This year’s Sun God Festival merchandise stood out for its captivating designs, high quality material, and grunge inspired graphics. Students lined up for limited drops and sold out entire collections in minutes, populating campus with the striped zip ups and distinctive crewnecks. Behind the designs was Rylee Boyles, a fourth-year double majoring in Cognitive Science Design Interaction and ICAM. She serves as the Senior Graphic Artist at AS Graphic Studio, and spearheaded the entirety of this year’s merchandise development and production. In conversation with Boyles, she delves into her creative process and inspiration, her collaboration with Triton Outfitters, and the overall experience of designing merchandise for such a large-scale event.
What inspired your design?
“Generally, the merch is correlated with the overall theme of Sun God. The theme this year was a grunge, rebellious, skater-esque vibe, so we wanted to incorporate that into the merch. We started with looking at blanks, so we had a meeting with the Triton Outfitters managers. We collaborated together to come up with a Pinterest board of the overall aesthetic of what we are looking for.”
That Pinterest board can be found here:
Was this inspired by Dominic Fike’s vibe?
“No, actually we don’t know who the artists performing are when we start working on the merch. The overarching vibe of the merch is just based on the theme that ASCE is giving me as the Sun God designer. This year, it was just a coincidence that the vibe of the merch correlated with his vibe as an artist.”
Boyles tells The Triton that as a designer, she began working on the merchandise before knowing the performers. While the aesthetic aligned with Dominic Fike’s overall atmosphere as an artist, this was a coincidence that further strengthened the cohesiveness of this year’s festival.
What platform do you use to design?
“Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. However, a lot of it is hand drawn. The logo and the typography this year was all hand drawn on my iPad.”
Do you determine the materials/qualities of the merchandise or do you just work on the designs?
“I do actually have a say in the materials used. Ella Winter is the Manager of Made to Order, the organization that picked out the blanks. It’s a subdivision of Triton Outfitters.”
She explained that the design process is highly collaborative between multiple teams.
“Our MTO manager, Ella Winter, is generally picking out blanks and showing them to me. The TO managers and I all have a meeting together, and we talk about what blanks we think correlate best with the designs. Sometimes we’ll do the blanks first and then I’ll put a design on it, or the design first and then we find a blank.”
Boyles added that this year’s focus on higher-quality materials helped elevate the final product.
“Generally, at TO, we try to incorporate higher quality materials. This year we had a lot of higher quality blanks, like Shock Aware and Cotton Collective, so it was very high quality this year, which probably correlated to the higher sales, and everything looked a lot better.”
What was your creative process like from the initial idea to the final products? Were there any challenges?
Boyles explains that while the design process is collaborative, it is ultimately centered around trust in the designer.
“When it comes to the design process, they generally put a lot of trust in the designer to come up with the designs overall.”
While there are many student groups involved in the overall production of the merchandise, like Triton Outfitters, ASCE, and AS Graphic Studio, the final decisions were made with a smaller team this year to streamline the process.
“This year we decided just to have TO because too many cooks in the kitchen can cause things to become too much. So it was mostly me and Andrew and Ivy and Ella talking about designs.”
Andrew Alvarado, Ivy Xu, and Ella Winter are all employees at Triton Outfitters.
“I would show them all of the design ideas that I had drawn out, and it would be like, ‘I like that,’ ‘I don’t like that,’ and then we would pivot on things.”
Although the process was generally smooth, she noted that she occasionally had to advocate for specific designs.
“There were instances where I did have to fight for a design. This special hoodie – they didn’t want to use it because they didn’t think it correlated enough with Sun God Festival. I was like, ‘We have to use it somehow.’”
She ultimately succeeded in keeping elements of the design.
“In the end, we compromised. It wasn’t originally going to be used, but we ended up incorporating it into a limited drop hoodie.”
Didn’t that hoodie sell out quickly?
“Yes, that hoodie was actually the most popular hoodie, and I wish we had made another version that wasn’t a limited drop.”
She reflected on how design decisions sometimes carry unanticipated outcomes.
“It wasn’t originally supposed to be part of the final lineup. I kept pushing for it because I really liked the design.”
One of the compromises involved adjusting labeling placement.
“It wasn’t as Sun God-branded as the other items, so we talked about adding tags, but in the end we added the logo on the sleeve.”
The only constraint she had to follow was that each item needed to either feature “Sun God” text or include the Sun God logo. Beyond that, she had full creative freedom over design and color choices.
How did it feel to see your design selected and introduced for such a large campus event?
“Crazy. It was just crazy, especially the positive feedback we had on the zip-ups.”
Boyles said the pressure of designing for a sell-out collection was intense but rewarding.
“It’s a lot to design a merch line because the end goal is that it has to sell out. You have to make designs that people actually like.”
Seeing students wearing her work made the experience surreal.
“It’s really surreal to see random people walking around campus wearing your T-shirt. Sometimes I’ll go up to people and be like, ‘Oh my God, I like your jacket,’ and it’s something I designed.”
She also noted the success of this year’s release.
“We sold double what we did last year, and revenue was up around 17%. Sun God Festival overall was much larger this year too, in terms of attendees.”
Have you always been interested in art or design?
“I came into college wanting to do art, because in high school I was in AP Art. However, I took a graphic design class and I hated it at first.”
Her perspective eventually shifted after taking more hands-on courses.
“Coming into college and taking a few of the design courses, I wanted to pivot more into graphic design. And getting my job at Graphic Studio helped a lot. I’ve never done apparel design, because this is the first time that I’ve done apparel design at my job at Graphic Studio, and it’s something that I really enjoyed.”
Has this experience influenced your career goals?
“Yes, for sure. I think it made me want to pursue event or concert graphic design more.”
While UX/UI was once her main focus, her interests have shifted.
“I used to want to do UX/UI because there’s more money in it, but I’m thinking now I’ll pursue UX/UI as a career and do graphic design freelance on the side.”
What was the most challenging part of the process?
“The most challenging part is making sure the sizes of the designs are correct on the blanks. That’s the mathematical side that can be tough.”
She explained that this process requires precision in determining proportions.
“You have to make sure the design works from extra small to large, because it’s the same print size across all of them.”
There was also financial pressure involved.
“It was a lot of pressure because a lot of money was going into it, so everything had to be perfectly aligned.”
How many hours did you spend on this project?
She described the workload as intense but rewarding.
“We started at the end of fall quarter and finished by the end of winter quarter.”
“I was probably working 15 to 20 hours a week on Sun God merch, with hour-long meetings each week.”
What was your favorite item to design?
“My favorite was probably the zip ups. I really enjoyed doing those, but those were probably the most difficult. The hats were fun too. I had never designed hats before, so that was a cool experience. And the stickers were kind of silly this year.”
Rylee Boyles’ work had a clear impact on the student body, with her designs quickly becoming a familiar sight across campus. Her contributions helped shape the memorable aesthetic of this year’s Sun God Festival, evolving from initial sketches on her iPad to a collection that saw widespread popularity and sell-outs. As the festival continues to grow each year, Boyles’ work will be remembered as an invaluable impact on long-standing UC San Diego traditions.
Orelia Oiknine is the Editor-in-Chief of The Triton.
All photos are courtesy of the Triton Outfitters Website and Instagram.