As a freelance web designer, one of the things I encourage other freelancers to do is come up with some way to make residual income. I have a few irons in the fire right now, so I'm always excited to see what other designers are doing along these lines. Other's achievements inspire me to get on my own projects.
Today fellow designer and friend Kenn Macy finally showed me his idea for earning residual income and I loved it so much I had to write about it.
Ashi Dashi is an e-commerce store for socks designed by Kenn Macy. My personal favorite is the Kick The Habit sock, which looks like a cigarette.
I spontaneously interviewed Kenn for this article, so here's an excerpt from the interview.
What inspired you to design socks instead of web sites?
Well the inspiration came to me when i went to a boutique looking for cool socks but all i saw were overpriced t-shirts with the same designs. No socks. So i decided to do sock company instead of the same old t-shirt company. I just wanted to have fun with it.
Was the transition from flash to socks difficult? Did you learn anything new?
Well they're completely different things, but I usually use flash's drawing tool with my tablet for the initial sock designs. That came in useful actually. I learned that starting a business is hard work.
How does it feel to finally get the store launched?
God it's awesome! The site was thrown together real quick at this point and needs lots of work and professional product shots but its working and that's the most important part.
Bright Ideas
As designers, we're creative people naturally. I started designing for a living so I could make money doing something I love. What ideas do you have that could help you to do what you love and earn some residual income at the same time? What do you think about Kenn's socks?
