211: The Career You've Been Dreaming Of (Yes, It's Real)

Welcome to the Professional Creative. I'm so excited that you are here today. What I want to talk about is the magic of my favorite topic in my entire career, Pattern design. Because once you see it, I really feel like it is impossible to unsee it. The world is covered in patterns. And here was my aha Moment. That someone designed every single one of them. Every notebook cover, every bolt of fabric, every wallpaper in your favorite coffee shop, even the tea towel hanging in your kitchen somewhere. Someone made those designs from their imagination. And the most exciting part for me was that moment that I realized that someone could be me. Now I felt really far away from it. But I remember thinking, if someone out there is doing what I really want to do, why can't I?

And so I'm Bonnie. And this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life.

But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer.

Fast forward to today.

I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and

experience the same success.

I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

And so I know you might be thinking, okay, but how. But it is incredibly possible. It was for me and it is for you. 100%, yes. So in today's episode, I want to show you exactly what surface pattern design is, why it is such an exciting and viable career path, and how you can get started. And even if you've never thought of yourself as an artist, because I had not either. So by the time that we wrap up, I think you'll be seeing the world completely differently. You might even start imagining what your own work or your favorite product would be if you could create one today. So I want to take you back to the exact moment that this happened for me. I was standing in my mom's fabric store. This was 2009, and I was walking down an aisle stacked with bolts of fabric on both. On both sides. Now one of my jobs there at my mom. I had just gotten married, moved back to my hometown and started working for her. One of my jobs was to meet with reps and decide on what fabric collections we would carry in the store. This was so incredibly fun, and yet still, it took months until one day I was walking down this aisle, and I looked at a print, and it dawned on me that this was someone's work, that they were making and creating a career out of pattern design. And then I had one of those stop you in your track moments of like, this is what I would love to do. If I could do anything, this is what I would love. I didn't know what that meant, how on earth to get started, or if it was even possible, But I understood right away that creating artwork for products like that means that you can work from anywhere in the world, and you're likely in charge of your own schedule, Working from home, working from wherever and whenever you want. And that's really what I wanted. I had this entrepreneur goal in my bones. I knew I wanted to work for myself. I had always known that. But I also knew that I wanted to do something incredibly creative. I just wasn't sure what. Every single print, the polka dots, the florals, the geometrics, none of it just appeared. Someone has created that work, and someone is getting paid to create that work. Whether it's printed on fabric or wallpaper or stationery or gift wrap or rugs or home decor or plates, you name it. This is a job. People are making a living from this. Now, like I said, I didn't exactly know even what it was called at the time. I didn't know how to get started. I didn't know what I needed to lear. But by the end of this episode, you will know all of those things that I slowly figured out as well. So let's kind of back up and start really simple. What is surface pattern design? This was not language that I had when I started. I had no idea what it was called. I called it fabric design, which it definitely is. But it's really part of a much bigger, beautiful industry called surface pattern design. So at its core, that is creating artwork that gets applied to products. And once you start seeing it, you'll see it everywhere. The throw pillow on your couch, the gift wrap used at Christmas, Your favorite journal or planner. Even the things like packaging on your favorite foods count as a part of this beautiful design industry. Maybe it's your phone case or the mug that you're holding right now. Every single one of those is either what we call a spot graphic or a repeating pattern. Now, a spot graphic is something that doesn't necessarily repeat, but if it Repeats. It's likely going on something like a type of fabric, wallpaper, gift wrap, ribbon or tape, or something that really requires that repetition. All of those patterns come from a designer like me and maybe like you. The world is truly covered in patterns. You probably interact with hundreds of them every day, maybe without even noticing. But once you do notice, you'll see that there's a whole hidden layer of creativity woven into your everyday life. So here's something fun, maybe just a challenge for this week is to pick three patterns that you interact with. Maybe that could be your mug, your planner, your shirt tag. I don't know. But snap a quick photo of it and just keep it and think about the pattern itself. Do you like the mood of it? Do you like the theme of it? Do you like the color palette of it? Can you find the repeat? This is really fun. Can you actually find a motif or illustration in that repeating pattern and track it from left to right and from top to bottom and find the actual repeat grid? That could be what we call a half drop or a tossed layout. But if you start looking, you'll be able to find it. So immediately when I start thinking about this, I know that a lot of people think maybe the market is saturated, maybe you can't draw or you wouldn't classify yourself as artist. Sometimes we hear people feeling too old to start something new. We hear this all the time, and I want to really gently walk you through each one. But first, I want to give you a glimpse of what's possible. If you can close your eyes for just a moment and imagine opening an email from a company that you love and they are interested in working with you, licensing your artwork for a new collection that you're going to be able to go and buy in stores. You click the attachment, there it is. It is your pattern on their product. Your heart skips a beat and the future is tapping you on the shoulder. That future isn't as far away as it may feel. And I want to give you a set of very learnable steps I will never, ever, ever forget. The first time I made a pattern, the first time I pitched my work, and the first time that I got one of those emails, my life felt completely changed. So here's how those steps really begin to play out. I like to call them into different levels. So level number one is what we call curious. I would love to know where you at. You're at what level do you identify with? So the curious level is really about discovery, learning what surface pattern design is, understanding the basics and Potentially just starting to dip your toes into this world of pattern design. Now level two is emerging. Emerging is when you have actually begun committing to building out a career or a side hustle using surface pattern design. So you are actively learning pattern design. You're creating repeating patterns. You might play with a little print on demand. That's when you get to order something like fabric with your pattern on it right away. Now, in an upcoming episode, we're going to map out the entire pattern, what I call the pattern path. So it is every level from beginner to professional. So I want you to see how these build on each other. But today I'm going to start there. Level one and level two. Curious and emerging. Next week, we're going to build on that and we'll go into level three and level four. Let's talk about the market being too saturated. I, I get why this comes up. Because when you look at a big marketplace or major stores, maybe it feels like there's so much already out there. I had someone tell me at the beginning of my career that there was room for me and that changed something in me. It helped me believe, it helped me really understand that there was a space that I could step into. Meaning nothing is ever too crowded. There's always room at the top. And I want to extend that same thing to you. There is 100% room for you. Your style, your voice, your niche, whatever it is that makes you stand out, there is room for you. Two designers can draw the same exact thing with the same kind of theme or idea in mind, but the results are going to be completely different. Your work carries your own voice. It's almost like your fingerprint. It's your personality, your perspective, your unique interpretation. And that is something that we as a world really need more people to do. We are hearing from students every single day that they have landed new licensing deals with incredible companies. Really my experience at the licensing Expo trade show earlier this year solidified this for me. There is so much demand and so much need, especially right now, for human made story filled artwork. We heard it time and time again from brands, from art agencies that they're looking for designers who really have story to share, who have hand made, human made heart forward work. And that is what we are all here to do. It is in demand and there are more opportunities than I could have even ever possibly imagined. The next one I want to talk about is if you feel like you're not an artist, this is how I felt when I started. Now I would have said that I was a Creative. I was crafty, I was creative. I diyed everything. But I would not have called myself an artist. And I think the interesting thing is that many successful surface designers really don't consider themselves an artist in the traditional sense. Now, today I would call myself an artist, but still it doesn't quite fit because I'm not a fine artist. So so many of us work with things like photography, we work with digital tools, we work with collage, we work with just shapes and textures and sometimes mixed media. It is such an incredibly creative career and it doesn' really require that you are a master artist or sketcher or drawer. I know so many successful surface designers who have made livings over doodles or different ways that they layer geometric shapes or different ways that they combine textures. I have made so many patterns from nothing but scanned items from my garden. So I'll press leaves and flowers, I'll scan them all in and vectorize them and then I'll make patterns from them. So it really is a love of arranging, of being creative. But if you can't draw, that is no reason to stop pursuing this career. If you can draw, you're gonna have the easy road because if you can draw, it just makes it all the more fun. But I don't want you to stop if you feel like you're not an artist because it is a learned thing that you're absolutely capable of. Now, the next one is just something that we tend to hear a lot and it's this feeling of maybe too late or I wish I would have started 10 years ago or I'm feeling maybe too old. We have had so many 60 plus year olds join us and learn surface pattern design and have so much success. Actually thinking about Heather, who is 63 and she said that Illustrator actually reshaped her brain. She had no background in digital design, but she was determined to learn and she did. And now she creates beautiful work that gets licensed and so she's building revenue. If it is possible for her, it is 100% possible for you. If it's possible for me, it's possible for you. So let's talk about how to actually make this happen. If you give yourself just 15 minutes a day, that is over 90 hours in a year and 90 hours in a year. Well, that is a portfolio. That's three surface pattern design collections. It's your first round of licensing pitches. And so the power here is tiny, consistent actions. It beats these enormous kind of all in moments. Every time I did this the exact same way I let so much time go by because I was overwhelmed. I wasn't sure where to start. And so I wanted to make this happen, but because I didn't know how, it was easier to not do anything at all. And so one day I woke up and I realized that six months had gone by since I had decided that I wanted to be a fabric designer with everything in my being. And I realized how much time had passed, and quite frankly, I got a little mad about it. And so I promised myself that day that I would start doing one thing every single day that inched me towards accomplishing that goal. That helped me take my vision from 100 yards in front of me to, like, directly in front of me on my desk that day. And I knew what I could do that day to begin. And you know what it was? It was just to begin Googling how to become a fabric designer that helped me start understanding what I needed to learn. And as I took those daily actions, I didn't need to know what I was going to be doing in one week or one month or six months. I just needed to commit to taking the very next step. And so I, very healthily, healthfully, healthily became obsessed with this. And so I did one thing Every single day for 18 months, I didn't skip a single day. Now, 15 minutes is what counted in my mind. So some days it was only 15 minutes. Other days, of course, I got carried away and hours went by for me working on this dream. But at the end of 18 months, I pitched my very first portfolio and I landed my very first licensing contract as a fabric designer. I had never had something so impossible become true in my life. And that is the power of these small, consistent daily steps is one thing. Every single day that inches you towards your goal. Whether it's this or anything else, this is how the biggest things get accomplished in life. So pick a 15 minute window that you can protect. If you don't feel like you have it, I encourage you to find a pocket that you do. You can wake up earlier, you can go to sleep later, but I bet if you just look at your phone stats, you could probably be on your phone less and create those 15 minutes of sacred time to take action on your goal. Now, part of the trick to this is that 15 minutes doesn't sound like a lot of time. So you don't want to spend 15 minutes figuring out what it is you're going to do. You want to kind of set yourself up for success. So if you know that you have 15 minutes this afternoon, maybe you decide sometime in the morning when you're doing something else, what exactly you're going to do. So as soon as you sit down, you can begin sketching, or you can begin researching, or you can begin recoloring that pattern, whatever it is, wherever you're at, in the stages you want to know exactly what you're going to do as soon as you find that pocket of time. That's how you make the most of those 15 minutes. So protect it, find it, put it on the calendar. Show up for it like you would someone who you respect, someone that you have an appointment with because your future self is someone that you deeply respect. And she deserves you to take her incredibly seriously. So again, here's what I would love for you to do this week. Keep noticing patterns. Look at your coffee cup. Look at your bed sheets. Look at your friend's scarf. Ask yourself, if I could create anything right now, what would I make? And I want you to just write it down. There's no pressure. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I would just love for you to write it down. It might be. Would love to design fabric, I would love to design bedding, I would love to design wallpaper. Whatever it is, write it down and keep it somewhere in sight. Next week, like I mentioned, I'm going to give you the full roadmap and all of the exact steps from being curious about surface design to becoming a professional designer. We covered just levels one and two, curious and emerging today, but there's six in total and that's what I'm excited to dive into next week. Now, if this was exciting, if this got your gears turning, what I want to do is invite you to join me for a brand new workshop called Surface Design Fast Track. Now, Surface Design Fast Track is coming up September 4th through the 8th. It's a three day fast tracked workshop on giving you the proven roadmap to launch your surface design career. Really with clarity, tons of momentum, and a clear path that you can actually follow. We are going to get started again on September 4. It is a live workshop with live Q&As. But we are putting you on a fast track so that you are not wading through any information that you don't actually know. Need that you're getting exactly what you need to take action as quickly as possible. You can join me over at BonnieCristine.com FallWorkshop. I can't wait to see you.