The setlist taped to the floor

Eight songs in marker on a torn piece of paper. Number six has a line through it. At the bottom, in smaller writing: ENCORE IF THEY WANT IT.

That sheet gets taped to a monitor, played off for ninety minutes, and binned. It's the most personal thing a band makes and the audience never sees it.

Why the setlist and not the band's logo?

Because a logo is what a band shows you and a setlist is what it decides.

The order of songs is a whole argument: what opens, what the second one has to do, where the slow one goes, whether the new one gets a spot yet. Every band has had that argument in a car park.

A logo says a band exists. A setlist says what kind of night they were trying to have.

What makes the crossed-out song matter?

It's the evidence that it was real.

A clean list looks like a poster. A list with a song scratched out, a time scrawled in the corner, an arrow moving something up — that's a document that was used. The correction is the part that proves nobody designed it.

Same principle as a print that carries a real number rather than a round one: the imperfection is the authentication.

Whose handwriting should it be?

Theirs, if it can be got.

A photograph of an actual setlist, redrawn, keeps the letterforms of the person who wrote it — which for a bandmate or a partner is most of the gift. Handwriting is recognisable to people who know it in a way no typeface is.

If there's no original, an invented hand still works, as long as it's genuinely uneven. Neat lettering pretending to be a scrawl reads as a font, and everyone can tell.

Can it use real song titles?

Their own band's, freely. Somebody else's is a different question.

Short titles are generally too brief to attract copyright protection on their own, but a list of another act's songs, set out as their set, edges toward implying an association — and band names themselves are usually trademarks. A tribute-night set printed as a gift is unlikely to trouble anyone; the same list sold as merchandise is a different proposition.

Which is roughly where quoting anything on a shirt lands.

Does it work for a musician without a band?

The equivalent document shifts, and there are several.

A practice log. A page of a score with the fingering pencilled in. A pedalboard signal chain drawn as boxes and cables. A tuning written as six letters — D A D G A D — which to a guitarist is a whole mood.

For a teacher, a lesson plan. For a session player, a chord chart with the road-map letters and the repeat marks.

Is this a gift or a band's own merch?

Both, and it's unusually good as merch.

Most small bands print a name and a logo, which is what every band prints. A setlist from a specific night, dated, is a thing only that band can sell — and the people who buy it were there.

A run for the band themselves, one each after a tour, is a marker rather than a uniform.

Does it print well?

Very — handwriting is naturally high-contrast line work.

Marker strokes are thick, irregular and solid, which is close to ideal for fabric. The torn paper edge gives the print its own outline, so the artwork doesn't need a panel around it. The small bottom line is the only fine element and it wants to be larger than the original.

Washed black, charcoal and faded navy all suit it. One ink is plenty.

How do I get one made?

Describe the list at JustOG — the songs, the order, what got cut, and whose handwriting it should be in. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Somebody wrote that out on the floor of a venue twenty minutes before doors.