Case study · Merchandise

Wild Card Cycle Works Patch

A little Northern Michigan, made to go along for the ride.

The brief. Create a distinctive merchandise patch for Wild Card Cycle Works in Traverse City, Michigan, built for its community of mountain bikers and outdoor enthusiasts. The design needed to feel connected to Wild Card while staying bold and legible at a small scale.

The opportunity. Step beyond the ornate, playing-card-inspired imagery of previous merchandise and explore leading with the Northern Michigan landscape. A patch offered a compact canvas for bringing that sense of place into something riders could wear.

The solution. A patch design featuring a landscape of rolling hills, conifer trees, and lake waves beneath a warm sunset, framed by a simplified bicycle chain. Prominent Wild Card Cycle Works lettering anchors the illustration, while a palette of warm tones, blues, and beige gives the artwork a distinct outdoor character. Created with an embroidered finish in mind for hats and jackets.

Pencil and marker sketches of Wild Card Cycle Works patch concepts spread across a table: badges, storefronts, and bold WILD CARD lettering

The finished patch artwork on an iPad on a cutting mat, beside a sketchbook of patch thumbnails

The Wild Card Cycle Works patch: rolling hills, conifers, and lake waves under a sunset, ringed by a bicycle chain, over a navy-tinted street scene

Close detail of the embroidered patch stitching, with Traverse City, MI lettered along the bottom

A tan hat with the Wild Card patch hanging from the handlebars of a mountain bike

Four five-panel hats: three carrying earlier playing-card style Wild Card marks, and a brown hat wearing the new landscape patch

A black hooded jacket with the Wild Card Cycle Works patch on the chest

Got a community worth stitching?

Start a project See more work