App logo templates turn Traf a weekly profit that even Apple executives would be proud of.
Traf, a designer from San Fransisco, anticipated the popularity of Apple’s new feature and turned iOS14 into his own personal piggy bank.
With the new operating system, Apple users were allowed to fully customise their home screens for the first time in the iPhone series. Unsurprisingly, this sparked a social media storm, with thousands of users proudly displaying their own arrangements, or commending the efforts of others. Screenshots showed a wide range of themes, including nature, cityscape, cartoon, and fandom-based app icons.
It was the simplicity of Traf’s minimalistic design, though, that appealed the masses, and he quickly turned this popularity into profit.
Traf’s Tariffs
The San Francisco designer packaged his app icons, coming in four monochromatic layouts, and sold them online for $28 (about £22). The design work only took him around two hours: little did Traf know, though, that he had secured himself a small fortune in that time.
‘I thought it looked cool, so I shared a screenshot of it on Twitter,’ he said, in a blog post that he wrote about the phenomenon. ‘Right away, people started asking about the icons in the screenshot.’
Well-known Apple fan sites, such as Cult of Mac and iMore, gave Traf some recognition at first, and he was able to make around $6,000 in his first day of selling.
The real sales boom began when tech YouTuber Marques Brownlees, who has over 12 million subscribers, featured the designs in his video about the iOS14 launch.
In his blog, Traf credits that video, which has been viewed more than 5 million times, for an astronomical leap in sales. ‘The next thing I knew, I was making $28 what felt like every 28 seconds. My phone turned into the ultimate dopamine dispenser (if it wasn’t already). I had to disable notifications.’
The creator insists that he’s in it for enjoyment, and not the cash, saying: ‘If I’d done this completely for the goal of making money, I’m convinced it wouldn’t have worked as well as it did’. It’s very noble of him to say so – but we’re sure he’s enjoying his profits nevertheless.
