# Two words that only your community can read

> Community merch isn't marketing — it's a membership object, made by the group for itself. Which means the phrase should be incomprehensible to everyone outside it, on purpose.

August 17, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/swag-for-your-community

**cache matters.** Two words, small, in a monospace face, on a brown shirt at a meetup.

To almost everyone it's meaningless or mildly odd. To the two hundred people who run that
particular kind of system it's a joke, an argument, and a position, all at once.

That's what community merch is for, and it's a different object from anything a company makes.

## How is this different from company swag?

The direction it's addressed in.

[Company swag is addressed outward](/stories/conference-booth-swag) — it wants to be seen by
people who don't know the company yet, which is why it ends up being a logo and why nobody wears
it. It's advertising wearing a shirt costume.

Community merch is addressed **inward**. It's made by the group, for the group, and its job is to
be recognised by people who are already there. Nobody is being converted. The shirt is a
membership card that happens to be cotton.

## So the phrase should be obscure?

It should be *precise*, which usually amounts to the same thing.

The best community lines are ones that only make sense with the shared context: a position in a
long-running argument, a phrase from a talk everybody saw, a thing that's technically wrong but
everyone says anyway. If an outsider would need a paragraph, that's correct.

What doesn't work is the generic version of the same idea — a shirt about *coding* rather than
about a specific opinion within it. Broad is the failure mode here, not narrow.
[The password test applies](/stories/hackathon-shirts): the right people should get it in
half a second and nobody else should get it at all.

## Should it be small or large?

Small, usually, and the reason is social rather than aesthetic.

A community line set small reads as a detail somebody noticed. The same line at full chest scale
reads as a costume — it announces the affiliation to a room that mostly didn't ask. Since these
shirts are worn both inside the community and outside it, the small version survives more
situations.

The monospace face in the picture is doing similar work: it's the typographic register of the
community itself, so the shirt is speaking in the group's own voice rather than about it.

## Who should make it — and who should sell it?

Whoever is in the group. That's the actual shift.

Community merch used to require somebody to volunteer as the logistics person: collect sizes, take
money in advance, place a minimum order, store the extras, post them out. It was a job, and it's
why most groups never had shirts.

With no minimum, the design can simply exist and each person orders their own. Nobody fronts
money, nobody holds stock, nobody has to chase eleven people for a size.
[That was the whole barrier](/stories/no-inventory-print-on-demand), and it's gone.

## Can the community make money from it?

It can, and it's worth deciding whether it should.

A published design earns for whoever published it, which for a community means the organiser or
the group can have something coming back — a small fund for a venue, a domain, a round of
drinks. That's a legitimate and low-friction way to support a group that has no other funding.

But it changes the object slightly. A shirt that funds the meetup is a fundraiser; a shirt that
exists because somebody made a joke is a joke. Both are fine, and the group should know which one
it's doing.

## What if the community isn't technical?

Nothing about this is specific to software.

A birdwatching group, a swim club, a repair café, a fandom, a forum, a games night, a local
running crew, a subreddit. All of them have a phrase everybody says, and none of them have a
shirt, because for a group of forty nobody could justify a print run.

The design brief is identical: the phrase should be incomprehensible outside, and instantly
readable inside.

## What about the group's name?

Small, on the back or under the line — or not at all.

The name makes the shirt findable and a bit more official, which some groups want. But the line
itself already identifies the group to everyone who matters, and adding the name converts a joke
into merchandise.

If the group has a mark,
[the one-colour version](/stories/company-logo-on-a-shirt) at pocket scale is the right
amount.

## How do I get one made?

Give the line at [JustOG](/) — the exact words, small, in the group's own register. 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](/shop).

Two hundred people laugh. Everyone else reads a brown shirt.