T-Shirt & Merch Designs
In preparation for an upcoming tour, the indie-pop singer-songwriter, Emily Afton, needed a suite of branded merchandise designs to sell to eager fans on the road.
Role
As lead designer, I was responsible for concepting, designing and preparing for press a number of original pieces across a variety of mediums, including silkscreen (t-shirts, tote bags, poster prints) and digital prints (pins, stickers).
Strategy
The performer reached out to me online after loving a flyer design I did for a Mara Hruby and Kacey Johansing show in which she was the opening act. She’d recently decided to rebrand herself, casting off her previous moniker Emily Moldy in favor of the more straightforward and personal, Emily Afton, and wanted to partner with an artist to create a new suite of tour merch that would help launch and solidify her new identity.
We met a few times to get to know each other a bit more, digging into her interests, visual styles that appealed to her, and getting philosophical about the kinds of themes and symbolism she wanted to evoke. After distilling her thoughts into a creative brief, I began by creating a number of loose thumbnail sketches to flesh out some concepts. After nailing down her favorite, I got to work on illustration that would eventually become the “Candle” print, the first piece of what would become an ongoing partnership.
A year later, in 2016, I was tapped to produce an updated suite of assets to support her debut album, Archetype, including album art for the lead single, merchandise, limited edition art prints, and graphics to support the project’s Kickstarter campaign. Out of that project came the “Mirror” print, a concept rooted in identity, perception, and the universe of archetypes that can exist within a single person.
In 2018, I partnered with the artist on second run editions of the “Candle” and “Mirror” t-shirts with slightly modified designs.