Working with a designer you have never met

Keep everything in one place

The single biggest cause of confusion is a conversation spread across messages, email and phone calls. A decision made verbally and never written down is a decision nobody can check later.

Working in one thread means the brief, the feedback and the files sit together, and either side can look back at what was actually agreed.

Agree the shape before the work

What is being made, what you will receive, how many rounds of change are included, and roughly when. Four questions, answered once, prevent most disputes.

• What is being delivered
• How many revisions
• Approximate timeline
• Who owns the result

Respond in batches, not streams

A designer who receives six messages over two days spends the time context-switching rather than working. Collect your thoughts, send them together, and be clear which points are requirements and which are preferences.

Expect asynchrony and plan for it

A freelancer is not on call. Replies come in hours rather than seconds, which is normal and is the trade for working with somebody who is not on your payroll.

Build that into your timeline instead of being surprised by it.

Say when something is good

Feedback is almost always corrective, which makes it exhausting to receive. Telling a designer which parts are working is not politeness; it stops them changing the things you liked.

Time zones and holidays are real constraints

A designer in another city is on the same clock as you; one in another country is not. Neither is a problem if it is planned for, and both are if the deadline assumed same-day replies.

Festival periods in India move quickly and affect printing as much as designing. Ask about availability before you commit to a date.

Write decisions down, even the small ones

A decision agreed in a call and never recorded is one both sides will remember differently. It costs a sentence to confirm it in the thread and prevents the most common kind of dispute.

This protects the client as much as the designer — the record is what makes "that is not what we agreed" checkable rather than a matter of insistence.

Agree how you will talk before you need to

Deciding mid-project that some things happen on a call and others in writing is how records get patchy. Settling it at the start — the thread is the record, calls get summarised into it — takes one sentence.

It matters most when something goes wrong, which is exactly when nobody wants to be reconstructing what was said.

How to start

Everything runs through one place. Artists sign in at the artist studio, upload work, choose which products each piece suits, and see what they have earned. Customers browse the artwork, pick a design, and choose what to put it on.

Nothing about it is exclusive. You can sell the same work elsewhere at the same time, and there is no listing fee and no minimum.

• Apply with three pieces so we can see how you work
• Choose which products each design belongs on
• Get paid by bank transfer on what sells

Common questions