Merch
We <3 how technology and how it enables us to solve problems simply and intuitively. But this doesn't mean that the necessity or magic of physical products is lost on us.
We believe in doing what you love (or dwyling as the cool kids say) and want to wear our hearts on our sleeves - sometimes literally.
So we'll be making/having a few things made that will let us do just that and documenting our decisions and the evolution of things here.
If you have any suggestions on how to improve these in future runs or think of anything cool we should be printing, let us know in the issues!
NB: assets from previous runs are saved in dwyl Marketing & Branding > dwyl Stash
Stickers
Why?
Pretty much everyone at dwyl loves stickers and hey, we couldn't let our friends down!
We encourage people to only take stickers if they have longer term uses in mind, such as sticking them on laptops or notebooks. What we don't want is for people to stick them somewhere like on their clothes where they'll end up in landfill rather than being recycled with the product. We went with a non-laminate option.
Where?
We needed these pretty quickly and turnarounds for most sticker suppliers seem to be between 10 and 20 days. We went with Fast Print for their quick turnaround of 4 days on custom stickers.
Design
From the beginning we knew we wanted something very simple that centred on our icon (the heart-with-the-tick). We came up with a few different yet basic designs and none of them were amazing, but these are our alpha stickers.
Whilst @iteles thought the final design was a bit too bland with just one colour and all the uniformity, we erred on the side of simplicity for this initial small run.
They came on a few long sheets so there are a bit of DIY involved (which kind of made it fun)!
But we ended up with a decent end result:
Changes
- Further research needed into most easily recycled/eco-friendly options
- The colour wears off these with some ease due to the lack of lamination - ties in with investigation into options above
- Potentially get them designed by someone with honed design skills to add more interest whilst retaining the simplicity
- Hex stickers of course! (thanks for reminding us @iancrowther)
- www.stickerapp.co.uk and www.diginate.com have been recommended to us.
We also had some slightly larger stickers made which we added to our laptops and... :wink:
T-shirts
Why?
We got a couple of t-shirts from our friends @LiftSecurity and @bithoundio that were oh-so-soft and we love showing them off. As our wardrobes have to contain more than a 3 t-shirts, we thought it would be great to treat our team to some dwyl tees too.
Where?
We chose Bella & Canvas t-shirts because whilst they're incredibly soft and come in some great colours, most importantly their ethics are in the right place, both in terms of humans and the environment.
Suppliers and printers of these tees were quite difficult to come by in the UK, but we went with Fire Label for our small alpha run of 55 t-shirts. They have such a great attitude, we've been very impressed with how sunny and helpful they are.
Design
We had quite a lot of decisions to make on the design side! We again decided to keep things as simple as possible for our small initial run and we're hoping to get some great t-shirts designed further down the line for anyone who wants one.
Front
Graphics
There was great debate on whether we should focus on our logo or icon as the main design.
Whilst we love that we ended up with a heart-and-tick icon, the tick feels like it's the wrong way round in the full logo version:
It's an ongoing debate but seeing as we may be moving away from the logo, we went with the icon for now.
Original version have dwyl on the front and not dwyl.io. This audience for this initial run of t-shirts is developers, so the 'io' makes sense here, but in future runs we need to decide whether it's necessary.
Lastly, there was some debate over whether the 'do what you love' lettering should extend beyond the bottom of the 'dwyl' y. We went with making them a little bigger to match the full 'dwyl.io' width. Let's see how they turn out!
Print sizing
There was much sitting on the floor with a measuring tape and various mens and ladies t-shirts we'd received at tech conferences/events.
We wanted a print size that would work for both genders for now, [there's even a whole issue on it](
. We went for what felt right.
Back
Design
We started trying some simple ways to add the URL to the back of the tees with the icon to give it a little interest. We decided that although not aesthetically the prettiest thing, the back should include the 'www' until 'io' domains are universally recognised as URLs in the same was as '.com' domains are.
@nelsonic hit upon the thought-provoking idea of adding the question 'Doing what you love?' and whilst @iteles was concerned it might be 'too promotional', we decided to run with it for this batch and ask people for their thoughts.
Print sizing
Went with a maximum width of 230mm across the back on this one and adjusted the print accordingly.
Positioning
We were pretty clear from the beginning that we wanted the prints on the back to be mid-way down the back - no discrimination for people with long hair! ;)
The printers suggested 150mm down from the neckline and on a whim, @iteles made the call that that would look good for men but further down would look better for women. Therefore the print on the back of ladies' tees is 200mm from the neckline.
T-shirt colours
The downside of opting for the heart icon rather than the original dwyl logo is that we ended up with a plain white print that is less 'interesting' than a multi-coloured variation.
Having it on very dark colours like charcoal with a stark contrast made it look very bland and on very light colours like the green washes it out.
We chose to go with red and blue as our main colours and get a couple printed in navy and green as a trial. It helps of course that a disproportionate number of tech tees seem to be (anecdotally) grey or charcoal so staying away from those colours was a plus!
Changes
- Investigate fairtrade and most eco friendly material in more detail (cotton is hugely water intensive for example, bamboo is looking pretty appealing
- Learn more about eco-friendly printing processes, though this seems like a close call
- Design decisions
- Is having the '.io' on the front necessary?
- How can we add more colour to the t-shirt and interest to the design?
- Sizing of prints - is it big enough? Too big?
- Does the positioning of the back prints work?
- Does the questions 'Doing what you love?' + the website at the back make the t-shirts a bit too promotional or does it work?
- Do the darker colour t-shirts work or are the lighter/more colourful ones better?
