I launched my first physical product about a week ago. It’s a set of bookmarks with quotes from startup leaders.
Inspiremarks is a set of five startup quote themed bookmarks I designed and printed in the last few weeks. They are 2×6 printed on 15pt premium paper with a non-glossy matte finish. The set retails for $7.99.
I went from idea to first sales in less than three weeks.
Here’s the story of how it all came together. In this post, I talk about the reason I created this bookmark set and the design process.
The Inspiration
I’m the type of person that buys more books than he has room for. Books don’t fit on the bookshelf anymore. They are on the windowsill, they’re on the floor, they’re everywhere.
I don’t often get rid of books, but we simply had too many in our house. We had to trim down the number of books. I went through the books on the bookshelves and donated dozens of books to local charities
When I was going through the books, I realized that I don’t use bookmarks. I was holding my place with book jackets, rubber bands, receipts, dollar bills, pieces of paper, and other random items.
Here’s a photo of a few things I was using as bookmarks.
I was talking to a coworker yesterday, and he mentioned he was folding in the corners of pages as a bookmark.
I was never a bookmark person. I never gave it thought. I grabbed what was nearby to hold my page. That was good enough for me.
But that soon changed.
I was reading in a coffeeshop as I usually do. It was a Saturday. I bought a cup of coffee. I bought a croissant. And I read in the corner by myself. I didn’t think twice about what I was using to mark my place.
Then — it happened.
I looked up to a an odd look from the person next to me. It was a look of disgust. I was baffled. I had no idea what I did or what was happening.
After she left, I started to become more aware of my surroundings and my possessions. It was thirty seconds after she left the cafe that I realized what the look was all about.
I was using a piece of toilet paper as my bookmark.
This was the day I decided to buy proper bookmarks.
I started searching for bookmarks the next day. I wanted bookmarks that said something about my personality or what I stand for. With my new heightened awareness of my surroundings brought on by shame, I wanted bookmarks that would say something about me. I usually read books about software, startups, management, and leadership. I naturally assumed that there would be an abundance of bookmarks that fit into these categories.
I found none.
At that point, I decided to make them myself.
The Process
I didn’t know where to start. I searched online and found a lot of interesting bookmarks. There were leather bookmarks, metal bookmarks, corner page bookmarks. There were bookmarks with strings, bookmarks made of metal, and bookmarks made of crazy colors.
It was surprisingly difficult to find bookmarks that are the rectangular shape with no bells and whistles that I grew up with. I found a few — just not the overwhelming amount I expected to find. I ordered a few bookmarks that I liked. I wanted some inspiration and to cross-examine the differences between certain sizes and paper thickness.
The ones I loved most were these two bookmark sets: 1 from ObviousState (https://obviousstate.com) and one from the New York Public Library (https://www.nypl.org/).
The Obvious State bookmarks had a very intriguing, elegant feel to them. I really loved how they were primarily black and white with small hints of other colors. The quality of these drawings were superb. I also loved the shape and feel of these bookmarks. The 2×6 size just felt right compared to larger sizes. I also really liked the non-glossy matte coating on them.
The New York Public Library Quote bookmark setwas intriguing because I loved the idea of quotes in my bookmark set. I also enjoyed the idea of having a full color palette with some unifying marks to bring the entire set together. I didn’t like how they were larger than 2×6 (They were 7.25×2.25 — I know it’s subtle, but it made a big difference for me) and I also didn’t like their glossy finish.
At the end of the day, I knew I wanted to combine elements of each of these two sets with my own style and interests.
Step 1 was determining which startup quotes to use. I had a few on the top of my head, but I also wanted to go out and do some google searches for some I might be forgetting. I ended up creating a Google Drive document of quotes to choose from.
I wasn’t able to choose which quotes to use. I decided to skip that decision process and come back to it. I still needed a design — it didn’t really matter which quotes were chosen.
I was off looking for design inspiration. I started playing around with a tool called Canva — I used canva for Twitter and blog images, but I didn’t realize they were a tool you could use for print design. While I was looking at some bookmarks on canva, I came across this intriguing bookmark with a quote from Helen Keller on it.
There was something fantastic about the bottom part of this bookmark. In this particular bookmark, it felt like it was being misused. Instead of being the focal point of the design, this quote felt like an afterthought. I thought there was something there, though. I decided to use that format of a design as the focal point of the bookmarks I was designing.
The next piece of the puzzle was color scheme. I wanted something that represented me and the things I like. As I was sitting in Cafe Fixe in Brookline, Massachusetts, I looked down and thought about how beautiful my espresso looked. I had a flicker of inspiration and started to look for coffee and espresso themed color palettes. I found some interesting websites like http://colorpalettes.net that make color palettes from images. Soon, I found this color palette and it was love at first site.
The name of the company was the next thing that fell into place. I really wanted to call this startmarks or startupmarks. My first rule of naming a company is you need to find the .com for that name. My two first choices were not available. As I kept thinking, I decided that I didn’t want to limit myself to just startup themed products or bookmarks. With that in mind, I ended up deciding on Inspiremarks. Inspiremarks allows me to build things that inspire people. And it allows me to make a mark on society. Inspiremarks!
The idea of putting branding on the bottom of every bookmark came from the New York Public Library set and how it has their logo and brand name on the bottom of each bookmark in that set.
Another interesting design choice was the placement of the Quote at the top. This was very much intentional. With this placement, when you have a closed book, you are able to see only the quote mark sticking out. I think that’s pretty cool.
Another interesting design choice was the placement of the Quote at the top. This was very much intentional. With this placement, when you have a closed book, you are able to see only the quote mark sticking out. I think that’s pretty cool.
More to come
There’s more to the story including printing, packaging, photography, and getting into stores.