Producing Merchandise Sets

By Tom Verow

What to consider when making your own personalised sets of merchandise.

So, you’re ready to put together a set of products to help increase your brand awareness. But you’ll need to be careful to make sure everything matches otherwise all your efforts on designing these products are going to be wasted! In order to help you make sure you get the best set possible we’re always here to help and will always try our best to get your colours to match. But, we’ve also put together some steps on how you can make sure you’re getting the correct products.

Foundations

Choose one or two colours from your company palette.

First thing is first, you need to pick your colour or colours. Obviously the best way to do this is to choose one or two colours from your company palette. If you have two colours you want to use you could always pick one to get the product colours in and then print using the other colour. Alternatively, if you only have one brand colour you want to do, why not get the products in that colour and then print white across the board?

Products

Once you’ve decided on the colour you want to use, it’s time to pick products.You can find stocked products that are in the correct colours or flood print products in your brand colours. Or if you’re looking to go subtle, find a trim colour that matches yours and then tie it in with your print. When you are selecting your products, quality is key. There is no point getting a high end pen and powerbank if you’re going to present it to your customers in a cheap plastic bag. Make sure you’re choosing products of a similar quality as these are going to reflect your brand image. But how are you going to know the quality I hear you say? Well, this is where samples come in. Make sure you get a sample of every item you want in your colour to not only check the quality but also so that you can check all the product colours are at very least similar. No one wants to hand out a cyan blue bottle when everything was meant to be royal navy. In the meantime, we can draw up free of charge visuals so that you can get an idea of what all the products will look like when branded with your design.

When you are selecting your products, quality is key.

Design

Whilst we are on the subject of design, there are a few important elements to think about. Adding additional text to your logo? Make sure you are using either the same font as your logo or one that completely contrasts so to make it clear to your reader and not distract their eye to finding what is different in the design. Even a slight change in the weight of the typeface can offset your entire design. If you want to get some more advice on font choices, check out our article called ‘Starting From The Font’. When it comes down to actually branding the items, it may sound obvious but it is best to make sure that your branding sizing stays relative to the product. If you have a top to bottom print on your t shirt and then a tiny embossing on the notebook, your set of products is going to look mismatched when you’re actually designing a coherent set that works together.

Make sure that your branding sizing stays relative to the product.

So next time it comes to designing your branded merchandise set, make sure you consider the above points in order to make sure that your products are as effective as they can be. And don’t worry, if you ever need our help on finding the best products to match your brief, we’re just a phone call away.