If it's an artist I've seen before, I'll usually wear a prior tour shirt to the concert. If it's an artist I've never seen in concert before, I'll try to pick up an official merch shirt or worst case, grab something off Redbubble that someone else made.
For NMIXX, I did see their Showcase concert around 3 years ago: however, I was still new to Kpop at the time and they were my first kpop concert so I didn’t get any merch. I wasn't even a fan at the time: I decided to go because I was going to see Twice as my first kpop concert, and tickets for the NMIXX showcase suddenly came up in an email offer for $25. I said “why not see what I’m getting into with this kpop thing” and it became the best $25 I ever spent because I became a fan afterwards.
When QWER was in town recently, I was in the same "shirt dilemma". Even worse, there was barely any QWER stuff on Redbubble (and what was there was meh and looked like something I could make myself), so I just decided to make my own shirt for the QWER concert. I based the entire concept on "Smells Like Rock Spirit", revolving around one of their content videos that they did with YB. Shirt was a bit chaotic since I tried to squeeze in alot of things, but I enjoyed the process.
Fast forward to the NMIXX tour. Since I had fun making a shirt for the QWER concert, I decided to give it a try again. I wanted to do a central concept again and went with basing the shirt on my favorite NMIXX song "Love is Lonely" (love the nostalgic feel of the song, and being an older dude, it feels like a song I had distantly listened to in the early 90's)
Shirt front:
Went with a vertical "NMIXX" group logo. No real reason: when I was doing the QWER shirt previously, I just told myself I'll want a vertical name logo for next time :P. For the image, I knew from the get-go I wanted a huddle picture on the shirt, so it was either the group huddle in beginning of the music video or towards the end of the music video. Went with the last video frame of the music video before the credits due to 2 reasons: (1) it was later in the day and better lit (the earlier huddle looked like it was at dawn and still a bit dark), and (2) the final huddle has all of the members heads down, while the earlier huddle might have seemed like it concentrated on 2-3 members more.
Initially, it was supposed to just be logo + beach huddle, but I had extra space so I added in a widescreen shot of the group during the night/fireworks/candle light scene. Love the warm glow lighting on the group at night, and also helps add a contrasting day/night imagery.
Shirt back:
Initially, the back of the shirt had the English translation of 1/2 of the song lyrics. After awhile, it seemed like it was a bit much to have a wall of words there, so I revisited it and went with that striking imagery of Haewon sitting in the water across an empty chair and just kept one line of the chorus "love is so lonely without you…". This image during the music video always hits me hard since it conveys so much and would have been a front of shirt image, but I didn't want it to seem like I was building the shirt around one member. Since I have the group on the front of the shirt, it felt okay to pair the chorus lyric with this image as a combo on the back.
Sleeves:
Decided to go the extra mile this time and did sleeve images as well.
Right Sleeve: vertical NMIXX logo (again), the album cover for "Fe3O4: STICK OUT" + and an album name logo beneath it
Left Sleeve: horizontal NMIXX logo (just in case I didn't convey it enough that this is for NMIXX :P), paired with an image of the group in the water together in the end credits
Part of me wished I had higher res elements for the shirt, but at the same time, I like the lower res "nostalgia feel" that pairs well with the song. If I were to redo this, I think I might have leaned into the lower res pics, and made them look like they were old photographs.
Overall, I had fun making the shirt and looking forward to the upcoming NMIXX concert!
by greydt