If there was a lesson to be learned from the most recent project from Studio Nari, it’s that you never know who’s going to come across your work – particularly if you’re collaborating with Coach. Having been working with the fashion house for the past year (“on a larger project that will be launching soon,” Nari founder Caterina Bianchini reveals), the studio had built up a huge catalog of work for the fashion brand, including type and illustration . It was then that Lil Nas X’s creative director saw some of the studio’s sketches. “That was the beginning of the relationship, we were then asked to begin creating bespoke type for the tour merch,” Caterina tells It’s Nice That.
This commission has been spotted in the sumptuous visuals across Lil Nas X’s new Montero tour merch. A soft, near-psychedelic butterfly is at the heart of the work, uniting the words Coach and Montero with bleeding characters resembling wings. The butterfly, Caterina explains, was crucial in distilling the Lil Nas X style. Here standing as a symbol of freedom, transformation, hope and beauty, the symbol “felt very fitting”, Caterina continues. “We wanted the type to feel fluid, bold (the inclusion of keylines helped with this) and accessible (the soft nature and bleed on the characters linked to this).”