Sleep Token - Take Me Back to eden
The most hyped band in the world has a new album coming out - can the merch match the hype?
the brief
One of the key trailblazers in the Heavy Music world, Sleep Token are becoming an international juggernaut in the merchandise space. A sonically ambitious project, the band have built a wildly successful creative vision to pair with their music, essentially crafting their own mythological lore.
With the upcoming launch of their third album 'Take Me Back To Eden', the band needed a merchandise range that would highlight their signature mythological flair, hero their new colour palette, and feature new premium products to extend their offering.
The RANGE
Approaching this as the Graphic Designer, I knew that this range will fly if it felt like an extension of the bands universe, helping to tell the overarching story. Once I was handed the artwork which was beautifully illustrated by Alex Tillbrook, I saw a lot of opportunities for exciting designs.
When crafting the range, I opted to highlight several of the mythical beasts as the focal points for the backs of the garments, allowing for a more concise front print to give context of the song titles from the album.
Through the core range featuring an essential offering of T-Shirts and Hoodies, this allowed us to also offer some exciting premium pieces such as Canvas Jackets, Scarves, two Deluxe Tracksuits, and my favourite part - the Character Wall Flags.
The CHARACTER WALL FLAGS
The glowing highlight of this campaign, was the humble Character Wall Flag. As the album 'Take Me Back To Eden' featured 12 songs, each song had a unique illustrated character to match - creating a perfect storm for a collectible item that highlighted each design/song.
Each flag featured the song's character, the song’s title spelt out in the custom Sleep Token rune alphabet, as well as the signature Sleep Token crown logo, allowing for a great extension of the Sleep Token world to hang around your walls. The fans ate these up, selling over 1400 flags in 3 weeks, accruing nearly $30,000 in sales.
