IGN, Gamespot, TV Guide, Personal • 2014-Present

Apparel Design

Overview

Overview

Overview

Just like with my branding work, over the years I’ve had the opportunity to have my hands in many different projects across every type of event you could imagine. With that comes the need for apparel whether it be for the staff to wear themselves or to sell to fans.


I have always greatly enjoyed making shirts and other apparel and this represents the range of designs I’m capable of from illustration to typographic execution

Approach

Approach

Approach

My approach generally to each shirt differs of course depending on the project and desired audience. But even still my desire when making any shirt is to think at the end of the day, is this something I would want to wear as a fan and could it be passed off as something that doesn’t just shout "video game merch here!"


Despite my best efforts over the years to make apparel on something besides black shirts, a lot of these ended up that way due to requests from the clients but even still i did my best to make sure the designs still looked their best presented on a more plain canvas like black

Final staff shirt design

GameSpot 2022

Gamespot Summer Games Fest 2022 Staff Shirt

Playing up the idea that E3 has now been taken over by Geoff Keighly, I wanted our staff shirt this year to be a fun goof on that while still being able to represent the GameSpot brand effectively. Keigh 3 was born soon after and this shirt was the result.

IGN e3 2014 staff shirt design

ign 2014

IGN E3 2014 Staff Shirt

The first piece of apparel i ever made for IGN still remains one of my favorites. Fore the staff shirt that year the idea was to make a video game museum housing all the best power ups from years past and present. It was an early foray into simple illustration and taught me a lot about the process and execution

staff shirt for sog 2020

ign 2020

IGN Summer of Gaming 2020 Staff Shirt

For its inaugural year, the staff shirt for Summer of Gaming had to be something that would be memorable and represent a moment in time where IGN went for something big. I wanted the shirt to fee like it could be worn as a gaming piece of really just any piece of streetwear and i feel like the end result achieves that well

omega cops exclusive shirt

IGN 2018

Game Scoop 500 Podcast Exclusive Shirt

With its 500th episode approaching, the hosts of Game Scoop wanted to do something special for the fans in attendance of the live show as well as those watching from home. "Omega Cops" was a longstanding anagram of "Game Scoop" and became one of the shows most loved references. The crew themselves and its fans were the Omega Cops and with it i wanted to give them a shirt to remember their love for the show and for its anniversary

ign monthly box

IGN 2017

IGN Monthly Loot Box "Rogues" Shirt

For about a year IGN helped its UK division with a monthly subscription crate similar to the others at the time like Loot Crate or Birch Box or anything like them but this time for the gaming audience. With that came the need for a custom shirt in every box. This month's shirt was "Rogues" and the motif i used was in reference to Rogue class types in RPGs and games but also to Rogue-lites and Rogue-likes as well.

ign monthly box

IGN 2017

IGN Monthly Loot Box "Gods And Monsters" Shirt

Again the team in the UK needed a custom shirt for the box this month and the theme just happened to be "Gods and Monsters" so i thought it would be nice to attempt a simple illustration of Kratos' (from God of War) weaponry from those games the Blades of Chaos. Again with the goal here being that the shirt doesn’t necessarily scream "i love video games" but instead could be more of an "if you know" reference point for fans to wear proudly

Code Foo Apparel

IGN 2018

IGN Code Foo 9 Shirt

Each year IGN hosts a group of interns on its Product and Engineering end. We gather about 6-8 students and bring them to San Francisco to experience what its like working in a real world media environment on real products


this year however was the first time we would be adding design and product management interns and with that we wanted to make the apparel a representation of those 3 elements working together.

code foo 10 bomber jacket holographic alt

IGN 2018

code foo 10 bomber jacket

IGN 2018

IGN Code Foo 10 Jacket

This was the year COVID hit and our plans eventually were cancelled for Code Foo since the in person element was very key to the experience for us and the participants. The planned merch for this year was gonna be special, we were going to upgrade our usual hoodies to be bomber jackets for our 10th iteration of the program. Sadly they were never produced but the design still remains a favorite of mine

IGN hack day

ign 2016

IGN Hack Week 2016 Staff Shirt

Like most companies IGN has a week where all other projects are put aside and the Product/Engineering teams are allowed to create something new and unrestrained from normal practices. With that each year we would produce a shirt centered around the theme. This year we had 3 main points each project had to hit, revenue, innovation and brand loyalty.

NVC fan shirt

IGN 2018

Nintendo Voice Chat "Welcoooome" Shirt

NVC had many jokes and references over the years but one of its most recognizable was the way that its host would welcome fans to the show every week. We wanted to give our fans something they could rep NVC with and for once a shirt that wasn’t just black

IGN e3 2018 staff shirt

IGN 2018

IGN E3 2018 Staff Shirt

Each year that IGN attended E3 we wanted it to feel like we were at the center of news coverage and really at the center of all games coverage during those times. With that came the idea for this year's E3 shirt to be a constellation with the IGN brand as its center, it proved to be one of our most successful designs and went on to be sold later to fans of the site

iggys invetory shirt

ign 2021

IGN 25th Anniversary "Iggy's Inventory" Shirt

IGN's 25th anniversary was fast approaching and with it we wanted to celebrate being around for so long as a media brand, especially when so many others in the space had unfortunately closed their doors. We hd previously created our own mascot (dubbed "Iggy" by myself and its creator Angela Nguyen) and for that year Iggy had been pixelated for a 16 bit adventure game we had produced with him


We had a line of apparel centered around him and this one in particular was a shirt for his "inventory". those inventory items were actually from our logo that we developed for the event itself but also applied well as a generic gaming inventory one might have

the cyberbomb

Giant Bomb 2022

Giant Bomb "Cyberbomb" Shirt

Giant Bomb was looking to launch a new line of apparel and wanted to do something that was a bit different than what previous offerings showed. I suggested we make something techy that could fit in an in game cyberpunk ad and this was the result to be printed

gnt bmb shirt

Giant Bomb 2022

Giant Bomb "GNT BMB" Shirt

Another initiative Giant Bomb was looking to launch was to refresh the way people thought about the brand. To take it from not just being a gaming brand but something that could be a lifestyle brand as well. We had kicked around the shortening GNT BMB for a while and eventually it lead to the creation of this sub logo for the shirt. This was another attempt at the "if you know it" type of designs for apparel

700 exclusive shirt

ign 2021

Beyond 700 Exclusive Shirt

For one of its longest running shows, IGN's PlayStation dedicated podcast Beyond! (the sister to the Xbox focused Unlocked) was running its 700th episode and the staff wanted to make a shirt commemorating the event like we did with Game Scoop 500.


With this design i really wanted to go super minimal but still maintain that PS branding. The end result was something that felt core to the Beyond family and also a piece anyone could wear whether they were a gamer or not

© Justin Vachon 2023