Tahsim Durgun — Merch

Tahsim Durgun — content creator, bestseller author, comedian and funk host with a community of over a million people — wanted to release his own merch. He had ideas and a rough direction, but no clear picture of how the whole thing should look in the end. My task: to turn his ideas and inspirations into three finished, wearable motifs, for a tote bag, T-shirt and hoodie.

The result sold out fast. And there is hardly a more immediate proof that a design works than people who vote for it with real money and then wear the motifs out on the street.

When we worked together, Tahsim was still at the beginning of his journey. He brought what many creative people bring: a good sense for what he finds cool, concrete motif ideas and inspirations he liked. What was missing was the path from there to the finished, printable, wearable design. He gave me the direction and the references; I translated them into a visual language that fits him and his community.

That Tahsim of all people wanted to work with me still means something to me today. He became known for addressing topics that matter to me too: racism and injustice, which I actively stand against in my private life. All the more rewarding to contribute to a project for someone whose stance I share.

Merch design sounds casual at first — it just has to look cool. But that is exactly where the difficulty lies: there are no functional guardrails like in UX or web design, no conversion goals, no technical constraints to orient yourself by. The only measure is whether people want it.

On top of that: a motif has to fit Tahsim’s personality, be something his community can identify with, and work across three different products — because a tote bag, T-shirt and hoodie have very different surfaces and print conditions. And in the end it has to be something you would willingly put on.

I fully illustrated the three motifs and prepared them for print on the tote bag, T-shirt and hoodie. But the real core of my work lay less in pure illustration than in translation: bundling Tahsim’s loose ideas, preferences and references and turning them into a clear, independent execution that feels coherent.

This is essentially the same skill that defines my product and design work, just in a different medium: taking the vague vision of a client who knows the destination but not the route, and making something concrete and finished.

The collaboration lived on Tahsim’s input as a starting point: he showed me what he liked, set the direction and shared inspirations. From there I developed the motifs and refined them until they matched his vision on the one hand and convinced as wearable designs on the different products on the other.

It was a creative, playful process without a tight corset — and precisely for that reason one that demanded a clear sense of style, audience and impact.

We often regard design as a science of grids and systems. Merch design, by contrast, is emotional and direct. Without KPIs or technical constraints as guardrails, it comes down purely to the human connection. Success means creating something people want to make a part of their own identity. This project is so close to my heart because it gave me the freedom to combine visual storytelling with a pinch of humour and a piece of lived, everyday activism.