Wave to earth
merchandise
Merchandise design
This project was part of a self-directed project during my third year in university. The reasoning behind this project was due to my interest in print methods. During my first year, I really enjoyed all the print making sessions held as part of the printing and printmaking module, and therefore, wanted to develop this further. Despite all the different printing methods available in our department, I wanted to try out screen printing as it is something that was interesting to me and fit well with my other interest, collecting merchandise. One of the key items included when music artists release their own merch are t-shirts, therefore, I wanted to combine my two interests together to create t-shirt designs and print them to create merch of my chosen music artist.
Check out the full process work file here.
Why screen printing?
I chose screen printing as the printing process due to my personal interest in print making. Having tried out different print processes during my first year in university, I wanted to learn more about screen printing and incorporate that into the self-directed project. A lot of apparel merchandise tend to be produced using screen printing and therefore this printing process fit perfectly into the theme of the project, i.e. designing and producing t-shirts for a chosen band.
About wave to earth and
current branding
Wave to earth is a three-member band based in Seoul. The band consists of singer-songwriter Daniel Kim, drummer Dong Kyu Shin, and bassist John Cha. Wave to earth creates indie pop with a lo-fi sound rooted in jazz drumming. Under the motto "All Self-made," they handle all recording, mixing, and mastering themselves, as well as overseeing the artistic direction, including album art, videos, and fashion. The name ‘wave to earth’ reflects the band’s aspiration to ‘become the new wave’ and expand their universe across the world.
Having done a brief research on the current branding of the brand, it was evident that the overall theme of their branding was related to nature. All of their current physical CD albums and existing merch had elements of nature included, with red and blue as the primary colours used. However, one of the challenges was that the band had a limited number of merchandise to explore and also didn’t have an official online store. In terms of their recent album and its concept, the band had explained it as aiming to explore the naturalness of their music and explore the flaws and make it a positive experience, and this was something I focused on when creating my designs.
Existing album covers and promotional materials highlighting current branding
Designing t-shirts
For the final designs, three different designs were finalised. Each design focused on different design styles: typographic, image based and a mix of both. Based on current branding, the designs were done in a minimalist style and made great use of white space and keeping it monochrome. Adobe Photoshop was the best option when designing the t-shirts, as it allowed the flexibility of using different effects and filters to achieve the desired texture of the design and also allow the designs to be printed easily through screen printing. However, Adobe Illustrator was also used when creating some of the illustrations for the designs.
T-shirt design 1
T-shirt design 2
T-shirt design 3
Additional merchandise
The tote bag designs were created in correspondence to the t-shirt designs, therefore, reflected the same placement and design of as that of the t-shirt designs. This was done so to as response to research conducted of different types of merchandise released by music artists and most often they have the same design through all apparel and accessories to highlight the merchandise as a series and also encourage fans to collect all of them to complete the collection.
Final tote bag designs
Screen printing process
After the screens are prepared and the designs were transferred, the prepared screens were placed on top of the fabric and fixed in place using clamps. The design was printed on using textile ink, which is a combination of equal amounts of acrylic paint and textile medium, and with a squeegee, the ink was squeezed through the screen to print off the design onto
the t-shirts.
Process and end results of screen printing on t-shirts
