As a creative entrepreneur, you hear a lot of the quote, “Create once, use it multiple times.” It is a strategy of taking a creative idea and using it through a funnel, where the same piece or media is used in multiple formats. It is a way of getting the most out of an idea, because creating a project or artwork takes a lot of brain power.
Think Mickey Mouse. He started in Steamboat Willie and is now an icon of Disney, with shows, movies, games, and all kinds of merch. While that is the dream—to create one idea and build an empire out of it—most of the time, some ideas just don’t have those kinds of legs.
That does not mean that most ideas are dead in the water after their first use. Some just have short legs, or tiny legs. I have two examples to share.
The First
Early in my creative career I was commissioned to create, a set of themed prints.
A wife, for her anniversary (if my memory serves me right), wanted to create some artwork for her husband, who was a hockey player and still loves the sport. Although photos and memorabilia are available, she was hoping for something that spoke to his youth more than what is related to what you watch on TV.
So we talked about creating something that harkened back to childhood—those things that spoke to the activity of actually playing hockey. Shinny under floodlights at the rink. Pond hockey on winter afternoons.
This brought up the topic of classic wood hockey sticks, giant hockey gloves, awkward helmets, and how skates used to be leather, or at least resembled leather, rather than the fancy performance skates you mold to your feet that you find everywhere today.
With those ideas, I created four prints using patterns from old jersey material, netting, and ice paint marks, highlighting each of those pieces of equipment: Sticks, Gloves, Skates, and Helmets.
The final touch was adding colour bands across the background, like you find on the sleeves of hockey jerseys. As he and I are Oilers fans, I made them blue and orange.
The prints were a hit, and he loved them.
Since I was early in my career and I could not charge a ton for them, I suggested a lower rate if I could sell them in my online store. She was happy to get what she was wanting made at a more affordable price, and I got to keep the artwork and sell it again.
Over the years, I have not sold a ton of them, but I have sold a reasonable amount. Each time, I adjust the bands of colour to match the team colours of the client. Though it is the same concept, there is a slight customization in there for people, which customers like.
The Second
Another example is from freelance illustration.
One thing to note in freelance illustration is that when you are hired, there is a negotiation of rights. These rights are what permissions the illustrator gives to the client for the use of the artwork. Similar to the hockey prints, this changes the rates that the client pays for the artwork being created.
For this example, it was for a magazine that wanted iconography in addition to the illustration. These would create colourful section headers.
The icons were of the provinces and territories of Canada. I suggested focusing on the provincial animals, or at least animals that are highly related to the region. They needed to be clear and readable from a small size, so simple was the way to go.
The rights they asked for were for the one-month circulation of the national magazine, for the year that it was out. Anything beyond that, I kept the rights to.
So I thought they would make for great accent prints for people’s homes.
So many of us move around the country, but we still identify with where we were born or grew up. I made them up to be small 9x9" prints and 20x20" prints for those who wanted to make the piece the focus of a collage wall.
I am happy to say that I have sold a good number of them, but they have never really blown out of the water. I had hoped that they would, because I would have moved on to making shirts of them. (Still might.)
So why am I telling you about this?
Well, just this week I received an order for each of the provincial prints and one of each of the hockey equipment prints. All in 20x20" large print size!
An art curator who furnishes offices presented them to her clients as an option, and they approved them for a large office in Toronto.
This was a really nice order!
As an artist, this is where you may think that just the newest is the greatest and not pay any attention to that which you have created in the past.
But that is a mistake.
Your body of work is your career, and each thing you create will speak to someone. It is that body of work that facilitates your career. Lots of little sales of lots of different prints is what funds a long-term career.
All of these pieces started as small custom projects that were recycled into new things, which were then sold again for a while. Instead of just removing them from my shop as sales waned, I kept them there for the right people to find.
Although it is not technically recycled again, I think they have found a new life as office artwork.
Maybe shirts are now the next recycle of these projects.