Sleep Token
AUS Tour & Pop-up stores 2024
Merchandise Design, Graphic Design, Video Editing
the brief
After a monstrous 2023 which saw Sleep Token become a juggernaut in the Heavy Music space, one of the biggest tours of 2024 was just around the corner - Bring Me The Horizon were touring Australian arenas and they were bringing Sleep Token along for the ride.
Seeing the masked heroes come back for another Aus run meant we needed to do something different this time - so along with their regular Tour range that I designed, I worked with Jungle Merchandise to design and bring to life the Sleep Token universe through Australian exclusive pop-up stores. To create the best experience for fans, I needed to create two separate merchandise ranges, with one featuring items that had never been see before, as well as creating the visuals for the pop-up stores themselves in Sydney and Melbourne.
The tour RANGE
As this was an Arena sized tour, I had to change my strategy for designing this range. There are a myriad of new challenges you have to figure out when creating a merchandise range at this level, but I developed a great strategy to help me truly make an impact with this range.
The most important part of this range was that Sleep Token was the support band - which meant that every night had huge potential for new or first-time listeners to buy their first piece of Sleep Token merch. Therefore, we needed to have a mixture of designs that gave the classic Sleep Token aesthetic, while incorporating new colours and designs. I was fortunate enough to continue using Alex Tillbrook's illustrations to design these products, while I got to include two of my own designs in this range - the Vessel Tee & Vore Tee.
This blend of offerings allowed us to keep old fans happy with new designs, while providing a great variety of products for new fans to choose their allegiance with.
The POP-UP STORES
Firstly getting to craft the Pop-Up Store range was a great challenge, as I had to craft a unique selection of products that were exclusive to our stores in Melbourne & Sydney. This of course meant I got to really dive into developing unique product offerings, including puff-print on our TMBTE Crewneck, creating a luxury off-black full sweatsuit, and experimenting with poster printing - executing a reflective iridescent poster to showcase the TMBTE tracklist / characters.
This range included the wonderful illustrations from Alex Tillbrook, as well as incorporating some killer designs from fellow ST designer Blake Davison, as well as my own design of the Live Performance Tee.
POP-UP STORES contd.
Secondly, getting to design all of the visuals for the store was a unique experience as I've never designed a pop-up store before, but it was the perfect time to throw myself in the deep end.
Point of Sale signs, street signage, concert photography slideshows, live footage highlight reels, entrance video screens and even a live counter menu, I kept tweaking from the point of view of the consumer, and eventually it all came together beautifully.
We successfully created an extension of the Sleep Token universe for fans to adore, and we had queues all the way around the block in Melbourne & Sydney just to top it off.