For the past half year, I've been having fun occasionally making custom shirts when attending kpop concerts. It's a fun creative side exercise, and serves as a leadup to the concert itself (I normally do no type of designing at all, so this is just a layman’s pursuit). So far:
- Shirt #1: QWER “Smells Like Rock Spirit” (shirt concert based on a content vid QWER did with YB)
- Shirt #2: NMIXX “Love is Lonely” (shirt concept based on the song...which ultimately wasn't on their concert setlist 😢)
For IVE, I actually did see them on the last tour, and do have a tour shirt, but decided to do Shirt #3 as a IVE “Discography” concept with the goal of showing all of their title tracks. I gave myself the following rules:
- any visuals on the shirt will have to come from the official music videos
- any visuals used must have all 6 members
- try to find iconic representations for each of the songs
Shirt Front:
- “Eleven”, “Love Dive”, “After Like”, “Kitsch”, “I Am”, “Off the Record”, “Baddie”, “All Night”
So, "All Night" might be a disputed one to include here since it's a cover song, but it was a fun ending song for their previous concert (it was hilarious how many times they re-started the chorus of the song for the Newark concert...literally thought it was going to be all night... 😜). Also, I just love that visual of them launching the video meeting and getting swept up by a bunch of emojis/icons - from the start, I had to get that on the shirt. Call it "dealer's choice" on my part 😉.
"Off the Record" was the toughest: there's like only 3 scenes in the MV where all the members are visible together, and even then it's only their silhouettes. I initially went with the scene when they're startled when the sprinklers turned on, but eventually went with them doing a group hug under the sprinklers.
"Baddie" I went with what they ended up using for the thumbnail, but the only negative is that Yujin is basically obscured.
For "Kitsch", I initially went with the top down view of them sitting together in some bleachers and looking up at the camera - it was clear, and brightly lit showing off all 6 members. However, ultimately opted for the more iconic pointing towards the eye choreo, even though the visual was darker and more obscured, and some of the members fading into the background.
- “You’re So Weird, Don’t Change” from “Kitsch”: wanted to use text to break up the visuals and this neon sign from the Kitsch MV always struck me and was one of the elements I knew I wanted on the shirt from the start. It’s a nod to my fellow Dives 👍
Sleeves:
- IVE group logo on each of the sleeves
Shirt Back:
- “Heya”, “Accendio”, “Rebel Heart”, “Attitude”, "Be Alright", “XOXZ”, “Bang Bang”, “Blackhole”
For "Accendio", I initially wanted to do a split screen of the "good" and "bad" versions of the group, but eventually nixed the idea as it felt a little too crowded.
Overall, this set of visuals for these songs had the least changes and I think I did a total of 2 revisions at most (and it was more for adjusting the signs). Was pretty happy with the selected images almost from the start (they were all "yup, that image" when going through all of the MVs)
- the background billboard signs in the “Bang Bang” MV serves as the text to break up the visuals for the back of the shirt. There was one sign that happened very fast and obscured by darkness that I couldn't make out the text, so that one wasn't included (it's after "Keep Your Boots Dirty"). Luckily, the visible signs do form a cohesive message of sorts, but I do acknowledge there might be a missing sign in there.
Shirt was printed on a Comfort Colors shirt, one that is typically used by limited shirt droppers, so I’m familiar with the shirt quality. In addition to the quality printing, I like using “Custom Ink” for the shirt printing for their easy to use interface and ability to select specific brands of shirts to print on (sorry to sound like an ad, but I’ve been impressed with Custom Ink so far).
It was a fun little project and was one of those things where I pretty much had an idea of what the final outcome will look like from the get-go, but it was mainly getting an initial version done first and then lots of tweaking. I think I got like 80% of it done in one night, and then just tweaked it for another 2 weeks before sending it out for shirt printing. In the end, I'm happy with the final results and it'll be a fun thing to wear to this year's IVE concert.
