East Coast Roadshow: The Merchandise
Since the early days of stephendann.com/stephendann.net there has always been a Cafepress store with the site’s dollar sign logo on a range of merchandise. With the East Coast Roadshow booked into place and the dates set in QANTAS itinerary, there was a sense that this wasn’t just a standard issue academic trip to attend a conference, speak at a seminar, talk to a few colleagues and go home. This was something bigger, more expansive, and deserving of some of my house brand silliness.
That I called the trip “The East Coast Roadshow” when applying for the funding from the ANU wasn’t helping the sense of sobriety and proprietary for the six week haul. The sense of sobriety comes from the outcomes of the tour. Research articles, national benchmark studies and a few high profile reports. Data collection on the road is the easier phase of the hard parts.
Since I had a slogan, Photoshop and some free time…
The tour mouse pad - it does include commentary on Perth being "Really Far East"
The mouse mat has the original design for the back of the t-shirt.
The t-shirt ended up being revised back to make a more streamlined timeline without the commentary (East Coast, South Coast, Really Far East Coast, and “Where’s the coast”
The front was a combination of the Roadshow’s text logo, my personal brand, and the late addition of “featuring Perth” because it amuses me no end that I’m doing an East Coast tour that ends in West Australia.
The front of the t-shirts.
Just for added efficiency when dealing with the airport luggage “spot the identical case” game, I’ve added luggage labels.
Mailing label (lower) and luggage label (upper)
The luggage labels are one concession to a modified IMC strategy – I don’t think sticking a large dollar sign on the side of luggage is a great way to expect to ever see that luggage again. Instead, it’s the S that foms the basis for the $ in the main logo getting a solo gig. I don’t actually think the logo works as well as the ($) emblem since the | doesn’t provide the visiaul divide for the white text. Still, so long as I get the luggage back at the end of the flight, I can live with a little bit of modified IMC.
It has to be said, that the logo gear does suit the apartment dwelling rockstar tour date style of life for this research project.
