Create brand and products

Sometimes you just have to do what you want. My creativity has been resticted to corporate design for a very long time. So, I have finally done what I want and created series of designs with a retro theme which I will expand on over time.

Create brand image

When I was creating my Tshirt designs I already had an idea for the name. I developed the visual branding in the same way I would for any client: design multiple visuals, seek opinion, reject and refine until it works.

Set-up shop

After some research and evaluation of third party solutions I settled on Zazzle for this purpose as they offer a production and distribution channel which means I can get on with what I am best at. Ideal.
I create the designs and they do the rest.

Create website

I could have hand coded the entire website (like this one) but more and more I am moving to Wordpress. The advantage to Wordpress is that it provides an excellent CMS and plugins which significantly reduce development time.

SmartPhone (mobile) website

I don't want to lose customers. Just saying my website displays ok on a smartphone is not good enough, it has to be completely optimised for mobile devices (iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc).
I have used Wordpress to deliver the content.

Set-up social media

Well, it's a must now, but the biggest objection I hear to social media is the time and resources required to keep it all updated. I could not agree more, so I have integrated my store to my website and Facebook and Twitter.

Connect media channel

My Zazzle store is configured to update my websites automatically.  Zazzle updates Facebook which in turn has been setup to send posts to Twitter. Twitter content is then fed back to my website. So, updating my social media is a breeze.

Summary

Once you have a setup like this it pretty much runs itself. You just create your products, upload them and decide what to write, once.

There's a few little extras you'll need to do like attract Twitter followers and Page likes, but the real drain on resources is cut to a minimum.