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I’m a big time band merch nerd. Especially stickers. If I don’t have the money budgeted to buy a shirt or hoodie from a band at their show, I will at least purchase some stickers. They end up either on my truck, toolbox, or the filing cabinet in my office. I always make sure my band Sempervivi’s merchandise table is fully stocked with items ranging from inexpensive to higher priced items. In 2022, we were running low on previous sticker design concepts, so I took advantage of a Sticker Mule sale and stocked up. I worked up four different sticker design ideas and had all of them printed in order to offer some variety to our fans.

Sticker Design Story

Using the "Skate" sticker design on my favorite coffee cup.

The “Skate” sticker design on my favorite coffee cup.

First, I thumbed through some old line art books and picked out a nice roaring tiger. I colored in the tiger’s fur with a golden yellow hue. Then, I combined this expertly detailed illustration with our name uppercase in a vintage font. Our hometown “LEX KY” nestles between two simple lightning bolt icons in yellow, completing the first sticker design.

Since many would call our band’s genre “skate punk”, I incorporated a broken skateboard image into an old school signage layout. The bold image of the broken deck jumps out in front of the marquee font spelling our band name. Then, I added our hometown and Roman numerals for the year 2015 to the sticker design, commemorating the year when our band began.

I played with a few different different color schemes. The band members couldn’t choose between the two palettes I pared it down to, so we had both printed. I love the alternative “Joker” combination of mostly purple and lime green. The melon red and Carolina blue scheme is lighter, cleaner, and more fun.

Finally, I had been toying around with a rugged “stamp” style logo for the band. I jumbled the sizes of the letters and tilted them, creating a chaotic style to match our fast, loud punk sound. The final touches came together as I filled in the characters in neon pink and turquoise. Then, I outlined the letters in black and added a solid black shadow to the art to make it pop.

Stick with me, your trusty merch artist.

Every musician needs merch. If you are a live performer, your fans want to buy merch to support you. An inexpensive way to get started?  Contact me today to bring your sticker design to life.