Just a few years in the past, my spouse and I went searching for coffee-themed calendars for use as presents for coffee-loving mates. We have been very stunned to search out none within the calendar kiosks on the native malls or espresso outlets and only a few to select from on-line.
Being artistic individuals, we determined to create our calendars and print them on Cafe Press. Our first calendar used black-and-white photographs and was acquired very properly by our two mates.
About the identical time, I’d been engaged on a drawing type I had created known as Sketchtoons the place I combined unfastened sketches with hand-written notes in my Moleskine sketchbook. I made a decision to do a brand new calendar, creating Sketchtoons for 12 espresso drinks.
On this article, I’ll doc how I got here up with the concepts, drew, scanned, and colorized them to be used in calendars and different gadgets, after which marketed and offered the calendar with no price range.
Sketchtoon Espresso Calendar by Mike Rohde
Ideas and Analysis
The primary activity was to pick out which espresso drinks I’d function for every of the 12 months of the yr. I had the classics settled (espresso, latte, mocha, cappuccino, iced espresso, cafe au lait) however wanted a number of extra distinctive drinks, which weren’t accessible on every other calendar, to spherical it out.
For this I turned to Wikipedia, looking out first for traditional espresso drinks, then following hyperlinks on these entries to search out uncommon drinks just like the Flat White and Greek Frappe.
This labored splendidly, as there was good historic and technical data I might use to create personalized textual content for my Sketchtoons.
Sketching
As soon as I’d chosen my 12 drinks and had reference supplies gathered, it was time to start out the sketching course of. Utilizing a Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook, I first penciled out the construction of every drawing after which created the illustrations on the web page. The final step: drawing the title of the drink and writing within the textual content on the left and proper sides.
Scanning and Colorization
As soon as the illustrations have been full, I scanned every drawing from the Moleskine, then created a grasp high-resolution Photoshop file, with every illustration on a separate layer.
Subsequent, I created a typical background picture of tough, darkish brown texture on the highest and backside of every drawing, and created 4 background colours to cycle by way of the 12 months.
Every illustration was then colorized, utilizing layers above every background shade for the white tones, cup, and occasional colours, and lightened areas behind the descriptive textual content:
As soon as the colorization was accomplished, I exported every illustration, with colorized layers, to a single, high-resolution PNG file (created to specs offered by Cafe Press for the calendar).
Every PNG graphic was uploaded to Cafe Press, and finalized with an outline and pricing selections. Cafe Press gadgets have base costs, on high of which you will add a selected greenback quantity on your revenue.
Sketchtoon Espresso Calendar (Cowl)
Sketchtoon Espresso Calendar February (Espresso)
Advertising and Gross sales
I didn’t have a price range for advertising and marketing, although I do have my Rohdesign weblog with a good variety of readers. I shared particulars of the calendar: drawings, and when the calendar went up on the market in addition to follow-up postings.
I additionally added a hyperlink to the Cafe Press web page for the calendar in my e mail signature and uploaded pictures of the calendar to my Flickr account.
INeedCoffee.com additionally offered publicity, as I had been a contributor on the web page, I used to be capable of submit a small advert for the location and on my contributor profile web page.
I’ve not too long ago bought an iPod Contact, and one of many choices is to put in your wallpaper on the startup display screen. I made a decision to take the art work from the calendar and create vertical wallpapers for every illustration.
Being a former Palm PDA consumer, I noticed a sq. format model could be good to supply to Palm and traditional iPod customers, so I created a sq. set too.
The free wallpapers have been widespread, and although I can solely join one obtain of the wallpapers to a sale, I feel it helped expose the calendar to extra individuals.
Lastly, I selected two native espresso outlets I frequent and gave every of them a calendar as a thank-you. This additionally may fit as publicity to different espresso lovers who see the calendars hanging of their outlets.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I offered 80 calendars by way of Cafe Press and acquired many compliments on the calendar from those that purchased them for others or themselves. Our good friend who began this mission was more than happy with hers.
Based mostly on this yr’s calendar mission, I’d change just a few issues, primarily getting the calendar prepared in September reasonably than November, permitting consumers to see it sooner.
All in all, I discovered the mission a really fascinating experiment, which I feel went fairly properly. I’m planning a revised model of the identical calendar design for 2009, and am contemplating a brand new calendar with totally different designs and probably a special theme.
In the event you’re contemplating creating your calendar, take a look at Cafe Press. It’s free and fairly simple to arrange an account, and also you would possibly even earn sufficient cash to take your folks out for a espresso.
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