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Ipalooza Promotional Merch

Badge-driven apparel and merch design for TownHall's 2024 Ipalooza IPA festival. Audrey has designed the festival merch in prior years as well.

Ipalooza 2024 merch design — arched wordmark over a hop-cone medallion badge, applied to a navy hoodie
Client
TownHall
Industry
Hospitality
Role
Design
Year
2024
Services
Merch design, Print design, Badge design, Apparel design

The problem

Ipalooza — TownHall's month-long IPA festival — needed 2024 merch that worked as both a membership perk and walking promotion. Event merch that looks like an afterthought doesn't get worn; this had to earn a place in someone's regular rotation. (Audrey has designed the festival merch in prior years as well.)

Background

Ipalooza is TownHall's annual IPA festival, held at the Ohio City and Short North locations — a month-long celebration of hops with dozens of IPAs on tap and a membership program that rewards finishers along the way.

The 2024 edition centers on an arched collegiate wordmark and a circular hop-cone medallion badge, applied across hoodies and sweatshirts in coordinated two-color print. Audrey has also designed the festival merch in prior years.

Membership perks include branded merch, so the design had to feel like festival gear people would actually wear — not a one-off event souvenir.

Objectives

  • 01

    Design a 2024 badge system that reads as festival gear, not a giveaway

  • 02

    Keep production practical with a two-color print approach

  • 03

    Make one design flex across multiple garments and colorways

Audience: TownHall regulars and Cleveland craft-beer fans joining the Ipalooza membership program.

Process

Planning, strategy, execution.

  1. 01Planning

    Merch that earns the wear

    Planning treated the 2024 merch as the festival's most durable marketing — a piece guests wear for years, not just February.

    • Established the medallion-and-wordmark structure around the hop cone, the festival's natural emblem
    • Set a two-color print constraint to keep per-unit cost and production clean
    • Planned the badge to scale from sweatshirt chest print to hoodie and glass-adjacent applications
  2. 02Strategy

    Collegiate energy, brewery roots

    The strategy borrowed the language of collegiate and heritage athletic gear — an arched wordmark over a seal — so the event reads as an institution with a legacy, not a one-year promotion.

    • Arched Ipalooza wordmark carries the name with presence across the chest
    • Circular medallion locks in EST. 2013, In Cervisia Veritas and TownHall or Nowhere
    • Colorways paired to garments so each variant feels intentional, not recolored
  3. 03Execution

    One badge, five garments

    Execution delivered print-ready badge artwork applied across sweatshirts and hoodies in coordinated colorways.

    • Two-color badge artwork tuned for screen printing on fleece
    • Navy/gold, heather grey/red, charcoal/light blue, olive/gold and burgundy/gold variants
    • Consistent placement and scale across crewneck and hoodie cuts

Creative approach

An arched collegiate wordmark gives the event name presence across the chest, with a circular hop-cone medallion anchoring the design — EST. 2013, In Cervisia Veritas, and TownHall's 'TownHall or Nowhere' line ringing the seal.

A two-color print approach keeps production clean and lets the same badge flex across garment colors — navy with gold, heather grey with red, charcoal with light blue, olive and burgundy with gold — so each piece reads as its own variant while staying one system.

The work

Walk the deck.

Use the arrows, thumbnails or arrow keys.

Ipalooza two-color shirt detail with arched wordmark and hop-cone medallion, shown beside a navy hoodie mockup with gold print

01 / 03Shirt detail — two-color print

Delivered

  • Ipalooza badge and wordmark lockup
  • Sweatshirt and hoodie designs in five colorways
  • Two-color print-ready artwork

Scope of ownership

  • Badge design, typography and garment application
  • Colorway and print-color direction across the merch line

What this project demonstrates

Festival merch designed as retail-grade apparel — promotion people keep wearing long after the event ends.

Performance results for this project are not published here. Metrics are available on request where the client has cleared them.

Next case study

Grrrl Camp 2024 Festival Creative

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