Some sample duties:
- Researching various types of blogs and forums for promotional opportunities for our clients
- Testing our website for bugs
- Writing copy
- Finding new potential products
- Packing and shipping customer’s orders

Organizational skills are a huge plus, but so are artistic ones. If you’re into photography or playing around in Photoshop, we can find a way to work those skills in. If you really like spreadsheets and research, we’ll tailor the internship in that direction. The two of us who are currently making things work are both jack-of-all-trades types and we’d love to find someone with similarly varied skills, but if you’re totally green and super enthusiastic about bands or t-shirts, we’d still love to have you. We’re happy to fill out whatever paperwork you need to get credit for this internship, but at this time we cannot provide a stipend. (We will, however, feed you when you’re on location, reimburse your travel, and give you your pick of obscure band t-shirts.)

Email your resume to info at grizzlymouse.com along with a cover letter that tells us something about why you think you’d be a good fit. Preference given to those who can receive college credit for the internship but all will be considered.

Even just talking about DIY is empowering! I bet at least a few of you read that last blog and responded with a hearty, “Yes! I’m creative and broke and my fans will LOVE things I make personally! I’m going to buy supplies right now!” I also bet some percentage of that group is now surrounded by a pile of thrift-store t-shirts, blank cds, Sharpies and gin, wondering what the hell they’ve gotten themselves into.

The truth is, DIY isn’t for everyone, and here are some excellent reasons to pay a pro to make your merch dreams come true.

1. You don’t like the DIY look.
Some artists (like some people) just don’t like the etsy-meets-Girl-Scouts-craft-day aesthetic. DIY isn’t for people who want their designs to be complicated, like multi-color screenprints, or who will be irritated by the natural variations that accompany the handmade look. Plus if you don’t like the way DIY looks, it’s a fair bet that your fans won’t either. Save your sanity: have your merch made by professionals.

2. You don’t have time to DIY.
Even one DIY tee is likely to consume several entire days once you take into account the time you’ll spend creating the design, shopping for materials and t-shirt blanks, cutting the stencils or preparing the screens, printing, ironing the shirts to set the print and cleaning up the mess you’ve made. It’s a big time commitment and it’s totally okay if you’d rather hire someone to do it for you and spend the time you’ve saved booking shows or watching reruns of “Dr. Who.”

3. You don’t have the artistic skills to DIY.
Cutting stencils or making screens can be complicated, and not every artist is also a great merch designer. (If this is you, don’t feel bad. I couldn’t pay my rent without people like you!) Making merch yourself can add a great personal touch, but it’s folly if the result is unappealing to your fans.  Let’s face it, Sia is pretty much the only artist who can successfully sell a shirt with this kind of design:

4. You need a LOT of merch.
If you know there will be a large demand for a particular item, don’t try to DIY.  You might save money but you’ll lose your mind.  Gaga’s taking you on tour as her opening act?  Just say no to trying to print 200 tees using your living room as a studio.

5.  You definitely need the merch by a specific date.
That Gaga tour starts in a month?  Don’t assume you’ll have time to create all your tour merch before you leave.  The best case scenario is that you manage to pull some rad DIY merch together without stressing yourself out too much, but the worst is that you end up with no merch to sell on the road.  Don’t risk it.  Hire a professional whose job it is to make sure the merch is in your hands when the van pulls out of your driveway.

Bonus tip: even if you are hiring pros to make your merch, be sure to leave enough time for them to get your order to you without incurring rush fees.  I like to order t-shirts at least a month before I’ll need them, but things like glassware, vinyl and other complicated items can take up eight weeks to come in.

Next up on the MerchBlog: Merch Economics 101, wherein I’ll discuss the most profitable merch items, why quantity discounts are your friend and what items you should start with if you’ve only got $500 to spend.

For many, DIY makes a lot of sense, but it’s not the best option for everyone.  This blog will cover some of the reasons to DIY and the next one will take the opposite perspective.

1. You don’t have start-up capital to order professionally printed items.  This is the most common reason I hear from bands when it comes to making the DIY decision.  Many printers and t-shirt companies have minimum orders that are out of reach for an indie artists, and even if they do start with low minimums, the price per tee for 25 isn’t usually a bargain.  But if you are willing to do the labor yourself, you can save a pretty penny by DIYing things like t-shirts.

2. You’re artistic and you think making merch yourself sounds fun.  There’s something awesome about looking at a stack of newly-branded tees and saying, “I did that!”    When a musician is also an excellent visual artist, creating their own merch designs is fulfilling. (Though in my experience, these musicians are quite fulfilled at t-shirt number 7 and much less fulfilled while screening t-shirt number 38. Which brings us to….)

3. You want to print a small run because you don’t know what the demand for merch will be.  If you’ve never offered merch before, you won’t know what sorts of things your fans are interested in.  If you’re in a metal band, you’re pretty safe going with a black tee, but what if you’re in a chill wave group?  DIY allows you to try out several different designs, shirt colors, and even types of items to see what thrills your fans before you make the big commitment to a larger order.

4. You think your fans will appreciate the personal touch.  DIY tees have always been a part of the folk and punk scenes.  Certain fanbases are much more likely to get excited than others over a shirt THE BAND MADE THEMSELVES.  The DIY product also tends to be less polished than professional printed items, which is a turn-off to some customers.  If your fans all look like they stepped out of an episode of Revenge, they probably will not consider your not-quite-perfectly stenciled tee cute.  (However, if your fans are the sort to say things like, “Oh, I’ve been listening to Artist since before he was anybody,” those one-of-a-kind misprint DIY tees can be a badge of indie honor.)

5. You want to offer merch that’s completely different. Take musician Olga Nunes. She ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last year with merch rewards that included laser-cut wooden skeleton key necklaces and “Message in a Bottle” kits, which contained “one bottle, one metal skeleton key, twine, one red balloon, writing paper, and one bamboo skeleton key necklace” and were described as being “for letters to recipients with no known address.” There is nothing mass-produced about that, which is incredibly cool, so it’s no wonder to me that the kits are already sold out on Olga’s site. If you want to offer that kind of merch, you pretty much have to make it yourself– unless you’re going to hire someone just as DIY as you to do it.

So there you have it! Five excellent reasons to DIY your own merch.  Next blog, I’ll give you five equally persuasive reasons to stay as far away from DIY as possible.

And last night, I called an artist I love out on bad merch.

Bad merch can happen to anyone.  Maybe you forgot about the design until the last minute and just plunked your (square) album cover down on a tee and called it done.  Maybe you had a great concept but you or your hired graphic gunslinger couldn’t make it work in real life.  It’s no one’s fault, precisely; it’s just that merchandise design is not the same thing as graphic design.

Things that work on paper or computer screens will not always work as shirts.  (And even if the design does translate, there’s more to selling merch than having a cool design.  More on that in another blog.)

Today, Jonathan Coulton released his new album, Artificial Heart.

Jonathan Coulton (or “JoCo” as many of his fans call him) is a brilliant, insightful songwriter.  He’s also built his own empire and makes money from selling music directly to his fans, which is huge considering that the general population can download pretty much anything for free.  JoCo tweets, interacts with fans, even makes his own DIY music videos and he does it all really well.

Jonathan Coulton is way ahead of the game when it comes to selling his STUFF to his fans.  He knew enough to create several different packages at different price points, all of which include digital downloads.  He wrote witty descriptions of them, and I was charmed enough by the whole thing that I decided when I next had the spare cash, I’d pick up his $100 package, which includes the cd, THREE t-shirts, posters, doodads, a USB key with his entire discography, a vinyl, exclusive tracks, and even your very own nemesis.  Adding it up in my head, it seemed like an incredible deal, plus I am a big proponent of putting your money where your ears are and supporting indie artists.

However.  After tweeting my glee about the big package, I looked at the shirt designs, which I’m including here with my fingers crossed that JoCo doesn’t bring a cease & desist down on my ass.

The official Artificial Heart tee:

The two additional “limited-edition” tees:

Both the designs and how the mock-ups were presented were enough to seriously dampen my enthusiasm.   The official shirt logo is very small and doesn’t have JoCo’s name or the album title on it (unless it’s on the back, which isn’t shown.)  The text isn’t aligned in a visually pleasing or innovative way. Simplicity is awesome; oversimplification is not.

The second two shirt designs may be in-jokes that hardcore JoCo fans understand. While the superfans are an artist’s bread and butter, the goal should be to create merch that even casual fans want to sport.  The visual should be awesome enough that it’s irresistible even if you don’t know the joke!  Hell, the goal should be to create merch that causes people who’ve never heard of you to say, “What is that and how do I get one?!”  (This will almost never happen, but one can strive for it.)

I tweeted my disappointment, which led to a tweet-conversation between me and one of my art-friends, Olga Nunes:

bethofalltrades actually, having checked out @jonathancoulton‘s tee designs the big package isn’t so attractive. sad.

olganunes @bethofalltrades Love the idea of it, though.

bethofalltrades @olganunes me too. i just wish the tee designs were stronger (and guaranteed to be printed on high-quality shirts)

olganunes @bethofalltrades It’s a hell of a package for $100, though. Maybe the tee shirts are a little lofi because of the low cost?

bethofalltrades @olganunes granted, it’s an up front cost, but paying a pro + printing on nice shirts would more than pay for itself in the long run

At which point I got a reminder of the fact that social networking has changed the game because suddenly I was in a different conversation about the Artifical Heart release with @indeciSEAN, @LauraVogel and @jonathancoulton himself, discussing digital download services, DIY and customer service.

And THEN I got another reminder about how much the game really has changed, with this tweet:

chicazul @bethofalltrades @olganunes To be pedantic, JoCo did hire a pro. All album & merch designs are by @sampotts.

Yikes.  So theoretically, @sampotts can follow that @-reply directly to me saying the person he did the designs for should have hired a pro.

There are two ways out of an awkward social networking moment like this: apologize sincerely and quickly, or stand by what you said with as little defensiveness as possible.

I’m standing by it.  Having investigated Sam Potts‘ design work, I can say that the guy’s got skills.  He’s responsible for the look of the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.!  He’s got the kind of aesthetic I want for my wedding invitations and I’d probably try to hire him to do them if I wasn’t so stubborn about this DIY-thing. (My mother says that my first sentence was “Me do self!” Other than my grammar, little has changed.)

So Sam Potts creates appealing graphic designs.  But graphic design is not the same thing as merch design, and these tee designs aren’t doing their job.  They’re not enticing, they’re not exciting, and without a visible artist or album name they’re not effective advertising.

Now, it may be that JoCo said, “Hey Sam, this is a drawing on a napkin and I want you to put it on a t-shirt,” and that’s what Sam did, but Jonathan Coulton, despite his brilliance in nearly every other area of life, is not a merch designer either.   These images weren’t designed with the goal of looking good on cloth that’s put over human bodies with varying degrees of bumpiness—- and to top it all off, the mock-ups make them worse

A good mock-up can make a sale, but a bad one can kill it entirely.  These ones have a lot of issues, including
- the mocks are too small to actually see the designs
- the placements of the designs on the shirts are awkward. The heart is too far to the wearer’s left and the 2nd and 3rd designs are too far up to look good when the shirt is on a body, particularly a body with breasts.
- the plain black boxy shirt outline makes fashion-conscious folks wonder if the actual shirt is going to be big, boxy and unflattering. (I saw on JoCo’s twitter that he’s not sure what type of shirt he’ll use, so there may be hope!)

There’s no excuse for using shoddy mock-up templates when there are awesome ones out there available for relatively low prices. (Yes, you have to pay for them. They’re an investment like any other sales tool.) I use templates by IMAKETEES, which you can buy here.

To illustrate the importance of the mock-up, here’s a shirt I designed for another art-friend, musician/hot rock chick Abby Ahmad.

The design was inspired one of Abby’s songs, “Braver Parts,” which references her “heavy heart and iron lungs.”  A serious fan would know that, but for a casual fan, the design stands alone.  See how the image takes up a large portion of the tee, and it’s balanced in its placement?  The mock-up is large enough to show detail, and the texture simulates real screenprinting, another huge plus when it comes to selling shirts online.  If the customer can’t touch it and see it up close, you’ve got to do the next best thing, which is to make it as real as possible.

Now, imagine that the mock-up looked like this:

I bet you have a harder time imagining that shirt on your body.  In the small version, I can’t see Abby’s name at all, and the print looks flat.  The first mock-up shows the shirt as a unisex slim-fit, while the second makes it look like a standard (unflattering) men’s tee.  (I have lots to say about “premium” shirts like American Apparel versus less expensive slim fits like Tultex versus the drabness that is the Hanes Beefy Tee, but that’s a rant for another blog.)

At this point you might be saying, “Beth, if this is all so complicated that even Jonathan Coulton got it wrong, how can an indie artist hit a home run with a tee design?”

Step one: Hire a professional MERCH designer.  Make sure they have tee experience.
Step two: Profit.

Can’t afford a pro?  Here’s a cheat sheet for you:
1) Use the shirt as your canvas. Most paintings aren’t 3″ x 3″ on a 12″x18″ canvas, so start off big and downsize to make it fit attractively.
2) Keep in mind that the design won’t be flat; it will be on a person and it will stretch and move and be lumpy, so it’s best to avoid squares and other extremely straight lines.
3) Think one to two colors; it’s cheaper to print, and a strong design will be eye-catching even if it’s not an explosion of rainbows.
4) Your friends will tell you it’s awesome, so show the design to people who don’t know you or your work and gauge their reaction. (I’ve done this by printing it out and telling passer-by that I’m doing a marketing research survey. For real.)
5) Remember your fanbase.  If you play in sophisticated speakeasies, a neon-spattered 80′s inspired tee isn’t going to sell.  The happier your fans are with the designs, the more likely they’ll buy them and then show them to their friends who might order as well.
6) If at all possible, pay the extra for high-quality shirts, because they will be worn more.  The more they’re worn, the more people see your name, and the more “Where did you get that shirt?” conversations ensue.

And if all else fails… hire a pro.  If you reasonably expect to sell 25 shirts at $15 each, you can afford it.  After adding production costs, you’ll just about break even on those 25 shirts, but having a strong design will help you sell 25 MORE shirts, and 25 more after that, and so on.

For those of you who made it to the end, you have chicazul to thank for the eye candy at the end of this post.  She tweeted:
chicazul @bethofalltrades I’m curious to see examples of designs you like. Your opinions on marketing are interesting & persuasive.

More proof that flattery will get you everywhere!  Here are some tee designs (some band, some not) that knock it out of the park.  For most of them, you can click the image to be taken to a place to buy it, if you’re so inclined.

Tegan & Sara’s Heart Hands tee. Simple, striking.  It’s charming and it works even if you don’t know the band.  I like that the design takes up a lot of space.

 

Flowers in the Attic (Threadless, by Jason Byron Nelson). This one isn’t a band tee, but it could easily be.  It’s bold, controversial (but not in a tasteless way) and the placement on the shirt is visually interesting.  I own this shirt and someone asks about it nearly every time I wear it.  I loved this shirt so much that I convinced my old boss to hire him to create an original design for her.

Star-Cross’d Lovers (Threadless, by Alice X. Zhang & Chow Hon Lam.) Conceptually, this is intriguing and visually, it’s attractive.  Printing on a colored shirt is also a great way to allow your design to really merge with the tee, as the water here does.

The Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen tee. Iconic for a reason!  Plus it’s one color, so cheap to print.

 

Ten Years After. I don’t even like this band and I would wear this shirt all the time.  Looking back to vintage band tees can be a great way to find inspiration to make something new.

The Grateful Dead, New Years 1982 tee. This breaks a few of my rules.  The design is relatively small and the band name is nowhere to be seen, but when you’re an iconic band, you can break whatever rules you want to.  This was a one-off design, sold at their 1982 New Years show.

Cut/Copy’s Zonoscope tee. Normally I hate album art on tees, but this isn’t square and the visual is extremely striking.  (Full disclosure: I work with this band, but I did love the shirt before I got the gig.)

The Pixies, Death to The Pixies shirt. It’s weird, but awesome and now a much-copied piece of classic band merch.

Lady Gaga glass shirt. Lady Gaga is an entire merch discussion in and of herself; many of her tees are in the style of other bands/genre’s tees… but even the ones that are relatively unoriginal (ie, rip-offs) are still interesting and usually attractive.  I picked this one because of the simple intimacy of it. A note on a napkin concept plus carefully chosen words plus bright white and red colorscheme = bold and eye-catching.

That’s all I’ve got for today.  So what are your favorite band tees?