lbella | EXPLORATION Artbook

EXPLORATION

the 2021 Sticker Club Artbook

This is related to another portfolio entry about my Sticker Club.

At some point in the second half of 2021, I started to get into a good rhythm of figuring out what I should offer every month to make it more sustainable for me. I learned that keeping it to one decent sized sticker every month is both manageable and more fun for me.

As the year goes on I start looking back at all the stickers I've made this year and being really happy that Sticker Club had ANY interest at ALL. For someone like me who is used to posting my art online for over a decade and having it feel essentially like sending images to a mysterious void, it was such a bizarre and exciting feeling to have anyone be authentically interested in my original work.

I liked this feeling so much that I came up with a really fun idea: What if I make an artbook for sticker club and include the remaining stickers I have from 2021 so that I can get these stickers into more people's hands and have more people enjoy this cute little collection I created?

Jump to:

With this project I got to truly marry my two greatest loves: illustration and graphic design by being able to take all the content I've already made over the course of the year and present it in beautiful ways and treat every aspect of it in a special way. From the meticulous and detailed typography and typesetting to the bold and in-your-face motion graphics and video editing, creating this book was just as fun as creating the designs back a year ago.

The Book

My goal for the art book was to essentially have a very abridged version of the Patreon in a physical form + the full 2021 sticker collection.

I had multiple thoughts running at once before I really dived into this project:

"I have SO many exclusive stickers left over!"
"I would feel really weird about reselling these stickers individually after the Sticker Club year is over since they're supposed to be exclusive...😐"
"god, I'd love to make an artbook someday"

I put these thoughts together and came up with one satisfying solution: the art book bundle.

I spent all May and June 2022 doing the book assembly, gathering all the images, gathering quotes from Patreon posts, organizing and laying out the book, writing up captions and providing additional context, perfecting the typography, making sure the book follows a system with a good rhythm and so much more.

The Bundles

I love spoiling people with gifts. I love the interaction between me designing something on the computer, getting it printed out, and then having that thing get put into a new person's hands. So I thought "why stop at just a book?" I want to make this a joyous, delightful, bundle of goodies!

So the full Sticker Club 2021 artbook bundle officially comes in 3 different editions: COLLECTOR'S EDITION I, COLLECTOR'S EDITION II, and COLLECTOR'S EDITION III. Every bundle comes with a full set of 2021 stickers but EDITION II and EDITION III come with fun exclusives that I won't be selling anywhere else.

The tote bag that comes with COLLECTOR'S EDITION III. It looks absolutely delightful.

I chose my runner up 4 favorite designs and I plan to get them printed on buttons so that there's more versatility on where people can place them. Have something that's not as permanent as the original stickers.

A rough mockup of the "Reverse-Maid" acrylic standee design.

While planning the artbook I thought "I want to do something special for the stickers that were my absolute favorites last year" so I offered them in different forms! Reverse-Maid is my absolute favorite sticker from last year so I wanted to make that one into an acrylic standee. Then there's my 4 follow up favorites; Halloween Spirit, M-GIRL, Scary Cake, and CAR KEY PUMPKIN PIE, I wanted to put them on buttons that you can move around and wear anywhere.

The Advertising

Since I've had couple years experience running my store Virtual-K, I knew that the best way to proceed for a small artist shop like mine was to have everything be on a made-to-order/pre-order basis. That way I don't have a bunch of inventory that nobody is interested in and I can actually store the items and eventually ship it out. So from July to September I wanted to hold a pre-order session for the artbook bundles. October would be the month to manufacture them and do photoshoots. Then by the end of November I wanted to ship them out.

I had NO idea how much interest an artbook from me about my sticker club would actually stir up so I wanted to provide a good 2 month window to have posts on social media that educate people on what this project is, who it's for, the items it comes with, and be sure to tell them when it ends.

This is the first time I've ever designed a book for the general public/my audience before and it's the first time I've sold bundles of items that are coming from different manufacturers. I knew that I had to be sure to have a very clear and solid plan so that way I can educate my customers and give them an outline of how I want things to work. Thankfully, I've done big pre-order sessions of this length before so this is not new to my core audience; they know they can trust me to fulfill these orders with long pre-order periods. I got more interest than I expected on day 1 of the launch!

I am a very big fan of having my social media videos loop with short but fun title cards or the title of the project that the ad is for (if it's big enough), so I make my own motion graphics intros and outros. I have different branded ones depending on whether the video is for my sticker club, my store, or for this artbook which gets special treatment since it's a large enough project.

The key element for my artbook's advertising strategy was to educate people on this project and showcase fun video ads that tie into the overall "this is a book about behind the scenes content" theme. What better way to link back to the behind the scenes content than literally showing people short timelapses of the featured stickers in this artbook?

With the exception of January (because I there was no timelapse feature for my program of choice when I designed the January sticker), I exported the timelapses for each design, created a fun motion graphic featuring the book's wordmark, and created a design system for 12 short 30 second ads that I would post on both twitter and instagram.

First I advertised the more education side of the ends very heavily to my core audience through my side business' twitter and other social media outlets. In the final weeks of the pre-order I'm bringing the heavy advertising back by making these timelapse ads as a 12 Day Countdown to the end of the pre-order session for both my core audience and my personal instagram audience.

I didn't want to just post the timelapses, I wanted the timelapses to mention that these are part of an artbook project so I made sure to bring attention to that and bring back that call to action at the end of the videos in case the only thing a potential customer sees is one timelapse and not the full series.

Click the images to go to the corresponding post on my instagram to see the full videos (with audio!).

Cover Timelapse

February Timelapse

March Timelapse

April Timelapse

May Timelapse

June Timelapse

July Timelapse

August Timelapse

September Timelapse

October Timelapse

November Timelapse

December Timelapse

The Completed Items...

At the time I'm writing this (mid-September 2022) the pre-order is still on-going and I have not sent these items out to be printed and manufactured yet.

If you are reading this and it is before September 26th, 2022 you can still get in on the action and buy yourself a copy of my book and some goodies!

You can also follow my instagram if you want to see the journey of me getting these items made since we're going to be entering that phase fairly soon.

Graphic Design

There's lots of things I love about graphic design, but I have a heavy lean towards brand identity, logo design, and motion graphics.

EXPLORATION

An artbook I designed that documents the behind the scenes and my experience running the 2021 Sticker Club.

Müv Cola

Brand identity, logo design, motion graphics, and marketing for a bubbly new soda company that's all about summer vibes and a good time.

LBella Branding 2020

Bold, colorful, and fun brand identity design I've done for myself!

Virtual-K

My little art shop (or "art diner") where I sell my work in the form of stickers, prints, posters, keychain charms, and more!

REMiniscence

The story of an alien robot who crash landed here on Earth and collects dreams to make her way back home.

"Paprika" Poster Redesign

A movie poster redesign for the 2006 animated film, Paprika.

Virtual-K Sticker Club

A monthly "sticker of the month" club that people can subscribe to and get fun stickers in the mail each month. Works as an extension of my art diner, Virtual-K.