Bandzoogle through the years: a look at our best T-shirt designs

As part of our 20th anniversary celebration we thought it would be fun to take a visual trip through time via Bandzoogle t-shirt designs. Our annual T-shirt designs began many years ago when we first started our annual in-person company meet-ups.

And now for the first time, we are offering some of these exact tees for sale through our Bandzoogle charity store powered by Printful! All proceeds from the sale of these shirts will benefit the Musicounts Band Aid Program, which provides under-resourced schools with grants of up to $20,000 worth of musical instruments, equipment, and resources. 

Here’s a rundown of some of my favorites designs from over the years. Be sure to visit to the Bandzoogle merch store to get a tee of your own and support an awesome cause!

10 Year Anniversary

This was my first meetup at Bandzoogle. I had just been hired two months earlier and was excited to meet my coworkers for the first time in the flesh. I immediately noted two things after meeting my fellow Zooglers: First, I was disoriented by how tall most of my coworkers were. I’m not particularly tall (aka short), but I think there were maybe five staff members over 6ft in height. The second thing I noted was how kickass the t-shirt was for BZs 10th anniversary. I grew up loving metal so this Iron-Maiden-inspired tee was right up my alley. 

11 Year Anniversary

This was the first year I was tasked with designing the meetup tee. When I think of music and the number 11 the first thing that pops to my mind is the amazing scene in Spinal Tap where Nigel Tufnel is showing off his Marshall amp that “goes to eleven.” Documentarian Marty DiBergi then completely confuses Tufnel by asking him “Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?” So with that as my inspiration you have our 11th Anniversary tee with the Bandzoogle logo set in the Spinal Tap font and the tagline “This goes to 11 [years].”

12 Year Anniversary (things get weird)

For this one I was given a design brief from Stacey (who’s now our CEO) which was strongly supported by veteran developer Eli. Years before my time at Bandzoogle, we had held a t-shirt contest for our users and one of the submissions resonated deeply with the staff. It was entitled “Bandlandia” and pictured an anthropomorphic lion named BANDZOOGLE, holding a fantastical guitar and wearing a cape. 

The design included the definition of Bandzoogle: “A musical, multi-talented creature, which inhabits regions of Bandlandia; known for its nigh-hypnotic guitar playing.” 

Stacey was sure our founder Chris was going to think this was hilarious. I spent hours recreating the art in Adobe Illustrator and when Chris was presented with the tee he actually didn’t even recall this design or the T-shirt contest from years before. This made the shirt even more hilarious to me. In 2018 I gifted Stacey an all-over-print of this design as a sweatshirt which she still cherishes to this day. 

13 Years

This was the first time I revived our “smashing guitar man” logo for a t-shirt design. There’s probably some software that could have populated the shape of the logo with hundreds of “13”s, but instead I manually placed every single 13 you see in this design. Every artist must endure pain for their craft. My pain was resizing and rotating 100s of 13s in Adobe Illustrator. 

16 Years

For legal reasons I’m not able to use the original artwork for the 16 year anniversary tee. The design team had a lot of fun designing the Bandzoogle logo in the style recognizable band/artist logos, but the copyright issues are hairy. You’re getting a different version than the original, but I actually like this simplified version better. 

17 Years

This was the first year I got to hire a designer/illustrator to design our tee! I had been following Jaqui Oakley’s work for some time and was so excited to engage her for this project. I think the only art direction that was given was that we would love to harken back to the metal/rock genre that’s part of Bandzoogle’s DNA. Jaqui nailed it on the first sketch. 

This was also the big launch of our integration with Printful and we were able to pop Jaqui’s design onto tees, mugs, socks, pillows and whatever else you can think of.

20 Years

This year I am excited to present our 20th anniversary tee designed by illustrator Farah Allegue! Earlier in the year I had purchased one of Farah’s prints on one of my trips to Montreal and she immediately came to mind as someone to approach for the 20th anniversary tee. 20 years is a big deal and I thought her use of pattern and color was a perfect way to illustrate the celebratory tone of the occasion. We couldn’t be happier with the results. We are also offering a beautiful green variant of the design in our online store.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to the BZ merch store and grab some of these beautiful designs. You’ll also help bring music to under-resourced schools!

As mentioned, the online store is powered by Bandzoogle using our integration with print-on-demand service Printful. For anyone that prefers to donate directly to the campaign to raise money for the  Band Aid Program, you can do so with a direct link: Band Aid campaign donation.