Earning income from surface design — Nouvo Creative Fabric, Wallpaper & Home Decor (2024)

If you’re wondering whether it’s possible to make a viable income as a surface designer and you want to know some different ways to earn money from your artwork, then read on. In this post, I’ll cover where you should start as a beginner, how you can make a plan for earning money as a surface designer and how to get noticed. I’ll also briefly cover whether print on demand sites are worth the effort, and I’ve got some bonus tips to help you on your surface design journey.

Ok, so this post comes from another beautiful reader of my blog (thanks Jo!), an aspiring surface designer who wants to know if you can actually make a living from surface design.

If, like Jo, you’ve been reading my blog posts and you’re super pumped about the colourful world of surface design, but you’re not sure if it’s actually a viable option for you, then this post is for you.

I know there’s a lot of vague information out there telling you that you can do it, but it’s hard to know whether people are being honest with you about how much you can earn, especially when the person telling you is trying to sell you a course. Here you’ll get my no BS thoughts on the viability of surface design as a career.

So, I’m going to be very straight with you, and I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to put you off because I’m absolutely not. But I want you to have a realistic idea of what to expect going in.

There are definitely people who make a viable income from surface design. But there are also many many more people that don’t. In this post, we’ll look at the different ways you can make a living from surface design, and I’ll help you with a game plan to get you there.

I’ll also discuss how successful designers earn money, where to start and focus your time as a beginner, getting noticed, whether you should have a website or just use social media and whether print on demand is worth the effort.

We’ve got a lot to cover here, so let’s jump in!

Is it possible to make a viable income from surface design?

Because of the low barrier to entry (it costs very little to start designing artwork and selling it on products) and the fact that you don’t even need to be a good artist, coupled with the desirability and flexibility of this creative career, surface design is extremely oversaturated.

There are soooooo many surface designers now and with educational platforms like Skillshare and Creative Live, it’s really inexpensive to learn the basics to get started.

In case you don’t know my backstory, I started my surface design journey back in 2019, when I discovered surface design was a thing, and I had no real art skills or design experience.

I barely did any actual designing for the whole of 2020, but I took some courses and started to deep dive into the world of surface design. In 2021 I was able to dig in and build my portfolio to around 120 seamless patterns, and from September 2021 I started sharing my designs on Instagram and uploading them to my print on demand (POD) shops on Society6, Redbubble and Spoonflower.

So, full disclosure, I’ve made barely any income from my designs so far (around $800 AUD in total since I started making repeat patterns in 2020), but as I said above, I hadn’t really been sharing my work or making it available on products until the second half of 2021.

I currently have a part time job unrelated to surface design that supports me, and I do my designing in my free time.

So that’s the real talk and my complete honesty about where I am in my journey.

I truly believe that it’s possible to make a good living from surface design. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be investing so much time in developing my skills and my business. And there are so many businesses and products out there that need artwork for their designs, which means lots of opportunities.

How successful surface designers make money

There absolutely are people who make a full time living from surface design, people like Bonnie Christine, Bärbel Dressler and Michelle Fifis prove that it’s totally possible.

These successful surface designers are people who’ve spent a lot of time (sometimes years) building their skills and portfolio with intention and developing a fanbase that wants to support them and that makes them an attractive prospect for brands who want to licence their artwork.

But what you have to know is that all of these successful surface designers have multiple sources of income that usually includes teaching or membership to their subscription services (such as Bonnie Christine's ‘Flourish’ surface design membership, where members subscribe and pay a monthly fee for access to information, workshops, learning materials and a community).

Licencing alone isn’t very reliable, so the top surface designers usually have their fingers in many pies, which enables them to create a more steady income (ew, what kind of saying is that?? Who the hell puts their fingers in a pie anyway?!).

So, there are wildly successful surface designers out there, but you have to be realistic and understand that for most people, it will probably take at least a couple of years to develop the skills required, create your portfolio and start getting eyes on your work before things start to happen.

You need to be happy with the fact that you’re creating work that may not be appreciated for quite some time, possibly working in an unrelated job to support yourself while you get your surface design career off the ground.

You need to love designing artwork for the sake of creating artwork, otherwise you’ll probably burn out before you start earning money or you’ll just end up hating it.

But I wholeheartedly believe that if you’ve got the determination and persistence to keep going, you will be successful, because the only way you fail is by quitting. Just be prepared to commit to learning, growing and developing your skills and don’t have unrealistic expectations.

Where to start?

Now, to be honest, I didn’t really have a strategy for making income from my artwork and it’s really only since the end of 2021 that I made some firm plans for how I was going to start earning money from my surface design career.

For the first 1-2 years, my goals and plans were very vague and I kinda spun my wheels for a long time. I also had shiny object syndrome and every time I found out about another way I could earn money or use my designs, I jumped from thing to thing. That’s classic Nicki by the way, I love me some shiny things, yep, like a baby!!

Even though I had goals right from the start, they were things like, ‘learn Illustrator’ and ‘design collections’. Looking back, I should have been more clear on my why - figuring out where I wanted to go (having my own product brand) and why that was important to me so I could reverse engineer how to get there.

Now that I’ve got some firm goals and strategies, and I’m hyper focused on where I’m going and how I’m going to get there, things are definitely starting to move in the right direction for me.

Knowing why you want to be a surface designer can help you power through the difficult moments and the frustrations and it also helps to keep you on track. If a shiny object doesn’t align with your why, then you can forget about it.

Something that may help you when you're starting out is to look at successful designers. Is there a designer who’s career you’d love to have or who does the kind of work you want to do? Follow them on their social accounts, learn everything you can about them and reverse engineer their success. If they did it, you can too!

So, if you’re at the beginning of your journey, my advice is to think about what you want to accomplish with this career and why, and make a plan for how you’re going to earn an income, right from the start.

Making a plan and moving strategically with intention is the key to getting where you want to be without wasting too much time (like somebody here who shall remain nameless…).

Ways to make money as a surface designer

To get you thinking about your options, here are just some of the ways that you can earn an income as a surface pattern designer:

• Licencing your designs to brands - (you keep the copyright) either contacting them yourself or using an art/surface design agent, or in some cases brands may discover you online and reach out to you.

• Licencing your designs on Microstock (MS) sites - sites (e.g. Shutterstock) where you upload your artwork and people pay to download the files and use the art for products or personal projects (MS sites pay as little as 0.10c for licencing your artwork so this should be seen as one source of income or another place you can have your portfolio of work where you are discoverable. But you can licence the same design over and over again so theoretically you can earn money on a design infinitely).

• Selling your designs outright (the buyer owns the copyright).

• Selling digital or physical products featuring your designs - on your own website or through Etsy.

• Selling physical products featuring your designs - through print on demand platforms.

• Freelance services - where someone contracts your design services usually for a specific project.

• Commissioned artwork - where someone pays you to create a piece of artwork for them, usually a one off.

• Creating and selling digital assets - such as fonts, mockup templates or Adobe Illustrator brushes.

• Creating courses and digital information products - where people pay you to teach them a specific skill.

• Working for a print studio - a print studio is a business that creates artwork that they then market and sell to businesses needing artwork. They hire employees or freelancers to create the artwork and then do the selling for them.

• Being employed by a business - for example a fashion apparel brand that hires a textile or surface designer as an employee for a salary. Surface design jobs are out there, but they’re not very common.

Most designers have a combination of income sources, but if you’re just starting out, I’d pick one thing that you’re going to work on and focus all of your attention on doing the things that will get you there.

Making a plan to earn money without wasting time

Once you’ve figured out what income stream appeals to you and why, make a plan for how you’ll make it happen.

Learn about what you’ll need to do to earn money from that income stream, for example how does licencing work? How do you sell digital products and where? What sort of services does a freelance surface designer provide? How do you work with a print studio?

Say you wanted to licence your artwork to children’s brands, you might start by finding a children’s brand that you like and doing some research on that brand. Look at what type of designs they feature on their products so you can figure out the type of artwork you’ll need to create, as well as what skills you’ll need to develop to accomplish that.

Start developing a portfolio that aligns with your overall goals as a surface designer. A great way to start adding designs to your portfolio is by creating a collection for the brand you want to work with in a self directed project. This Skillshare course by Andy J. Pizza, ‘Make Creativity Your Career: Six Exercises to Create a Successful Side Project’, guides you through the process of creating a project that will help you achieve your career goals (here’s the link to a free trial of Skillshare*).

If you’re looking for some direction on how to create surface design career goals and break them down into actionable steps, Bonnie Christine's Skillshare course ‘Your Roadmap to Surface Design: A Step by Step Framework to Crafting Your Career’ is a fantastic place to start. (I know, I know, more Skillshare, what can I say?!).

When you’ve got a plan and you're spending each day strategically working towards your goals with intention, you’ll get there much faster. Where focus goes, energy flows!

Get noticed!

Something else I’d recommend that you do right from the start, is to get your work out there, even if you think it’s not good enough. Start before you’re ready! I really wish I’d started sharing my work on Instagram straight away, from day one.

People love to see your progress and the sooner you start developing a fanbase, the sooner you’ll have people who want to support you and buy things from you. Also, the more traction you gain, the more likely that you’ll come to the attention of a brand or creative director that may want to work with you.

Should you have your own website or use social media?

It’s definitely beneficial to have your own website in addition to social media, because with POD sites and social media platforms you have no control over what happens with your account, and it’s too easy for people to be distracted by other artists and creatives.

And you’ve probably heard of people losing their Instagram accounts for no reason and losing all of their content and followers - that’s because we don’t own our social media accounts - it’s like building your house on someone else’s land - and it can be taken from you at any time.

Having your own website as a portfolio of your work can help you look more professional and you have complete control over how it looks and what you offer on there. It also allows you to build an email list of supporters that you can nurture and eventually start selling to.

You can get an easy to build website with customisable templates from companies such as Squarespace and Wix, that don’t cost much for the basic plan, and they have free trials so you can check them out first. Wordpress is another option. I will say, I tried Wordpress and found it extremely difficult to use and abandoned it for Squarespace.

My Squarespace website was relatively easy to set up and use for the purposes of having my portfolio and blog looking fairly professional.

Having a blog is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Even when you’re just starting out, you can just blog about your experiences as a new designer, talk about art or design topics that interest you or share your inspiration for patterns and collections.

My blog actually got me my first freelance gig recently. A gorgeous swimwear brand contacted me to offer me work on a project, when my blog came up in the search results, after they Googled a specific question that they needed answered. It was completely out of the blue and something I never would have expected, so having your own website and blog content can be very valuable in ways you never thought of.

If you do decide to have a website, explore your options and don’t spend too much time on creating your website to begin with. Just get the basics up there - a portfolio page, a contact page and about page are really all you need to get started. You can upgrade or make it prettier down the track when you need to.

Are print on demand shops worthwhile?

There are definitely people out there who make a good living from POD sites, but they are the exception and not the rule.

It takes an enormous amount of work to consistently create the amount of art that’s required to start getting noticed on POD sites - you need to be uploading new work regularly (weekly if possible).

There are literally millions of designs on these sites and it can be impossible to be found. And even when someone does land on your POD shop, they may see other peoples artwork and like it better. So you really need to start building relationships with a loyal fanbase so that they’re buying your artwork because they like you.

Personally, I’ve only sold a few masks and home decor items on my POD shops (mostly to friends and family).

So, I’m obviously not the best person to tell you how to have success on POD services, because I haven’t been at it for very long and my uploading and promoting has been very sporadic. But I do intend to continue with it to see how it goes, so watch this space and I’ll let you know how I go.

If you want some advice from an expert, Cat Coquillette is very successful and she has a great course on Skillshare called ‘A Step-by-Step Guide to Art Licensing: Sell Your First Piece of Artwork Online’. And there’s lots of other classes on Skillshare if you want to dig deeper into this topic.

I will say this though, if you do decide to try out POD, do some research as each POD company has different products available, different levels of ease for setting up and some of them require you to apply for acceptance.

With POD you need to think outside the box for ways to get eyes on your artwork. For instance, follow the social media accounts of your chosen platforms, and also any of their fan accounts (eg Spoonflower fans on Facebook), and make sure to like and share their content.

Also, do a bit of trend research to see what people are buying, that way you can create artwork people are searching for.

And finally, Spoonflower runs design challenges regularly. Entering these challenges is another way to potentially get some exposure.

Bonus, final tips

Here’s a few final random tips for you if you’re just starting out:

• The most important thing for you to be doing is to create artwork and share it, that should be your priority.

• Enjoy the learning phase - this is where you get to really experiment, develop your skills, do crazy things in your work, figure out your style and make terrible work when it doesn’t matter.

• You’re where you need to be right now.

• It takes as long as it takes.

• Don’t be discouraged by other peoples work/journey/progress. Don’t follow other designers or artists if it’s going to deflate you. I rarely go on Instagram as I find the more I’m on there, the more inadequate I feel.

• Everyone starts at the beginning - your favourite artists and designers all started their journey from zero and have made terrible work and big mistakes along the way.

• Mistakes don’t define you.

• If you’re only working within your comfort zone, you’ll never improve your skills - so try new things and don’t be afraid to experiment.

• Your style will only happen when you do the work - successful designers always say you need to work on your style and you need to develop your style - but you can only do this by making a buttload of work and taking a birds eye view of what you’ve created.
  

So that’s it. I hope this post has been helpful for you. To summarise, surface design as a career is wildly oversaturated, however, there are surface designers out there who are making a very good living from their artwork. It takes hard work, determination and persistence and if you keep learning and creating art, you’ll get there as long as you don’t quit.

Commit to learning, growing and developing your portfolio, and be realistic about your expectations as it might take a while for you to start gaining traction.

There are so many ways to earn money as a surface designer, figure out where you want to go with your career and why, focus on one income stream to begin with and make a plan so you can be intentional about your learning and the work you do. The more focused and intentional you are, the quicker you’ll start earning money from your chosen income source.

Create a self directed project for the work you want to do and the brands you want to work with, and share your art from day one. Build a simple portfolio website where you can show your work, start a blog and grow an email list. You don’t know where your opportunities are going to come from and your own website is something that you have 100% control over, as opposed to social media.

Some designers have a lot of success on print on demand sites, but it involves creating a lot of work and promoting your shops regularly and consistently, and building a fanbase that wants to buy your artwork. If you do want to pursue print on demand, do some research on the site and also look into what people are buying, and think outside the box to get noticed.

I hope that you’re feeling inspired and not too overwhelmed by all of this information, and if you’ve got questions or there’s anything else you’d like to learn about, leave a comment below or send me an email.

Happy learning! xo

*By using this link to join Skillshare, I’ll also get one free month of membership, at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things that I love, and boy do I love Skillshare.

Hi, Nicki here,
welcome to my blog!

I’ve put together lots of great information and resources on topics including surface design, creativity, art, starting a creative career and building a surface design business in your spare time.

Send me an email or drop a message in the comments section of any blog post if you have questions or if there’s anything you’d like to learn more about.

Enjoy and happy learning! xo