6．Designing T-shirts and such of our Japanese Piano Indie Rock Band, Yellow Studs

   I designed a number of merchandise for a band Yellow Studs, but that band said my designs were not good enough, lol. I gotta improve. In this case of mine, rather than "design" it's like "putting existing designs trimmed out of some MV's, publicity pics and texts upon the right places." I think that will be a good way to drag more people to the MV's.

For example

A: Oh, what's that T-shirt you are wearing?

B: This is one of my favorite Japanese bands!

A: And what is that pic printed on it?

B: Guess this is one cut from one of their MV's :)

A: Mmmhhh, maybe you can show me that video?

--- Watching that MV, A will also find other links to more of our content.

Aside from this, I think it's also important to keep the looks of bands somewhere in the mind of the fans.

On top of that, my idea is, just simply, "why not make the best use of good-looking pics." I really love many of their videos especially by this man YOU (from a creative group named CH6). His videos are, even if you see them as pictures, really awesome. So I just put some pics cut out of the videos onto most of the T-shirts below. (And yeah, their design will improve... >__> )

↑Designs that weren't approved. From the front.

From the back.↓

   The place where I'm going to sell them at is called "spreadshirt", a website service from the UK. They are very easy-to-use for even a German company like mine since they seem to, not to mention, deal with lots of German companies. On the other hand, for example, American services similar to "spreadshirt", they don't seem to much consider dealing with companies from EU. More importantly, customer delivery by such American services would take a couple of weeks, which doesn't sound so good for customers. 

   Of course it was a bit of a hassle to go through all the first taxation procedure but I think it was easy enough. It was good of "spreadshirt", too, that they always got me back to my answer within 24 hours at latest. If you are one who has no much money for initial cost yet would like to sell merchandise worldwide, I would definitely recommend "spreadshirt". You only assemble design on their site and up it. No cost at all. "spreadshirt" take care of the rest - take order, make the products, pack, deliver. It seems they only need 1 week for a customer to make order then receive the item. The risk of no risk is that you don't get paid as much as you would from other, a bit riskier services. But I conclude it as inevitable because that's what I can do with what I have. If I had a time-machine I would visit and apologize to the ones who bought them for them being a bit extra expensive x) 

Maybe another band THE VALVES will, too, like this merch idea. Now waiting for their reply :)

Maybe the combination of "spreadshirt" and "BandPage (a can-do-everything site for musicians and listers)" would work well?

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Next blog will be about -

What to do before the first festival.

I've been thinking about hiring some locals in some cities in Germany, Poland and later some more... Having difficulties booking cinemas, to be honest. Or at least gonna hire some for MC :)

Thank you very much for reading :)

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