PRoject
My connection to Gasoline Lollipops started as a fan, long before I became their designer. This project has a more personal history than most. About seven years ago, I anonymously entered a poster contest for frontman Clay Rose’s other band, The Widow’s Bane, and won. That poster opened the door to working with Gasoline Lollipops shortly after and grew into a five-year creative partnership.
Over that time, my role expanded across their website, visual identity, merchandise, posters, album artwork, digital promotions, and live experiences. Knowing the music so well gave me a unique starting point: I wasn’t trying to invent a personality for the band. I was translating one that was already there.
Finding the Opportunity
The band’s sound doesn’t sit neatly in one genre. They call it PAFCR: psychedelic, alternative, folk, country, and rock, with influences that can shift from punk to roadhouse R&B. The challenge was creating an identity with the same range, one that could move from a gritty gig poster to a Southern-gothic album cover without ever feeling like two different bands.
I built the visual language around a hot-rod-inspired palette of rust red, faded cream, deep navy, and worn mustard gold, paired with distressed typography, vintage textures, collage, and hand-drawn details. The pieces could change dramatically from one project to the next, but the underlying system kept everything unmistakably Gasoline Lollipops.
BUILDING THE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
The website became the digital home for the band, bringing together their music, tour dates, photography, merchandise, and story in one cohesive experience. I designed and built the custom WordPress site to carry the same tactile character as the physical brand, using layered imagery, distressed textures, and unexpected details throughout.
Because I knew how important the songwriting was to both the band and their fans, I also created a dedicated lyrics archive organized by album. It gave listeners a place to dig deeper into the songs and made the site feel less like promotion and more like an extension of the music.
Merchandise and the Shop
Merchandise turned the visual identity into something fans could take home. I designed apparel and supporting graphics that felt like extensions of the band rather than promotional products, using the same visual language in ways that could stand on their own.
The designs connected with fans and helped merchandise become a meaningful source of revenue for the band.
Building a Visual Language
The identity was designed to behave more like a toolkit than a fixed template. Typography, texture, photography, illustration, and collage could shift depending on the album, show, or application while the core palette and visual attitude held everything together.
That flexibility became essential as the work expanded across merchandise, print, digital, and physical environments. Each piece could have its own personality without losing its connection to the larger Gasoline Lollipops world.
Event Posters
Concert posters became a place to continually reinterpret the identity. Each show could inspire its own concept, illustration, palette, and personality, from gritty Western imagery to stranger, more surreal ideas.
Rather than repeating a formula, I used the brand as a set of creative ingredients. The posters could look completely different from one another while still feeling like they belonged to the same band.
My anonymous winning entry for The Widow's Bane poster contest.
Album Art & Streaming
Album and single artwork gave me another way to respond directly to the music. Rather than applying the identity the same way every time, I developed individual visual concepts for each release and carried them across digital artwork, CDs, vinyl, and promotional materials.
The broader system provided continuity, while each release had enough freedom to reflect its own mood, story, and place in the band’s evolution.
Album artwork across digital music platforms
All the Misery Money Can Buy — 2020
"The album was produced by Clay Rose and Justin Tocket, mixed by Justin Tocket, and mastered by Bernie Grundman, with album cover design by Araya Metzger."
Americana Highways, single premiere feature
Nightmares — 2022
LIVE EXPERIENCE
As the band grew, so did the scale of the work. The identity expanded into digital promotions, social content, and live-show graphics, taking imagery that had lived on posters, album covers, and screens into the performance environment itself.
Seeing the work become part of the live experience brought the visual identity back to where the music mattered most: in front of an audience.
Results
What started with one anonymous poster contest grew into a five-year creative partnership and a visual identity that evolved alongside the band. The work ultimately touched nearly every part of how Gasoline Lollipops presented themselves, from their website and merchandise to album releases, posters, digital campaigns, and live performances.
During that time, the band continued to grow their audience, perform on larger stages, and eventually sign a record deal, while merchandise became a meaningful source of revenue. The real success of the system was its ability to keep evolving with them without losing the character that made Gasoline Lollipops feel like Gasoline Lollipops in the first place.
Worked with Gasoline Lollipops band members: Clay Rose, Donny Ambory, Bradley Morse, Kevin Matthews