A seasonal apparel and merchandise collection created for Club Tattoo, the iconic tattoo brand co-founded by Chester Bennington and Sean Dowdell. Working closely with the team, I developed a series of illustrated designs, apparel graphics, accessories, and merchandise that pushed beyond traditional tattoo-shop aesthetics and embraced a more experimental visual language. The goal wasn’t to imitate tattoo culture. It was to contribute something unexpected to it.
How did this project begin?
Club Tattoo came to us through our connections in the nu-metal music world. At the time, we were creating artwork for bands like Adema, Julian-K, and Orgy, and those relationships eventually led to connections with Sean Dowdell and Club Tattoo.
Sean was Chester Bennington’s longtime friend and bandmate in Grey Daze, Chester’s first major band before Linkin Park. Club Tattoo had seen the work we were doing in the music and alternative culture space and approached us about creating a new artist-driven merchandise line for their shops.
What was the challenge?
The interesting thing about Club Tattoo is that they already had plenty of talented in-house artists. It’s a tattoo studio, of course they have artists. My first thought was honestly: “What do they need us for?”
But that’s exactly why they reached out. Sean wasn’t looking for traditional tattoo artwork, he wanted something different. A lot of tattoo merchandise tends to follow familiar visual territory. The challenge was creating work that felt connected to tattoo culture without looking like everything else hanging on the wall.
What was your approach?
I approached it from the perspective of someone who genuinely loves tattoo culture. I’ve been around tattoo artists for years. I have tattoos myself. But I didn’t want the artwork to look like flash art, I wanted it to almost feel like what getting tattooed feels like. The anxiety, excitement, and general discomfort present in a lot of the art.
The work leaned heavily into animals, symbolism, strange hybrids, and unexpected combinations. We’d start throwing out completely ridiculous ideas: What if a hummingbird was mechanical? What if a snake was crawling out of a television? What if we just kept pushing the idea further? The stranger the concept, the more likely it was to become interesting.
What was your role?
This project was heavily illustration-focused. I created the illustrations, designed the graphics, developed the apparel artwork, worked on typography, and collaborated closely with both the creative director and Sean’s team throughout the process.
We produced dozens upon dozens of concepts across multiple seasons. The work expanded into:
- T-shirts
- Hats
- Leather wallets
- Notebooks
- Merchandise collections
- Apparel systems
How did you know it was working?
There was one design in particular that became the benchmark. Internally we called it the Eye Palm, a severed red arm with an eye in the palm, inspired by an old Tales from the Crypt episode.
Club Tattoo kept coming back to it and at one point told us it was one of the best-selling pieces they’d ever produced across their artist series collections. Nice to know their customers were responding to the weirdness!
Why does this project matter?
Club Tattoo remains one of the strongest examples of my illustration work because I wasn’t being asked to fit into somebody else’s visual style, simply to bring what I have to the table. “What does a Dane Forst apparel collection look like?” That’s a rare opportunity.
The challenge was creating an entire family of designs that felt connected to one another while still giving each piece its own identity. When viewed together, I wanted them to feel like they came from the same strange universe. Some of my favorite illustration work of my career came out of this project.
