Rap stars have merch?

I had to do a few pieces for Eazy-E, Flavor Flav, The Biz, and Notorious BIG. Doing art for 13 year old girls is super easy. Turns out rap merch can be pretty easy too.

Go big and bright.

Bright colors. Oh yeah, and as you would think, these aren't only for male buyers. Because these will mostly be sold at Hot Topic or Journey's, girls and guys will both buy them.

Oversized prints are going to be popular. Gotta be bright to match that sweet Kid Robot or LRG hoodie and Nike dunks. If you're into that.

Anyways, here are some examples I did.

Inspiration!

Here are some websites that I really like.

abduzeedo
shorpy
thegiantpeach
karmaloop
urbanoutfitters

Do your research.

It's good to know what your client is going to like before you spend time on a project. It's also good to take a little time to sit back and click around online to find inspiration! New things that spark interest or new trends.

Spend time on your sketch.

Make sure that you have a good idea of what you're going to do if it is a design that will take a long time. Sometimes clients ask for very specific things and you spend hours and hours and then you show them and they hate it. Sometimes, that could have been helped by showing them a few ideas before you start! If it sounds like they are going to be impossible to impress, then it may be smart to pass the job along to someone else.

POP.

What makes a design appealing to someone? Why do people buy t-shirts that have graphics on them? Obviously because they can be cool, but why are they drawn to them?

There are a lot of things that go into the composition of a design. And as boring as that sounds, it is something you have to understand very well to succeed in that kind of business! Knowing your buyers. You want to know if a guy or girl will be buying this, or both. What colors are "in" and also the demographic of your buyer. Are they teen or adult? Hipster or teenybopper?

Unisex designs

We can start with this design for my brothers band, A Rocket to the Moon.
This is a good example of a unisex design. Both guys and girls will like this. It has a pretty wide age demographic, too. It isn't very limited as far as buyers go. I didn't plan it that way, but I guess it just worked out, ha.



And ladies...

Here is one that is much more limited with age and gender. I did this one with a younger girl crowd in mind. It really is easier to design for girls. You just need bright colors, hearts or swirly text, and a cute subject. This shirt is obviously aimed towards the young to teen girl market. The "juniors" market.



Gotta draw 'em in.

Guys are much harder to work for. A good example for this would be a shirt I did for a UFC line that was focusing on different countries. This is pretty obviously pointed right at the male market. Black shirt, strong brushed metal texture, and strong colors. Since guys typically shop less than girls, as a designer, you have to make dudes want the shirt.



That is a pretty easy overview of guys, girls, and unisex design.

I guess we'll just jump right in to it.

When a client hires a designer, they usually give some type of direction to work off of. This can be fun or suffocating. Luckily, I have never had too much to do with suffocating direction. Sometimes they want things that just don't make sense. Other times it gives you full creative freedom.

Lets start with something everyone should know!

Sesame Street! I started doing licensing designs for Sesame Street earlier last year. That means that when a licensing company hires me, they have the licenses for those brands and put their merchandise in stores. This was the last name I thought I would be working for. I loved it.
Ever seen that SNL short "On A Boat"? That was my direction for this design. The Cookie Monster tee is based off of the MTV show, Jersey Shore, with a "fist pump" parody.

These types of designs have to hit a person's funny bone. These shirts are targeting a 13-25 year old age range as those ages most likely know what the shirts are referring to visually. They are also unisex tees.

Freedom!

Lately I've been working on a line for a company called Rock Renaissance. They gave me total creative freedom with a style I love most: LA edge. Here is a picture by a friend of mine named Dirk Mai.

This fits the LA edge style in the ways that it has blacks and mild color. It kind of gives the bohemian vibe that Rock Renaissance called for when I heard their vision.
Here are some examples of what I came up with for that specific look:

I love doing these styles because it is right up my ally. Things that I would wear. That makes it a whole lot easier to design! These are also all unisex designs. I'll go into further explanation on how to really go about making a design stand out to a guy or a girl or both.

I started designing t-shirts to save money.
In 2006, my band Brighten started touring and instead of paying a designer to design tour merchandise, I learned how to do it myself.

Long story short...

Brighten did a walk through at Fueled By Ramen records (FBR) and met some of the staff while we were in Florida. Our friends, This Providence, had me do some designs earlier for that tour. Their merchandising manager talked to me about doing some more work for FBR bands. Four years later, I'm still working with that label and have been lucky enough to grow outside of that too!

It isn't easy.

I started out doing small jobs that didn't pay anything. This is a very competitive job! Companies will sometimes have 10 or more designers to work on the same thing. Those 10 designers come up with designs for the client to look at. Out of those designs, the band should choose 1. You can see how slim the chances are of getting a bands approval in the beginning, right? It takes time but after a while, you start getting high approval rates and then don't have to compete for jobs. This is when things get real fun!

So here we are...

My job is great now. I set my own hours and am paid to draw. For a college student, or for anyone really, that would be a blessing. So I don't take it for granted and I work really hard! Currently, I've been working on designs for anyone from Lynyrd Skynyrd to David Bowie, Paramore to All Time Low, or from Bruce Lee to Notorious BIG.

Now that we are caught up, next post I'll go on with pictures.
This wont really be a text blog. I'm not really into that. I like looking at pictures! Who doesn't?

On to the next...

This is a blog I have to do for a class I'm taking and thought that I could kill two birds with one stone. I need to post more anyways. So this will be good.

Focus.

I'll be focusing on merchandising apparel. Aside from going to school full time, I design t-shirts (and other kinds of clothing) for merchandising and licensing companies like Urban Outfitters, Hot Topic, Wet Seal, Warner Brothers, blah blah blah. Yes, I said t-shirts. People don't usually think about it, but it really is one of the most common clothing items worn after socks and underwear.

Designing is a really fun job, but takes a lot of thinking and study in areas that you would not normally look into or care about. For example, what color shirts are selling really well this year? What types of designs will girls be looking for in 3 months? Where in the world do the designs you buy in stores even come from? We'll go into all of that.

I'll be posting pictures of illustrations and art I like as well as art that I've done.

Hopefully this turns out well!