Merchandising

Merchandising monetizes while it advertises, and it can come in as many forms as you can dream up. T-shirts are the classic, but highlighted here is how merchandise can break the fourth wall of the screen and let an audience have a little piece of their media come to life.

The L.A.R.P. fanzine was a fictional publication in a recent promotional music video (which I manually animated). For the album's release, I designed an actual zine from scratch, complete with real ads, a feature story on how I came to commission artist Brian Walsby to draw the cartoon pictures, and QR codes to link the physical product back to digital assets. It also served as special packaging for the CD version of the album, which was included along with alternate parody* covers that referenced the video and classic punk albums in a hand-numbered limited edition.

*As an aside, the art of parody is not dissimilar to a term paper or a Hip Hop sample. It provides reference while winking to an audience, letting them know you love or have been exposed to the same things. Yes, there's comedy involved, though much more community. I love when band merchandise includes this element.