With my website underway, I decided it would be a good time to look into designing the merchandise to go on the website. I don't want to have a working website that looks great- with nothing on it.
I started by trying to design some products for the main collection page. I thought I could reuse some patterns and designs from my logo design process.
Before I did any of that however, I looked for some free Photoshop mock-ups, so I could display all my designs. I needed to know what I was designing for, so I searched for some free mock-ups and downloaded a bunch.
I started by designing some notebooks, using my brand identity patterns.
I think these designs are okay, but not great. I don't know how likely I would be to buy these notebooks. I also think the mock-up itself doesn't display the notebook in the best way. It originally had a black folder and pen underneath the notebook, but I used Photoshop to get rid of these as it had too much of a business feel to it. I want the mock-ups to be really simple and elegant, and I don't think these notebooks look like that.
I left these at this stage and started thinking about t-shirt designs. However, I had a similar problem with these mock-ups. None of them were the exact style of t-shirt I had imagined, and if they were, the backgrounds were slightly strange. However I tried to make some designs for them anyway. I started with my rainbow design from the logo design process.
I had the image in my head of a t-shirt looking good with a small rainbow emblem on the chest for each different colour character with different shades of each colour as the rainbow. However, looking at this image, I don't feel confident with this idea. I don't know how likely I would be to buy this. I think personally if it was a baby-tee with an embroidered emblem I would be more likely to buy it, but the execution of this t-shirt idea in a mock-up just doesn't live up to what I had imagined. I tried another t-shirt design as a more oversized shirt style with a design on the back, but I didn't like the way it turned out either.
I did two designs, one with the main logo and one with the rainbow. Although I think this style of shirt is quite trendy at the moment, the pattern I used for the graphic on the back just remind me of clowns. I feel frustrated because my ideas so far just haven't been what I expected.
I think in general, it seems like it may be too difficult to design products for the bran in general. The whole point of my idea was that users could shop specifically for their own personality type. I don't think users would invest in the brand so much that they would buy products designed for it. I think users would be more likely to buy products based on their colour character, as it feels more personal. I think I may need to rethink the layout of my website.
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