How A24 and Online Ceramics won the movie merch game
August 01, 2024
How A24 won the movie merch game
A24 has developed a cult following for its movie merch, thanks in large part to the cult following of the designers who create it.
Last week, cult clothier Online Ceramics, known for Deadhead-inspired tie-dye tees and stylistic screen prints that knife classic horror graphics with self-knowing humor, announced that its founders Alix Ross and Elijah Funk would part ways. Ross has left the company; Funk will stay on to run its new endeavors.
The announcement happened to coincide with the release of a new book chronicling the history of the clothing company, Tricker’s Cabin, by the publishing arm of the entertainment company A24. The book offers a retrospective of Ross and Funk, how they came to know each other and work together in their home state of Ohio and later Los Angeles, and their cumulative work together over eight years as Online Ceramics.
Online Ceramics began designing T-shirts for A24 in 2018, and since then, the company’s distinctive point of view (which Funk describes as a “happy-sad dichotomy” in the book) has become the studio’s de facto merch aesthetic. Over the years, the two companies’ approach to visual storytelling have landed on a similar wavelength: one that breaks up horror with humor. When filmgoers think of A24, it’s this look that comes to mind, making the duo as hand-in-hand as those Grady twins in the Shining who showed up right before things got real bad.
MEET-CUTE
Online Ceramics designed its first A24 T-shirt for the film Hereditary, in what started as a self-initiated “bootleg” project. Funk and Ross had seen the Hereditary trailer and made their own T-shirt for the movie, but hadn’t been able to get in touch with anyone at A24. They decided to make it anyway and “just get in trouble,” recalls Ross in Tricker’s Cabin. GQ global editorial director Will Welch ended up putting them in touch with A24 creative director Zoe Beyer, and she gave Funk and Ross hi-res images and her blessing. That started their yearslong collaboration.
A cursory scroll through the A24 shop six years later shows Online Ceramics-designed tees and sweatshirts are labeled as collabs in the product title, as in “Online Ceramics x Pearl Farm Fresh Tee.” Online Ceramics itself is just as much of a selling point as A24. The archival shirts are all sold out, although the listings that are left up show the breadth of their collaboration (and, I would imagine, torture fans who missed out on the chance to own one themselves).
On Reddit, some fans hypothesize that merch pricing is a supply-and-demand indicator of the brands’ cultural caché. Online Ceramics x A24 sweatshirts are $ 125; T-shirts are $ 60. Tees for Neon’s Longlegs are $ 25 by comparison. How is it, exactly, that A24 can sell their tees for more than double the price? one subreddit wonders. There’s some speculation about better-product quality, and because “A24 is Supreme for cinephiles”; because “A24 has their fan base who consistently shells out whatever price they charge”; because “Supply and demand. A24 charges that much because they can.”
Over on Instagram, fans who missed product drops plea into the void: “Please send me a pack I am poor but of exquisite taste,” wrote one commenter on a sold-out bumper sticker for the A24 horror flick MaXXXine. Neither A24 or Online Ceramics appear to reply to comments. In the cutthroat competition for merch drops—which heighten demand through scarcity—it seems no one can hear you scream.
Crafting the A24 aesthetic
Funk believes movie merch gives fans the ability to participate in retelling the story of a film. “One of the reasons I enjoy making T-shirts is it lets the audience participate in whatever the subject of that particular item is promoting by owning it,” he says. “I’m certain that almost every time someone wears the shirt, they have a dialogue with someone about the story, which keeps the narrative in perpetual motion.”
Of course, the demand for A24’s movie gear is also due to the unique design execution of the merch itself. Online Ceramics figured out how to build on existing fandom with a consistent and distinct point of view that has developed into a visual brand in its own right. The designers have mostly created tees for A24’s horror films, like the Witch, X, and Pearl, and all follow a similar stylistic format: title; square image with a border, tagline, and a few lines of small text in a square composition. The style goes back to the design of that first Hereditary tee, which was inspired by the backs of old Penguin Classics and VHS tapes.
“I hadn’t really seen anyone apply that type of design to a T-shirt before, and I think that subconsciously it creates a familiar feeling which makes folks relate to them almost immediately,” Funk tells me over email. He compares the visual effect of the tees to browsing movies at a Blockbuster, “which to many is an all too relatable, exciting feeling of discovering something new based on how it looks.”
Online Ceramics’ design choices for A24 play up the idea of choosing a movie based on its cover and the abstract feeling it conveys; not based on knowing every minute detail of what a film is about. In fact, the quote on the Hereditary T-shirt, “a journey through the deepest and coldest layer of hell,” isn’t even in the movie, Ross says in the book. But it works as a tool to emphasize a feeling. “In an age where we can google everything and understand what it is before we ever even purchase or consume it helps discover new interesting things,” Funk says. “That’s sort of the magic of these shirts.”
Online Ceramics’ “happy-sad tension” predates its work with A24. Funk sees a necessary correlation between horror and humor, which traces back to his youth in Ohio, and his grandmother, who he says was a working clown—a character that is both happy and sad. He feels the “concept works perfectly” with A24’s horror films. “If you watched scary movies with complete belief and a serious mindset you might actually be a sadist, which I think most horror directors understand,” says Funk. “There has to be a bit of a punchline, or camp here and there, to lighten the mood.”
Applied to T-shirts, this concept creates an appealing sense of visual tension. “You have to show a little wink in order to make it wearable,” says Funk. “It sort of disarms the viewer. If you made a shirt with a dead body on it that seemed serious in tone, it’d be pretty off-putting. But when you pair it with a clever phrase or a funny tagline, the audience understands that it’s just a movie, and movies as a concept are entertainment.”
Funk describes the T-shirt for the Witch as one of his favorites, as it has a particular aesthetic kinship to Online Ceramics as a brand, and because it was the first T-shirt for which he really got to “stretch out creatively.” “Honestly [that] was when I felt like our partnership really began,” he says. “I remember I kept thinking, Are you sure this is okay? I was so thankful for that trust, and that gratitude still stands.”
That partnership also lives on through the tees themselves, extending the film’s story long after heads and credits roll in theaters.
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