Portfolio: Jesse and The Rippers T-Shirt

A closer look at the vintage detailing - Screen Version.

A mockup of the teal color I wanted the tee to be printed with.

Not too long ago I was asked at work to come up with a few ideas for some t-shirt designs. The night before I was at a radio station event with my friend and had run into some fellow industry people and one of them happened to be wearing a vintage Jesse and the Rippers tee (If you don’t know who Jesse and The Rippers are double shame!)  I thought it was an amazing t-shirt and asked him where he had found it; he said he got it on eBay and that it was most likely either limited edition or one-of-a-kind. I made a mental note and when the prospect of some new t-shirt ideas for the wholesale line came up, I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

The guys at work were a little (lot) skeptical as they’re all a lot older than me and have no idea how much impact Full House had on my generation. I became a bit one-minded and knew that I just HAD to do this t-shirt design! So, I went to the drawing board, found a good Uncle Jesse Mullet and started from there.  I also wanted to make sure that the trumpet guy was in there, I always remember the random dude with the trumpet sitting on the couch whenever Uncle Jesse and his band were practicing in the living room. He always had the coolest (lamest) sweaters!-- But how about that mullet, huh? Hehehehe. The overall effect turned out pretty good and I like the idea of doing it in that washed out discharge style with lots of vintage effects, after all, the shirt should technically be about 20 years old. And thus, the Jesse and The Rippers Tee was born! Ta-da!

Want to buy this tee? Visit http://www.resourcerags.com if you're a store and http://www.orangeshag.com if you want to buy one piece! (not available until Dec.2008)

Portfolio: L.Ron is My Homeboy!

This one is for all of the scientologists / scientology haters out there. That’s right! It works BOTH ways!

Following the basic concept of the Jesus is My Homeboy / Mary is my Homegirl fad of the early 2000’s I thought it’d be pretty funny to do an L.Ron Hubbard (the founder of Scientology) t-shirt in the same vein. I was right and it ended up being pretty hysterical.  It’s a pretty basic design, but I thought some one would find it enjoyable! Hehe.

Want to buy this tee? Visit http://www.orangeshag.com to make your order now! 

Indie Week Sponsor

Mrchgrl is proud to announce our official sponsorship of Indie Week Canada 2008 from October 7^th – 11^th. Not only will there be a valuable Mrchgrl prize being entered into the pot for the Grand Prize Winner of the festival, but we are also contributing on many levels, including something very near and dear to our heart: Merch!

Mrchgrl will be working in conjunction with Indie Week for a Merch Fair on the day of the finals (October 11^th) at The Reverb (Queen St. W & Bathurst St.).

More information to come, and make sure you go check out Indie Week Canada online at www.indieweek.com! Or else!  

Merch 101: Friends vs. Merch Girls

Lesson 3: Why you should hire a merch girl instead of a friend.

One of the most significant details that most bands seem to skip over is who is selling their merch. This is someone you are not only entrusting with your money and your inventory, but someone who you trust will do the job to the best of their abilities. Sure, in most cases whichever friend or girlfriend ends up doing it will work as hard as they can and are trustworthy, but is that all that matters?

You wouldn’t trust a friend who didn’t know anything about Pro-tools to record your album, you wouldn’t trust a record label without any artists on its roster to put out your album, so why would you enlist the help of someone who is unprofessional and knows nothing about merchandising to sell your merch? It seems like an easy way to save money, but in reality you could be using something as minute as that to give off an air of professionalism.

When a record executive or prospective manager is at a show scoping out new bands there are several things that are always on their checklist. How well does the band interact with the audience? How is the audience receiving the music? Do the performers have “star quality”? And what does their merch table look like?

Merch is a clear indication as to whether or not a band takes their music seriously and wants to pursue it professionally. If there are a couple of shirts strewn across the table, printed badly and nobody is at the table ready to sell some to prospective buyers it says that you aren’t thinking the whole “professional band” thing through. Something as simple as hiring a merch person promotes the notion that as a band you are willing to commit to being professional and taking major steps toward forwarding your career.

A merch person should be eloquent, know as much as they can about the band that they are working for, be helpful with fans and excited about the music. If you hire someone who is apathetic about these things, generally your sales will be lackluster, too. Fans want to know about the band, they want to ask questions and have an intimate band experience. Sometimes they aren’t able to get that at a show and often they are too shy to directly talk to a member of the band. This attention is often redirected toward the merch person, who, depending on their connection with the band and the type of person that they are, will either be helpful and friendly or shrug off the fans’ interest. Even the minutest details about a band or their music can make someone who was kind of a fan into a die-hard fan. It is an opportunity for fans to learn more about the bands that they see and potentially even buy more things than they would have otherwise.

Merch people need to be able to handle a rush of situations coming at them at once. When a band begins to make their mark and fans begin to line up at the merch table, there is often very little way of organizing the chaos. Being able to handle that type of situation with a calm demeanor and a smile is more difficult than it would seem. Security and Attention are of the utmost importance.

So please, before you ask your buddy to sell your merch for free, please consider hiring a professional.

Your Homework: Think about concerts that you have been to in the past where a) you spent time at the merch booth and felt connected with the band, and b) you felt brushed off or ignored by the merch person and didn’t end up buying any merch at all. 

Design Portfolio: Retouching and Restoring

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Since I was just a little girl I remember seeing this picture of my Grandma all over our house. It’s something that she loved to talk about as it was the first portrait she ever had done, she was only 16 years old and it was the first time she’d ever worn make-up. I’m sure sometime in the early 1950’s she cut it and put it into its oval frame and never left it. To me it always represented a time when my Grandma was young and beautiful and every time I saw it it reminded me of how much alike we could be. When I started really getting into tattoo culture I knew right away that I wanted to pay tribute to my Grandmother by having that image tattooed on me. I told her about it a couple years ago and although she’s always been resistant to the idea, I know that she is a little bit excited about it. I finally got her to lend me the picture so that I could take it home and give it to my tattoo artist, but I wanted to fix it up a little bit as it has faded over the last 60 years due to sun damage.

The first scan is of the original photo. As you can see there is a dark ring around the photo which is the original colouring, this part was covered up by the frame and never had the sun touch it. I wanted to return the photo to its natural state so I used Photoshop to restore it back to what I think is a pretty close match to its original loveliness. The idea for my tattoo is going to be a portrait with a baroque design style framing it, but I wanted to add a bit of colour into the face when tattooing, not too much and very subtle, just to bring it to life. I thought it’d be interesting to see what colour would do to the photo, so I did a bit of work on it and the version on the far right is how it came out.

Personally I like the colour version the best, it has a very misty but lifelike quality about it. I tried to use subtle colours and really punch out certain aspects like the fact that my Grandma has blue eyes and that her lips were probably a pretty dark red as this was shot in the 1940’s. Over all, I think it turned out pretty amazingly and I can’t wait for her to see the finished result.

Design Portfolio: Birthday Present

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I like giving my best friends presents that represent something beyond just material goods. What is usually the most available to me is t-shirts, but it's what you do with the t-shirt that really matters, isn't it? 

This year for my friend's birthday I used a past memory and some wicked photoshop skills to give her what I think is a pretty amazing present! 

The image is a take on the band death from above 1979's album cover, in which the two members of the bands have elephant noses on their faces. It's a widely known album cover and also has a pretty wicked look to it. A couple of years ago my friend and I dressed at the band for Halloween and it was a great night, so I thought I'd commemorate her aging with a great memory. 

How It Was Done:

I found pictures of each of us that I thought would have the right style for the format I was trying to achieve. I used a combination of posterising, levels and vector tracing in photoshop and illustrator to achieve the right balance between black and white. I added a few details to our faces (like her nose ring and labret ring and my monroe piercing) and then put on the elephant trunks. Then I used photoshop brushes and colour theory to achieve the background effect.

It's actually uncanny how much the elephant people look like us with our elephant noses on. :D

Design Portfolio: Costume Tees (Resource Rags)

As a graphic designer you are often paid to follow through with someone else's idea, that, to me at least, is pretty fun, but when you get to realize your own ideas it's a whole different ball game!

At my job at Resource Rags I am responsible for a significant amount of the new designs, helping create them and then eventually sell them to our customers. The coolest part of my job is when I am given full reign to do whatever I want in the design department.
We had thrown around the idea of doing costume t-shirts before and decided to go for it and see what happened, so I dove in head first and in five days had designed over 20 different styles and was on my way to the Halloween, Costume & Party Trade Show in Las Vegas. I made lists and brainstormed any idea I could think of, some I was definitely more fond of than others, but here are the results. 

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When I was brainstorming ideas for t-shirts, I kept thinking of my favourite costumes that I've seen over the years. There was a family of iPods, the Mom was a Mini and the Baby was a shuffle and the Dad was a Video and it got me thinking about things. First, family oriented costumes, and second, abstract costume ideas, not just the obvious Pirate, Clown, Tuxedo and Cowboy-style shirts. 

Design-wise, as you can see each shirt is high impact even though it uses a limited amount of colours. The only exception being the shirts that we print digitally (Hairy European Guy, Cut Out Abs.)

One of my favourites is the Ninja Turtle shirt, as it is a large print but only two colours, but because I took the shirt colour into account when designing, I was able to portray even more colours with the shirt idea. 

The Chest Cavity tee looks like it uses multiple colours, however, it actually only has a 3 color print on it using halftones and a similar process to cmyk printing. 

Anyways, take a look at the tees and let me know which ones are YOUR favourite!

How To Make a T-Shirt That Will Sell

Lesson #2: Sell your Merch and sell it Good!

There are a lot of variables that go into making a t-shirt that will sell. Most bands that are starting out don't have the budget available to hire a professional graphic designer and in most cases they have friends or people in the band who are capable of doing a quality design. However, there are many things to consider when designing for merchandising. Here are some of them;

fashion_vs.marketing
When designing a t-shirt, what should be the most important factor?
Whether or not it will sell.

If you can't sell your t-shirt, or you don't sell as many as you could be, then you're basically turning money away. So ask yourself, when you are shopping for a t-shirt what is it that you're looking for? Something that has a label sprawled across it or something that is eye catching and has substance? And when you buy a shirt to support the band do you wear it as much as you could instead of those eye-catching substance-having shirts you bought at the store? And if a band you love has several shirts and one of them just has their name on it, and the other two have wicked designs, which one do you think you would buy (given that they were the same price?)

Not everything that is made cheap has to look cheap and its about using the skills and tools available to you to make it so.

So what are the things that make a shirt eye-catching and substance-having?

For starters, they don't need to look like affliction tees. I would recommend thinking of your favourite bands, or bands you kinda sound like, even, and visiting their websites to see what kind of shirts they are selling. If you're a metal band, chances are the bands in your genre will have large, colourful and dark images with lots of big lettering and the bands name across it. Not much has changed in Metal merch in the last several years. Now, mainstream and indie merch? That's a different story.

here is an example of a shirt that if it were a new band on the scene probably wouldn't sell as much as these guys do. (probably not even close)

here is an example of a shirt (tegan & sara) that uses graphics instead of branding to sell to an audience that is fashion-conscious.

another example of a band that uses an eye-catching image along with a brand.

It still all depends on the genre, but in most cases mainstream and indie merch is either taking trends from fashion or sending them into fashion. The most common among indie and d.i.y. artists are indie/d.i.y. style shirts, meaning sketches or cut-out letters or something a bit obscure (Artists like: Death Cab for Cutie, Feist, Metric). More electronic artists are using symbolism and patterns (Artists like: M.I.A., MSTRKRFT, Justice) and mainstream Rock/Pop artists are finding their ways between the two. It's important to really grasp what your genre is so that you can understand your market. Now, obviously if your band has a very different sound and style then that should be reflected in the shirts you sell, shouldn't it?

Throwing the bands' name across the front of the shirt, although it worked for a long time, just doesn't cut it anymore. People (en masse) are generally more concerned with how they look then which bands they like (although those two things often walk hand in hand) and if your merchandise doesn't follow those patterns, it'll be impossible to having your fans wearing your stuff.

Merch is a tool that bands use to make money. But what is often failed to be realized early in the game is the fact that your merch is also a tool to help you create more sales. It is billboard sent out into the world to promote your band. If a shirt is being worn on someone who supports your music and another person sees it and is caught by its appeal, they are going to ask about it and often get information that is crucial to spreading the word about your music.

So that means it is also crucial to create eye-catching substance-having merchandise to spread the word about your music (and in turn, sell more merch!)

If your main fan base is made up of 14-19 year old girls, then chances are they aren’t going to want a gargoyle howling at the full moon on the edge of a cliff looking over a great body of water. However, find the right font for your bands name and you’ve got yourself a pretty rad Metal shirt.

Doing research plays a significant role in creating a long-lasting business and if you want to go somewhere in the vein of professionalism with your band, that’s exactly how you have to look at it, as your business.

Look at where the trends are going in fashion, pay attention to styles of screen printing that are more popular. If all the girls in your audience are wearing baby blue tees with hearts and gumdrops and cupcakes all over them, then chances are if you design a shirt in a similar style they are going to eat it up. Throw that same shirt at kids at a punk show and they will probably make you eat it. (Use a fork and knife; it’ll be faster and easier to chew that way!)

quantity_ vs. quality
When it comes to deciding on the amount of money you’re willing to spend on an early run of tees, keeping in mind things like colors and amount of t-shirts to be ordered is a big deal. There are little things you can do during the process to give fans more incentive to purchase a shirt from your band.

It costs the same amount of money to print an ugly design as it does to print a good one.

A screen printer isn’t going to tell you if your design is good or bad, they are just going to take your money, print your t-shirts and send the job on its way. They aren’t going to think twice about whether or not your shirts will sell and if you’ll be making another order because 80% of the time bands don’t reorder (chances are it’s because they made crappy shirts and can’t sell them all!)

It is up to you (or your band) to decide what print is best for you and how it’s going to sell, so here are a couple of tips and tricks to get an idea of where to start:

- throw up a couple of merch designs on your blog / website / myspace and have your fans comment on which ones they like best. Chances are they will all get some love, but there is usually one that gets a lot more attention and that is usually the one that should be getting done. You can always keep the other designs and use them at a later time

- ask your friends which t-shirts they have that they love the best and why

- hold a design contest with your fans and get them to design tshirts for your band and vote on them, the design with the most votes wins and you get a free design (this one is best offered with a free tshirt and a bit of money to the fan who designs the winner)

Another extremely important thing when it comes to the quality of the t-shirt is its style. The style of a t-shirt is basically how it fits and how it looks on, also often how it washes and wears. Guys are often a bit easier in this case and will wear just about anything, but as fashion becomes a more prominent factor in the music scene that will change and they will become less indiscriminate, so it’s important to factor that in now. Women are a lot more particular about how their clothing fits them, so paying attention to what is happening in fashion also allows you to see what kind of garments and styles you should be printing on. Right now ladies prefer longer, lighter fabric with a soft feel and the ability to wash. Men also prefer a bit of a longer, more fitted tee (genre-specific) and are more discriminating about fit. Good options for wholesaling are the ladies Gaziani (available through most screen printers and distributors) 5562 Junior Fit Tee. Although American Apparel tees are the best known for quality t-shirts, they fit a bit short and often shrink and are significantly more expensive than most wholesale t-shirts. A Men’s Alstyle AAA Platinum Tee (item #1701 in Alstyle Apparel) is a bit of a heavier, yet soft style fit and fits a bit longer also.

Taking into consideration style, fit and print, getting an early batch of t-shirts printed can be a nightmare, but if you choose a screen printer that is dependable and honest, you should be able to achieve selling out your batch.

designing_ for screen printing
When creating a new t-shirt style for sale, a graphic designer is often brought in to do the job. The problem is, most graphic designers have little-to-no clue all of the factors that go into screen printing and thus offer up beautiful, but un-printable (or incredibly expensive) designs. There are many ways to make designs that are both easy and inexpensive to print.

Colour plays a very important part of a t-shirt design; however it isn’t the most important part. If you look at t-shirts in department stores, most are only 1,2 or 3 colour prints because they are mass-distributed. Limiting your colour range doesn’t have to limit the sell-ability of your t-shirts. Larger images and graphics without letters are both inexpensive and aesthetically pleasing (and trendy!)

Using things like halftones can aid you in creating one-colour prints while still getting lots of detail and photo-real images.

So when you’re looking for a designer to make your t-shirt designs, make sure that they have experience designing for t-shirt printing specifically.

cutting_ costs
Yet another factor that plays a major role in the success of a t-shirt is how much it costs. In order for something to be cheap to sell, it has be to cheap to make. That sounds like it’s contrasting my previous statement about quality t-shirts, but there are ways to make less expensive t-shirt designs and prints that are great without breaking the bank. As previously mentioned, using a graphic designer with experience in screen printed t-shirts will allow them to provide you with limited colour designs that are screen-printer friendly.

Ordering less t-shirts to start off with is also pivotal, you don’t need to order 100 t-shirts instead of 50 because you’ll be saving $1.00 on the cost of printing. Start off with fewer pieces and increase your orders as they sell and your fan base grows. Discuss your screen-printers policies on screens and how long they keep them, often you can re-order t-shirts without paying screen fees again, or just incurring minor set up costs.

Use one-stop-shops like Mrchgrl. (Innocent plug!) When you want to have your t-shirts made, using a one-stop-shop allows you to customize your experience and order directly without dealing with all of the hassle, and often you save money because you are going to the same place for all of the services required.

sales_
One thing that is severely overlooked when creating a merchandising plan is who is going to be selling your merchandise at your shows. This may sound like an insignificant detail but having someone who is your buddy from high school sell your merch sends out a message to your fans as well as professionals in the industry that you aren’t a professional band. It may save you a few bucks, but it probably costs you sales.

Hiring someone who is knowledgeable about merchandising, your band and how to sell merch could help seriously boost sales. Fans have questions about the band and about the merch and “I dunno” or “wait until the drummer gets here, you can ask him” don’t exactly give off a vibe of confidence. Your merch table is basically a rolling store and if treated in the right manner can be another tool for you to use to your advantage.

That is the end of today’s lesson!

Your homework: Research similar bands to you and look at the kind of merch they are selling. Make notes about the styles that strike you and what about them strikes you. Rinse and repeat.

what you should know about ordering merch

Lesson #1 : Finding a Good Printer.

there are so many things happening behind the scenes in the merchandising industry and bands have no idea where to start when they want to make an order. usually they end up going with whatever is cheapest, and let me tell you that is probably the worst decision one could make when choosing a printer!

so here is an outline as to what you should know when ordering merchandise:

1. quality merchandise

printers often go on and on about how they can do this and they can do that, but the truth is, any truly progressive printer will try anything. if you want something done a certain way and they don't have the skills to do it, a good printer won't say "nope it can't be done!" they will see if there are options to make it happen. you should be able to tell by the products that they are displaying if they are the right printer for you. if they are displaying lots of corporate t-shirts and hats and things like that, chances are they aren't taking any measures to try and find business with the little indie bands and they aren't going to care if they mess up your order. coroporate businesses have the money to be able to account for losses, little bands don't.

research which printers work with bands frequently, look for merch-specific printers if you can. they will understand more about your market and the types of garments and printing you need and they will be able to facilitate that for you with little to know hassle.

2. cheap vs. good

there are so many reasons why cheap is one way to get your order severely screwed up. nobody understands better than i do how important it is to stay under budget and when you're a small band needing merch to make money you often have little to no money to start with so the cheapest option seems like the best option.

in reality, it's better to have no merch than merch no one will buy, isn't it?

be prepared to spend at least a couple hundred dollars on your first order, and remember that if the deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. make sure you know about all of the extra costs like set up charges and screens and art charges up front.

cheap prices mean cheap quality and cheap quality means it'll either fall apart or it won't sell, either way, it's not going to do much good sitting in tatters in a box in the back of your van, is it?

3. know what you want

if you go to a printer with a bunch of question marks, they're generally going to throw those question marks right back at you. do your research about how screen printing works so that when you bring them a design it will be ready to be printed.

if you don't know what you want then you'll probably end up with something you didn't want.

4. design the merchandise for screen printing

whether you're designing it or your buddy who goes to art-school is designing it, designing for printing is much different than designing for web or digital prints... limited colours save money, one colour is always the cheapest route and doesn't have to mean an ugly print. stick to one or two locations, you don't need to throw your bands logo all over the shirt, the people buying it probably already like your band anyway.

5. be assertive

don't let your printer jerk you around! (and this says a lot coming from a printer, huh?) if you asked for something and it's not what you got, say so. don't give them money for a job that was screwed up! get a discount on your merch if possible and a credit on your next order.

but this also means you have to be specific about what you want and dont want before the order goes to print, if the printer messes up because you didnt give them the right details then it's your fault, not theirs.

6. plan ahead

if you can only afford to order 10 t-shirts right now but you know those will sell out fast, make sure to let your printer know. see if they can hold your screen for a few weeks until you can get more money together to re-print your job. chances are they will and you won't have to pay a screen charge again that time (maybe just a set up) if you sell those shirts then you can go back with more money and have more shirts made!

if you remember all of these tips and put them into practice you'll be selling loads of merch in no time flat!

Homework: Go onto the websites of different printers in your area and compare and contrast pricing. See how progressive they are in terms of printing styles and look for companies that print bands' merchandise on a regular basis.

mrchgrl has a new look!

i've been toiling away with things recently and i've finally finished a lot of the new look for mrchgrl. unfortunately the website is probably going to be down for a while, but luckily we have a blog for those specific purposes. i'll keep you updated on new designs, customers and whats going on behind the scenes!

in the meantime, you can head over to our myspace to get more info or feel free to call me if you'd like to inquire about what mrchgrl can do for your band!