell a T shirt. So a lot of times you're going to see a lot of flowers. In this case on the. On the left flower. Animals do really well and things like that. Things in different shapes. I'm going to have another one here where it's like flowers in a heart shape. So, yeah, you don't always have to have words. Words can help, but I don't think it's mandatory to have words on a T shirt or on any product.

[A]

Interesting. And do you notice that for certain niches and not others or certain holidays and not others or just in general, all of them.

[B]

I think if you're targeting A specific. If you're targeting like a specific holiday or a specific person, a lot of times the words help because it kind of gears yourself towards that person. And if you want like humor, I think words, words can help. But if you're just doing something general, like flowers or fruit or something like that, animals, I think, I think it's okay to just have a graphic. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, to me, I think that's cool. Because when we're getting back to the. Okay, I see this one is a bestseller now. How do I turn it into something new? Sometimes big blocker is people can't think of. They can think of another design, but they can't think of any other text that would work except for that phrase.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So if you don't even need the phrase and you can just do a design and it will still sell, that'd be really cool. So I guess like you said, it depends on. You have to get specific to like the target buyer and what you're trying to achieve. Correct versus just blanket doing it. But something people can look into.

[B]

Correct. And another tip, you don't always have to just use AI for design. You can use AI for what you just said. Come up with another phrase that's similar to this with the same amount of letters or whatever. Right. That works. And it will spit out 10, 20, however many you want on there to give you an idea. So don't, don't think of AI as just an image generator. It can help you. You can, you can even ask AI to say, here's a top selling T shirt. You can even upload a top selling T shirt. Give me 10 other ideas for a T shirt like this for this audience or whatever, you know, and it will just spit out text like it will tell you how to make this T shirt. You can even ask them that how do I make this T shirt even better for the audience? And you won't do that. So don't think of AI as just an image generator. Now those that I mentioned are. But if you go to ChatGPT or other places like Grok or anything like that, you can ask AI those kind of specific questions and it will answer you too.

[A]

I love using AI for that too. Yeah, it totally eliminates the I can't think of something else because it can think of most of what it thinks of sometimes is off. But you'll get a gem in there.

[B]

You will.

[A]

Okay, number five, last one gems. Our last hidden gem.

[B]

Last one. I, I think, and this is something AI is really has a hard time to do. Too. And that's creating an interesting layout. AI knows kind of the basic layouts. Text on top, graphic in the middle, text on the bottom and that kind of thing. But take a look at these. These have really different layouts. You got text and then the ducks and then text in kind of in the middle and the ducks around it and like the text going all kind of wonky ways and using a different font. It's using a lot of this things that we talked about on how to make it stand out. Right. We got the fonts filling the space like big and small, like the interesting layout. So a lot of these top selling designs kind of mash up all these five, five different tips. This middle one here, you can see it's got an arch text, but then text on the side and then you got a cowboy and then filling the space with the stars and all of this. So it's got a really interesting layout. Not just text on the top, graphic in the middle, text on the bottom. Because a lot of times that's like our go to. Right? It's really easy. Or maybe graphic on the top and text on the bottom. That's it. I don't know what else to do. But get creative and change up your layouts. Here's the one where it's no text and it's just flowers in a heart shape. Right. So really interesting layout and top seller. People love designs like this.

[A]

Oh my gosh. The one on the left. Most definitely not all in a row. It gives me flashbacks. So when I was working at a company that we used to have a ducks in a row meeting before we went with our bosses. And I used to get stressed out for this meeting because I, I knew how important it was to be so organized.

[B]

And now you should have wore this shirt to the meeting.

[A]

I know I should have worn that shirt now. And the shirt's perfectly. Cause if anyone's just listening and they're not watching on YouTube, the Ducks are definitely not all in a row. They're all over. There's nine ducks in their own spots.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Doing different things. Totally perfect. Okay. Well, Juna, I think these five tips are really, really helpful for people getting started with design. I know I learned a lot from us chatting. And thank you for answering all of my questions when I was to get after the the real meat of the design tips. So if people want to learn more about you and shirts and design, where can they find you?

[B]

Yeah, I have a YouTube channel, Detour Shirts. So just look it up there. I put a link somewhere I guess. Yep. But, yeah, I've been doing that since the I've been going strong that since 2020, since the pandemic. I actually have, like most people that start and stop YouTube channels over and over, I kind of start and stopped, you know, two or three times. But I really went full force since the pandemic 2020. So it's been fun.

[A]

Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a blast. And you will definitely link below to your channel.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

I know everyone will be super excited to learn more about this other avenue of things that they could sell. So thank you.

[B]

You're welcome. Very welcome.