First Merch Drop
Hi everyone, Amanda here! Realizing that this is actually my first blog entry in here so just wanted to give a brief introduction! I’m the lead designer for Japan Sidequest, my favorite season is Autumn, and I am mildly obsessed with Japanese stationery. I’m also married to Graham, and help out with JSQ planning and content creation.
I’ve been busy the past few weeks working on our very first merch drop for JSQ, and I thought it would be nice to share some pictures of the creation process!
First bit of design work was to work on a 2.0 version of our logo. I liked our first initial logo, but wanted something that be used both vertically and horizontally, have both a clean vector-style look and a retro pixel art look, and also have a single icon that could be used in place of the full logo.
A comparison of the first logo design to the current logo design
Alongside the main logo, we also thought it would be nice to make a Founders version, available for only a limited time to early supporters for our business. I definitely was a little inspired by bakery/ restaurant signs I’ve seen with the “establish <insert year>” design. I really liked using our signature dark yellow color here, which looks really nice on darker colored products because of the nice contrast!
The design for our JSQ founder merch, next to a mockup of a tote bag that will be in our online shop
Our final design(s) that are being dropped with our first merch drop is something that I really loved working on: Japan Summer Icons. Japan is REALLY big on celebrating its four distinct seasons, and we thought it would be really fun to create a design using iconic items from the summer. I thought it would be interesting to show a bit of my work process for making these!
Graham and I brainstormed the ideas of what would be good icons to include.
I spent some time researching and finding reference photos of the icons.
I sketched and inked all of the icons on paper.
The sketches are scanned and isolated into individual images in Photoshop.
I set up a reference file with each sketch next to reference images for color reference when creating the final art.
I set up a new file for each icon in the program Aesprite, adding the reference sketch as a base layer.
I created the pixel art for each icon and saved them as png files.
I opened up all final pixel art in Photoshop, and then arranged them into a grid pattern.
I added a gradient background in Photoshop, and made a pixel title (ジャパン サマー / Japan Summer) in Aesprite. All parts were added together to create the final design.
Overall it was a very busy couple of weeks, but I really enjoyed working on these designs for our first merch drop! I have tons of ideas for future designs, and I’m excited to create more!
