With festival season kicking off, the summer is right around the corner. Summer is the busiest time for most brands and businesses as the sunshine brings people out and it’s the best time for branded merch and merch giveaways. Your merch should coincide with the season, so we will take you through the most popular merch items for summer.

Best Summer Swag Ideas

Summer swag should be fun, colorful, and useful for that specific event or festival. Creating a design that is specific to the event is the best way to get your started on the merch printing process.

Check Out What is Brand Merchandising

Bucket Hats

The 90’s are officially back! The bucket hat is an iconic apparel accessory that has made it’s way back into popular fashion. Hats are a great canvas for custom designs that can be either embroidered or printed on, or you can even use a stamp and patches.

Tote Bags

Bags are the basic merch to have at events, especially if it’s an event with a lot of different vendors. One way to step up your game and compete with other booths, offer a customized option with an on-site screen printing option with various designs or a DTG station with a way for the event goer to pick and choose the graphics for the bag.

Check Out 5 Reasons Why Custom Tote Bags Are Awesome Promotional Products

Can Coolers

A can cooler is the modern day koozie and they are especially a good merch item because they make a great canvas for your branding!

This item is a step up from the traditional koozie and will last for summer after summer, being used at sporting events or lazing by a swimming pool, so it’s perfectly versatile too.

Depending on the event, it may be the best merch item if there will be alcoholic drinks such as beer, and seltzers. There are a few different size can coolers, make sure you get the best size for the event.

Towels & Blankets

Towels and blankets are another example of great useful merch that is best for festivals or pool parties. Blankets and towels make a great surface for branding and allow for a more creative design to be executed as oppose to smaller items. Additionally, it can be very useful at the right event - Always be strategic about the type of merch you produce according to the event.

How To Make Fun

Promo Merch

Don’t be afraid to change things up and get more creative with your setup and your merch. Live event customizations can be a great way to involve event goers in the printing process and allow for a more interesting experience.

Check Out Custom Merchandise – The Perfect Branding Opportunity

Live T-Shirt Printing

Live screen printing is a great example of a fun way to present your merch, especially if it includes apparel. Merch agencies such as Family Industries can make this process stress-free by providing the equipment, materials, and staff to execute the best prints.

Live Embroidery

On-Site event embroidery is typically done with accessories such as hats, bags, and bandanas. Integrating a customization option can set you apart as a vendor in a busy festival where it’s highly likely that other booths will have similar accessory options.

Embroidery can also be extra specially because you’re able to embroidery names and initials, which can be great for people looking to purchase something as a gift or souvenir.

Decorations & Prize Wheels

Make your booth interesting by dressing it up to attract eyes, especially at a crowded festival. In addition, using games such as a prize wheel can also bring more interest in what you are offering.

Take into consideration the theme of the event or other characteristics of the demographic attending the event.

Customizing Tips

You don’t want to pick out great swag and then blow it with your branding customization. No matter how great the swag, large logos might get it relegated to the back of the closet or, worse, the trash. A less obvious logo may result in the items getting more use and therefore providing more advertising for your brand as a result.
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Make sure your logo or slogan art is crisp and professional. Poor quality in this department will cheapen the look of your summer promotional products no matter how expensive and well-made they are.
Make sure you choose a customizing company who does quality work or you could end up with expensive swag that looks depressingly cheap. Check out our blog with design tips for making stylish swag.

Author: Irene Floridia - Content Creator

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Band Merch

Band merch can be difficult to sell if you don’t already have a big following. However, making cool merch is a great incentive for people that may not be familiar with your music to make a purchase. Merch can include apparel such as band t-shirts and band hoodies, or it can also include accessories such as water bottles or key chains.

Band posters are a less thought of merch item, but we believe it’s a great option for those looking to keep cost down and create true art prints that have more of a “limited edition” feel.

The History of Band Posters

Selling posters is a way of advertising, after all, printed posters is the original way we used to advertise. They were meant to serve this specific purpose.

No one cared that they’d sit in the rain and get damaged or have pinholes in them. They were solely used as a tool to get crowds to attend live music events. This is very clear when you look at the original letterpress posters from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

60’s and 70’s Music Era

In the 60’s society experienced the psychedelic era, during this time, the true art form of the concert poster began to develop. This new style came largely out of San Francisco, where artists began to create posters for the budding music scene that the decade brought in.

During this time, the intention behind the design remained the same as it had been: to bring people to shows. The posters contained important information such as band name, venue, date, and time. However, it included more clever and eye-catching psychedelic designs.

The Punk and New Wave Era

In the late 70’s Punk and New Wave music emerged and these new genres brought a new form of show advertising with them, and DIY flyers became prevalent around cities in which shows were being held. Venues such as CBGB in New York and Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco became known for specifically showcasing bands within these genres.

Posters as Merch

As advertising became more of a digital medium, the evolution of printmaking continued. Modern collectible concert art is created for a different purpose. Rather than being designed primarily as a promotional tool, posters have become a form of concert merchandise.

Today, artists will design a poster that may be specific to a tour date, an entire tour, or a festival. Often a limited number of copies will be printed. Sometimes there will be variants of the poster, such as foil prints, that are created in even smaller quantities and thus hold more value.

What’s The Value of a Poster?

In order for a print to be valuable, there can only be a certain amount of them. There are people who collect band and festival posters, for collectors, the limited edition tag goes a long way.

Though the above posters have been around a shorter time than some vintage posters, condition is still important! A poster with pinholes, tape marks, or tears will not hold up in value the same way that a pristine piece will. So, if you’re thinking about selling posters at your next gig, make sure you have the appropriate packaging to keep them in good conditions.