Are there any failed designs we still love?

Are there any failed designs we still love?

As we've navigated running our Etsy store, products have come and gone. Each item is its own little experiment and opportunity to learn something new. Case in point: we uploaded the "Drink Water" tardigrade art just because we created it for our own water bottle. We didn't think many people even knew what tardigrades were, so why would it take off?

Photo of a water bottle on a table. The water bottle features a cartoon Tardigrade and says "You are not a tardigrade Drink water"

Surprisingly, it became our top seller and kicked off a whole line of tardigrade-themed products. Plus, it confirmed our vision to steer this shop in a science-y direction.

However, we can’t hate on another path we tried early on. Maybe it's because those designs are text-based and super easy to publish, even as a rookie graphic artist. Or maybe it’s because they still crack us up.

The catch? They require a super specific sense of humor, one we haven't exactly nailed down how to market.

We made four of these quirky little haikus written by ChatGPT. Sure, we didn’t personally pen the poems, but that was part of the joke.

We also created a line of "Keep Fucking Up" artwork, which we're bringing over to this new shop. They didn't exactly fly off the shelves on Etsy either, but we’re determined to give them another shot. We're constantly trying new things, and we know we'll mess up along the way. It's part of the learning process, and honestly, we love it.

Two mugs are being cheers together. The mugs say "Keep Fucking Up." highlighted in yellow.
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