Creator Spotlight: Jucke & Olly from Hand-Drawn Goods
Super pumped to have Jucke and Olly from Hand-Drawn Goods with us this week! We’ll discuss their super popular Jolly icons set, their source of inspiration, promoting digital products, and why kids love their stuff.
Who built Hand-Drawn Goods and why?
Hand-Drawn Goods was created by Olly and Jucke, the team members of Hatchers. Few years ago we started to use hand-drawn elements in web design. First icon set was a bunch of icons for a handcrafts artist website. Then we got this idea of making professional hand-drawn icon sets for designers.
We created the first hand-drawn icon set that included icons most commonly used for web interfaces. People liked it, so we continued creating thematic sets. At first we were selling icons on stock websites. But very soon realised how unfair big marketplaces are — they rely on numbers rather than on quality of products and do not really help to promote creators, while gaining the bigger chunk of a product price. So, we created jollyicons.com and then handdrawngoods.com
How do you promote your store and products?
Actually, we don’t do that much. We submitted the project to design resource directories, and people follow us for updates. It makes sense to provide thorough descriptions for icon sets, so that it’s easier to google them. We create and share free sets of icons, and if people like them, they come back for more. We also share discount codes on twitter and provide exclusive promo codes for newsletter subscribers.
How have you built your audience and online presence? What tools do you use to help you with that?
Jucke:
Making sure to be accessible through the website, email and major social networks is the first step. There’s a tool called Mention that I enjoy quite a lot. It helps to react quickly to what’s being said on the web and analyse our online presence. Our shop is very small, so we can communicate directly with everyone and answer questions as soon as we get them. It’s very simple for our audience to keep up with the Hand-Drawn Goods updates. But we don’t try to engage people into excessive communication. Even our newsletter is a once in a few months digest.
There are also great analytic tools that help to improve our presentation: Google Analytics, search term analysis, heat maps, behaviour patterns and timeline views.
We build our audience by just being out there and constantly developing our project. At least this works out for us.
What’s the best feedback you received about your product?
HDG:
That it’s awesome and the kids loved it.
Which of your Hand-Drawn Goods your favorite and why?
HDG:
We have so many Hand-Drawn Goods that are not out just yet… There’s one icon set we are still working on now that’ll definitely worth the title.
Jolly Icons was the first one and deservedly the most popular icon set. And we also love Jolly UI kit!
The goal was to make a UI kit that would go perfectly with any hand-drawn icon set. It was a massive project, and we enjoyed working on it.
What are some of your favourite places online, where you get insight or inspiration for your work?
Olly:
Pinterest, it has it all. It’s the whole universe where you can wander for hours, creating new sets, gathering ideas, researching for new projects. YouTube can have a similar effect sometime, but in more entertaining way. Beside that there’s a long list of design blogs in RSS reader. You can never catch up with everything, but never stop trying. Some of the favorites are Creative Review Blog, Brand New, BP&O and Creative Roots.
What is your daily routine?
Olly:
After I wake up at 7:15, I do quick set or yoga and jump on a bike to cycle to work. Halfway to the office I stop at a cafe for an hour of drawing. This is the best time of the day, and the most important one, my head is very clear and free to study new things, experiment and brainstorm. From 9:30
to 18:30 I’m in the office, working for clients’ projects. After work I often run for an hour or two — it’s a good time to analyse the day, meditate and come up with new drawing ideas. After dinner, if it’s not too late and I have some energy left, I may work on a new icon set… usually it’s hard to stop, so the day may end very late after midnight.
Imagine that you can go back in time and give yourself advice about something. What would it be?
Olly:
Create sources of passive income, sell digital goods, always come up with new ideas. Of course, it’s much easier now, but I wish I jumped on that train 5 years earlier.
What should we expect next from you?
HDG:
We’ve just released two new icon sets: Sunny Icons and Spooky Icons for Halloween. Next step will be a Holiday bundle that will include another icon set that is still in production. But we certainly have more plans and more awesome theme ideas for hand-drawn icon sets.
P.S. Go ahead and check out our guests Sellfy shop, more than 25 awesome hand-drawn icon sets await you!
