Are you an artist who would like to have your work seen by interior designers? Spoonflower artists Julia Schumacher and Danika Herrick (who is also a Spoonflower Ambassador) stop by the blog with practical tips you can use to get your designs in front of the interior designers you wish to work with.
Julia Schumacher
Julia Schumacher is an independent textile designer from Germany. She creates seamless patterns for wallpaper, curtains, bed linens and all other home textile surfaces you can beautify.
Tip 1. Show your work.
This could mean sharing images, video footage or other documentation of a completed project along with links to your work in a magazine or website. Don’t have either of these things? You can also create your own mockups (as shown in the image above) by visualizing a design in the spatial representation or by presenting a collection. Posts like this show that you are serious about your work.
Check out our post about marketing your artwork on wallpaper for more information about using mockups.
Tip 2. When in doubt, ask.
Ask the interior designer about the specific style, look, color concept, material and size they are looking for as well as need. This may mean you’ll need to adjust the color and size of a design to fit the project. After about a week of sending a design that fits a project’s need, ask again if everything is understandable or if there are any other requests.
Tip 3. Send a link to a specific design in your Spoonflower shop.
If an interior designer is interested in a specific design, you can also send a link to the design in your Spoonflower shop. This will allow the designer to see your design on various Spoonflower products.
Tip 4. Make it easy to find your work.
Since most communication takes place via email, add your homepage and links to your social media accounts in your email signature. This way you can leave an even better impression of your work by making it easy to locate and view.
Tip 5. Create and share your collections.
Designs often work best in combination, which is why I create collections. If you have a PDF of a collection, you can send the link to a designer. Alternatively, if you create collections on Spoonflower, you can share a link directly to your collection on the site.
Danika Herrick
Danika Herrick’s background is in art, interior design and decorative painting. She quickly fell in love with interiors so she went back to school for interior design. Over the course of two decades in the trade she also ran a design blog, started a fretwork company called O’verlays and began designing fabric. It was there she found her niche!
Tip 1. Remember it’s a numbers game.
Set realistic expectations. You will hear no more often than you hear yes.
Tip 2. Target the right audience.
Research the interior designers you want to reach out to and make sure you are contacting designers who have a similar aesthetic to you. Your work isn’t the right fit for everyone, and that’s ok. Market towards their aesthetic. You might have three colorways in your collection and send different versions to different designers. Nail their color story. Capture their attention with color.
Tip 3. Do your homework.
Before you start pitching to interior designers, make sure you have the right assortment in your portfolio. Get a bunch of home decor magazines, notice what scales and motifs are trending and curate or create a collection around that. There are some common genres like plaid, stripes, botanicals and trellis, which you should include in your collection as well.
Tip 4. Get feedback.
Enlist a friend (ideally an interior designer or artist) to critique your work. You could even use a Facebook group for this. Honest feedback will help to get your collection looking great before sharing it with interior designers.
Tip 5. Share your samples.
Sending physical samples can be a great way to catch an interior designer’s attention. Making sure those samples (and any outreach in general) are as polished and professional as possible is really important. You could even include a brochure with details about your work and process (I.e., answering questions such as: Do you customize designs? How does that process work? Which Spoonflower fabrics do you recommend for which purpose?) Check out Danika’s IG Reel for how she formats her samples.
Danika’s pro tip:
Tip 6. Be a resource.
Once you are in conversation with an interior designer you can work with them using Spoonflower color maps for customizing colors and tell them about the Spoonflower Trade program, which offers interior designers a 30% discount, free swatches and more. (Want more info on color maps and customization? See Danika’s posts “How to Use Color Maps to Improve Your Designs” and “Why is My Color on Fabric Different From My Wallpaper?”)
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@Cetriya I understand where you are coming from. Most artists are not extroverts and need a game plan on how to approach. @BetsyGreer your comment was helpful. I suppose it is not rocket science although it does get intimidating approaching the designer. I guess once we push ourselves a couple of times it will get easier and when we finally get a bite, we want look at the designer like a deer looking at headlights and freeze.
Thanks for your comment, Laura!
And you’re right, it is intimidating! However, reaching out to pitch ideas, products, etc., can be less intimidating once a) you do your research to find the people/places best suited for your work, b) set a time to stop researching and start reaching out (because one can easily just research until the end of time because it’s not as scary!), c) reach out and d) repeat. Remembering it’s a numbers game can be helpful because that means it’s a process you need to repeat to see results. I remember hearing once when freelancing to expect a 10% return response rate… normalizing that helped me reach out more vs. getting discouraged when I heard no or crickets.
The great thing about reaching out is that as you note, it gets easier over time. And… each time you reach out you will learn what works, what doesn’t and will get better, smarter and also more resilient along the way!
I really do love this, though I’d love to have more details on ‘how’ to start a conversation to designers. I know its a numbers game, but would love to know how to best send my first message to them.
Thank you.
Thank you for this helpful feedback!
We’ll keep it in mind as we create future content and resources for artists. In the meantime, when you first reach out to interior designers I’d suggest focusing on the value you bring them.
It’s important to not just talk about yourself, so one way to approach this is with a “you, me, we” strategy. Talk about the designer, how you can help them, and what you can do together. I hope that is helpful!
Best,
Betsy
Spoonflower