We were lucky to catch up with Dakota Floyd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dakota, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

I never planned to be a full-time screen printer.

Ever since I started playing in bands in high school I had been interested in screen printing. I made my first attempt at printing my own merch while interning at an arts center here in Atlanta. This was pre-everything-being-easily-available-on-the-internet, and I didn’t realize that some of the supplies had expiration dates, so I was wildly unsuccessful in my first attempts and gave up pretty quickly.

Fast forward about ten years, and I had become a middle school English teacher. I had been dabbling in screen printing for a few months when COVID hit. After realizing that we wouldn’t be leaving our homes any time soon, I turned my garage into a dedicated printing area and slowly started printing fundraiser shirts for various mutual aid causes. Eventually, I started taking orders from close friends and bands who needed simple designs done. I didn’t really know fully what I was doing and often tried to talk people out of having me print their stuff, but slowly I became more comfortable with the process — taking orders, setting timelines, figuring out the most appropriate inks to use for certain garments and designs, etc. I definitely goofed up a bunch of shirts, but I learned a lot over those months that would be useful later on down the line.

In May 2021 I decided to not renew my teaching contract and pursue printing full time. At that point, I was getting up at 6:45, at school until 3:30, then coming home to print until 9 or 10 every night. I wasn’t fully making enough money with screen printing to pay the bills, but I had some savings and figured that if I put as much time into printing as I did teaching that things would work out. Every month has been busier than the last since then.

Something I often told my students is that the first step to being good at something is being really bad at it. I was really bad at screen printing when I started, but I’m glad that I stuck with it. Much like any craft, there are always things to learn and ways to improve, and it’s been nice having such a large community to bounce ideas and questions off of. Something I really enjoy about screen printing as an art form is that there’s no single “right way” to do it. Everyone’s shop has different needs, and that’s ok!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

For folks who don’t know me, hi! My name is Dakota Floyd, and I run a small screen printing shop called Soda Prints. I am a thirty-something based out of Atlanta, GA. I got into screen printing because I wanted to cut out the middleman while printing shirts for the punk bands I was playing in, and now printing is my full time job.

Soda Prints is a one-person (and one dog) operation, and I really pride myself on my attention to detail and trying to keep the screen printing process as simple as possible for folks who want to work with me.

I’m a former middle school English teacher and love working with my old school, but my favorite things to print are band tees.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Something that folks say to me a lot is “You work for yourself! It must be great being able to take off work whenever you want!” While technically I could decide to take off any day I want or not start my workday until noon, the work isn’t going to get done unless I am actively doing it. If I have 1000 shirts due on Friday, it probably wouldn’t be a great idea for me to take off Tuesday through Thursday of that week, even though there’s no one telling me not to.

I don’t think a lot of people realize that even though I may set my own hours, I still have hours! I have work that has to be done throughout the day whether I want to do it or not. As a sole-proprietor, I still have to work even when I’m sick because there’s no one to take my shift. While yes, it’s nice being able to take off a week or two at a time to go on tour with my band, what people aren’t seeing are the 60-80 hour weeks that I work leading up to that to meet all of my clients’ deadlines.

Just because a job is “creative” doesn’t mean that it doesn’t require disciple to maintain a schedule and meet deadlines.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of doing work in a creative field is being a part of a something that’s bigger than yourself. I’ve been playing in punk bands for the past twenty years. As I’m getting older, I’m not booking or playing as many shows as I used to, and being a screen printer has been a way to stay connected to a community that I love in a different way. It’s also been cool getting to work with younger bands printing their first runs of merch. Even though it might not seem like much to a larger screen printing shop, for a small band, getting 30 shirts is a big deal! I try to be patient, explain the process, and treat everyone the way I wish I had been treated the first time I ordered shirts. Even when I’m swamped, I always try to make space in the schedule for bands in need.

I’ve also made so many new friends who are doing some of the most inspiring and refreshing creative work in their fields. It’s nice to be surrounded by people who inspire you on the daily, and I know I wouldn’t have met most of these folks if I hadn’t made the jump to printing full time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: sodaprintsatl