Special Force concert tees: 860 units, an IP collab with 5 illustrators in 50 days

An IP collab with illustrators and the Special Force teams: how to deliver in 50 days

Special Force, a girl-idol audition program that ran in August 2024, needed T-shirts for each team to wear on stage. It couldn't be simple printing; the designs had to be collaborations with illustrators, and with artists, teams, and star members all involved, the coordination itself was a major task. The schedule was also set longer than usual for event merch.

O-SEAN brought on five illustrators and started from the collaboration design itself. Working with artists, teams, and members across many stakeholders, we made team T-shirts for 8 teams and personal T-shirts for 5 star members over about 50 days. Collaborations with many participants tend to drag out design sign-off and revisions, so the key was managing the schedule in clear segments: who needs to align on what, and by when. The item was a short-sleeve T-shirt, and each team's design was done entirely differently.

In the end, 860 units in total were delivered on schedule. We didn't stop at delivery: on event day we provided on-site staff and helped run the weekend event. This case shows that even an IP collaboration full of variables, with artists and multiple teams involved, can be handled from merch production through to the event itself through coordination and schedule management.