LMU Rec Fest - Ghost Ink Shirts

The complete story

How the program came together

1. 01

   Opportunity

   For its annual Rec Fest, Loyola Marymount University wanted a giveaway that felt different from prior years. Event shirts are a familiar campus item, which makes them easy to overlook — the university wanted something students would notice and talk about. The piece still had to work as an event giveaway: cost-effective at volume, produced in time for the event date, and clearly tied to Rec Fest and the university's brand.

2. 02

   Strategy

   Drawing on an innovation event led by the DesignLab team with supplier partners, LMU's Brand Advisor identified decoration techniques that could make a standard event shirt stand out. Ghost Ink printing hides a design that appears when the shirt gets wet — an interactive detail suited to a recreation event. The approach kept the shirt on-trend and conversation-worthy while remaining cost-effective and event-friendly, and early concept proofs with LMU's team confirmed the design fit the school's brand.

3. 03

   Solution

   Club Colors worked with the LMU Campus Recreation team to refine the artwork and finalize the Ghost Ink shirt. The decoration is subtle in normal conditions and reveals itself only when the fabric is wet, which made the shirt function as both a giveaway and a moment at the event itself. Club Colors managed proofing and production end to end, coordinating the specialty decoration process against the Rec Fest date so quality and timing were handled as one workstream.

4. 04

   Outcome

   The shirt gave Rec Fest a giveaway with a built-in reason to be noticed rather than a standard event tee, and LMU shared the project publicly on LinkedIn. Bringing DesignLab creative, specialty decoration, and production coordination under one Brand Advisor meant the campus recreation team approved artwork and received finished shirts without managing the specialty process themselves. The result gives LMU a proven creative approach it can apply to future campus events.