Byzantine 戦 Ikusa - T-Shirt Design

•

Year: 2018
Client/band: Turisas
Country: Finland
Mediums: T-shirt
Official release date: May 2018
Concept: Byzantine, battle, for Japan tour

Design for a limited T-shirt of Finnish 'battle metal' band Turisas' Japan tour 2018.

It's a simple design, but its concept is meaningful for the tour. The style of the band have Byzantium and battle elements strongly. So I made the main part of the design into a Byzantine-style typography with one Chinese character '戦' (ikusa/sen) meaning 'battle' and 'war' in Japanese.

This design is just limited for the Japan tour and Japanese fans of the band, but was a challenge how to use a Chinese character (kanji) on T-shirt for Japanese people nicely. Because, to us Japanese people, a T-shirt with any Chinese character and Japanese letters looks almost like a joke or weird foreign-designed item, especially designed with common typefaces.

I have always though that it could be interesting and cool if the band uses the Chinese character '戦' for something. Finally the chance came, I came up with this design. And after the last show of the tour, thankfully I heard from the band that the T-shirts were sold out.

F I N I S H E D D E S I G N

FRONT

BACK

P R O C E S S

Sketches for the main part of the design,

a Byzantine-inspired typography with the Chinese character '戦' meaning 'battle' and 'war' in Japanese.
I made it look not too elegant, and not too easy-to-read.

The final version of 戦 keeps the hand-drawing -looking for antique-feeling.
I also created the alphabetical letters for 'JAPAN TOUR 2018' in the back design, based on the style of the 戦 for the front.

For the front design, I added a 'Byzantine battle' image; Varangian guards in a war.

Red is one of the symbolic colors of the band. So I thought many Japanese fans of the band want a tour T-shirt having the color. And the color scheme of red and green is what the band's old merch doesn't have.