Lev Grossman

And when I say “help me,” what I mean is “do it for me, because I can’t.”

Here’s the deal. And it’s kind of a big deal to me. CafePress, renowned online retailers of merch, has approached me about setting up an authorized store for Magicians-related stuff. The way I understand it, people will be able to make Magicians-related items and sell them through CafePress, and they’ll also be able to order things like shirts and shot glasses and other useful things with Magicians- and Brakebills- and Fillory-related words and images on them.

This isn’t a money thing. OK, there are tiny bits of money in it for me (and for you), but mostly I just think it would be cool. These are things that I want to own.

But in order for it to work, we need to feed the store art. First and foremost, we need a design for the Brakebills crest — the old key-and-bee shield. Yes, a version of this does crest does already exist — you can see it on the Brakebills website, for example. But the thing of it is, even though I made up Brakebills, I don’t actually own the rights to that particular image, and licensing it  would be expensive. (Don’t try to work out the logic here, you’ll just end up having to make a saving throw vs. madness.)

So we need a new Brakebills crest. We could use a new one anyway — I never thought the old one looked quite heraldic enough, to be honest. I would try it myself, but this project needs someone with actual graphical talent, which I totally lack. If you’re looking for a description of the crest, it’s on p. 49 of The Magicians:

Each jacket had an embroidered coat of arms on it, a golden bee and a golden key on a black background dotted with tiny silver stars.

But that’s not all we need. We need Physical Kids logos, Brakebills South logos, clever t-shirt slogans (“Talking Bear Wants Schnapps,” “Hogwarts + Sex = Brakebills”  – see, like that except clever), maps of the Neitherlands, clock trees fan art, Fillory and Further book covers, Brakebills ties, knitted Brakebills scarves, Two Moons shot glasses, anything at all visual or merchandisable related to or inspired by the books.

If you’re at all artistically talented, which I am totally not, I invite/implore you to take a shot at it. If you teach art classes, you could have your students take a shot at it. If you make fan art and want to get paid for it, now is the time!

For now, since the CafePress Magicians store isn’t officially up yet, submissions have to go through me. I’ve set up a gmail acount for the purpose: magiciansart at gmail dot com.

That’s all I got. Post any questions in the comments? Official image guidelines for CafePress are here, though I don’t know what half of that stuff means. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.