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Brandon Rike
My name is Brandon Rike, and I have been in official business since 2002. At
this point, I’ve been doing it for nearly nine years. I am 27, and I started doing
t-shirt graphics for bands around the age of 19.
My First Band Logo
I’ve always loved art. I was always a kid who could draw. Drawing was what I
did with most of my time. Around the age of 13, my friends and I started a band
called Dead Poetic. When we made our first tape, I designed the jacket. It was a
humble beginning, but I sketched for weeks on creating the perfect logo for us.
Making all the letters work together, encapsulating it all into one solid shape,
making sure there was good symmetry from side to side. I was using a pencil
and graph paper while I was in math class. At this point, all I knew was that I
was making a logo for our band. Nothing more, nothing less.
As time went on, I continued to design fliers for our shows, and jackets for our
demos. As our band kept playing shows, we met other bands who I would design
graphics for as well.
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Skipping High School Art Class
Meanwhile, my high school art class had little to offer that interested me. At
this age, I was over making clay pots and tie-dye, but I was not over creating
art and graphics. I enrolled in a post-secondary program, in which I went to college
for my junior and senior year. It was not until I got involved in this college’s
design department that I actually learned the term Graphic Design. I realized
that I had been doing Graphic Design for years now, and now I could give it a
name. I learned how to use Photoshop and Illustrator, and learned about what
good typography really was, and how to create good composition. I took about
half of an associates program, and never got a degree. Rock and Roll took over.
Move Over College, Here Comes Rock and Roll
My band did our first tour in 2001, and continued into 2002. In that year, while
on tour, I designed graphics for bands that we had toured with, like Underoath,
Beloved, The Uriah Omen, and Evelynn. While I had designed several
graphics for bands the years before that, these were my first jobs that weren’t
just local friends. I was designing for bands who played a lot of shows, and
sold a lot of merch.
As time went on, and we toured with more bands, it was a lot of, “Hey sweet
shirts! Who designed them?” “I did.” “Oh cool, do you want to do some for us?”
That was the bulk of my business. It wasn’t until we started touring with bigger
bands, who gave my name to the global merchandise companies who they
worked with. Then everything really started taking off. Now the majority of my
business comes through these global merchandising companies.
My Breakthrough Moment
It was when my hobby turned into an income. I designed some shirts for a good
friend’s band. He asked me how much I charged, and I said $40 per approved
graphic. His jaw dropped. He looked at me like I was a stupid child and said,
“You have to charge more, way more!” By this time my graphics were as good as
anything else out there. He explained to me that I wouldn’t be truly taken seriously
until I started charging the industry standard. Very reluctantly, I started
quoting people the “standard,” and the jobs kept coming through. Not only did
they keep coming through, I was getting more work than ever. It was as if a light
bulb had gone off, and not only was I being viewed as a top-level designer, but
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