Oathbound - Band T-Shirts 2024
Overview
Oathbound and I met through the Seattle Progressive Music Association (Prog Jam) in 2024. After talking with them and hanging out with them at their band practice we decided to work together on some merch. At the time the band was building up to the release of Until It's Gone, their first EP, and wanted to add an extra shirt design to their merch table.
I met with the band to discuss their music and the ideas surrounding it, and we discussed how we might expand on that visually. After deciding on a direction I designed 2 potential ideas for them and they liked both ideas so much that they decided to purchase them both 🔥! I built out both concepts into 3 color dithered designs and they had them screen printed by a local company in Seattle. They now have a baller merch table and designs they can AB test with their fans.
Approach
When talking with the band they made it clear that they wanted the shirts to expand on the cover art but not be a direct copy (the cover for their Until It’s Gone EP depicts 2 ghostly figures in a foggy marsh approaching a blinding light). Running with the ghost theme and the title of the EP, I designed the art around the idea of people/ ghosts separated by death, and also those who have peacefully moved on but remain with us in their own way.
I used some special techniques in Photoshop that allowed me to creatively separate the artworks so that they could then be easily screen printed but also made the most of the 3 colors in the art with dithering. The resulting screen printed designs came out exactly as I intended with really clean details and distinct look that makes the art on the shirts really pop.
