I have experience in media-driven businesses: I ran a corporate blog for a global juggernaut, was a writer for magazines and websites, and have always been adjacent to marketing types who like to tap into my writing and video expertise.
Therefore, I went into Grey and Slate with full awareness of the hunger the business would have for a constant stream of creation (my image is always “Feed me, Seymour,” from Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors).
At the start, I set myself the pace of releasing a design a day until I hit 100 designs. Indeed, I kept that pace up until about 250 designs.
The anxiety of such a pace, tho, is the fear that one will run out of ideas.
The hits keep coming
I knew I was ready to start the store when I reached the tipping point, brimming with design ideas that could fuel the first wave of design creation. But really, the first wave was less than two dozen designs.
That was fine. I was working on developing my style, brand, and processes – art and publishing (to store).
After that first wave, I was worried I’d run out of designs, but the ideas kept coming. I was inspired by things I heard, other shirts I saw, some design ideas from other maker areas, and variants upon variants of the designs I made (maybe too many, haha).
I realized that my mind and head were constantly alert to trends or designs that could inspire me. Seemed like every time I thought I had run out of ideas, a ton of more popped up. Haha.
Tho, to be fair, I have been creatively-minded for a long time, have developed habits and tricks to spark ideas (tho others seem to forget this advantage). But when you have a monster to feed, the stakes are higher.
Steady flow
I am rapidly approaching the first year anniversary of my store (01 May 2026), and on pace to hit 300 listings, days before that.
I am amazed I’ll be reaching those milestones in the next few weeks . And still my idea backlog keeps growing.*
Furthermore, the store needs to keep growing and refreshing:
I’ve dialed back the pace to one every other day.
My style has matured, such that I might start retiring or redoing earlier designs. So I will need to keep fresh designs coming if I want to keep my store at over 300 designs.
I am, also, planning on branching out to other product types, aside from shirts.
That means I need to keep feeding the store with new designs and ideas.
And that’s OK.
While I do not know where creativity comes from, I do know I can keep at this design creation pace for ever.
*BTW, I don’t actually do a design and then release it. I do them in batches of frenzied creation and then release them in a slow drip, while I dream up the next batch.
Image by Hagar Lotte Geyer from Pixabay
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