Band Merch: Your Album Cover on Skateboard Decks

On the merch table, a skateboard deck is the expensive, collectable piece: you won't sell many, but hung behind the stand it works as a sign, and it's the one the fan who already has everything takes home. So you don't end up with decks stacked in the rehearsal room, order one sample first, take names or money from the people who want one, and only then order those. Each deck costs you 89 €, plus one shipping charge per order (20 € to Ireland), and before you print the cover you need written permission from whoever made it. This guide is for the band that wants its album cover or tour poster on a deck: what to put on it, who owns the rights, how many to order, what to charge if the venue takes a cut, how to carry them from gig to gig, and how to do an edition for each date.

Why a deck on the merch table

• You can see it from the back of the room. Hung behind the stand, a deck with the cover on it announces the band and tells people there's something for sale, better than a T-shirt folded on the table.
• It's something people keep. A T-shirt wears out; a deck goes on the wall at home. For the fan who already owns the shirt from every tour, it's the next step up.
• It's a real deck. 7-ply maple, with the graphic printed by transfer on the underside (how a custom skateboard deck is made). Anyone who skates can add griptape, trucks and wheels and take it out on the street.

What it isn't: your best seller. If it costs you 89 €, it will cost the audience a good deal more than a T-shirt or a badge, and only a few will buy one each night. If your crowd is more badges-and-a-pint, start with a single deck, as a sample and a sign, and see how people react before ordering more.

What to put on the deck: the cover won't fit as it is

An album cover is square, and a deck is long and narrow, several times longer than it is wide. Stretch the cover to fill the deck and you lose most of it off the sides; leave it whole and it only fills a band across the middle. There are three ways round it:

• The cover in the middle and colour around it. The whole cover, edge to edge, with the deck's background colour above and below, which you choose in the editor. If the colour comes from the cover itself, it looks deliberate. Band name at the top; album title and year at the bottom.
• A vertical detail. If the cover has a tall element (a figure, a tower, a hand, a column of text), a vertical crop of that element works better than the whole cover. Ask whoever made it: they have the original file at a higher resolution and know what can be cropped without the image losing its meaning.
• The tour poster. Posters are usually vertical and closer to the shape of a deck: name at the top, artwork in the middle, dates at the bottom.

Two details you'll see on the deck and not on your phone screen. The eight truck holes go through the graphic near each end, so the band name shouldn't sit on top of them; the editor draws them so you can see. And text typed in the editor comes out sharper than text that's part of the image. What resolution an image needs to fill a deck (below 150 ppi at deck size, the print comes out soft or pixelated) is in which photos look good printed on a deck, and if whoever designed the cover would rather work in their own software, they can use the skateboard deck template.

Who owns the cover, even if it's your album

Being the cover of your album doesn't make it yours. A cover usually involves several people at once, and each of them has a say in whether it gets printed on decks and sold:

• Whoever designed or illustrated it. Under Ireland's Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, the author of a work is the first owner of its copyright, unless they made it as an employee in the course of their job (section 23), and copying it is one of the acts only the owner can authorise (section 37). A freelance designer you paid for a cover still owns it unless they assigned it to you, and an assignment only counts if it's in writing and signed (section 120). A brief for “a cover for the album and socials” doesn't, on its own, cover printing it on decks and selling them. Paying for the commission and getting the rights are two different things.
• Whoever took the photo. If the cover is a photograph, the photographer is its author and first owner too, even if you paid for the shoot.
• Whoever appears in it. If someone outside the band is in the picture, get their consent in writing before you put their face on something you sell.
• The label. If the album came out on a label, read your contract: if you signed over the artwork or the merchandising rights, you need their go-ahead as well.

The practical answer is an email from the illustrator or designer, and the photographer if there is one, saying which work, that they authorise it for skateboard decks, how many, where they'll be sold, for how long and how their name appears. If you're going to crop it or change its colours to make it fit, tell them first: the author keeps the right to object to a distortion of the work that would harm their reputation (the integrity right, section 109) and to be named as its author (section 107), and those moral rights can't be assigned (section 118). More on what you can and can't print is in where to get artwork for a custom deck.

And what you can't do: if you're a covers band or a tribute act, the original band's logo and album covers aren't yours, even though you play their songs; make your own design. The same goes for a festival's logo or a sponsor's brand without their written permission.

How many to order without ending up with stock

1. One sample. Hang it behind the stand at the next few gigs and take photos of it. Even if none sell, it's already working as a sign.
2. Take names. At the table, with the sample in front of people, write down names and take payment or a deposit; online, open a pre-order with a closing date. If you take money up front, say clearly when the decks will reach people and keep the cut-off date real: a pre-order that keeps getting extended stops being believed.
3. Order only what's sold. An order is one design in one width, from 1 to 19 copies, with one shipping charge. From 3 copies of the same design you can write to us and ask for a price based on quantity, but there's no fixed discount: do your sums with the price on the site.
4. A few extra, if you want to take the risk. For the gig itself, for whoever missed the pre-order. The ones left over don't go off: they're the next sample.

There's another way to hold no stock at all: order each deck straight to the buyer's address. The catch, outside Spain, is that every order pays its own shipping, so one deck per order to Ireland costs 20 € in shipping each time, whereas the same decks in a single order to you share one charge. And you don't get your hands on a deck before it arrives, so you can't sign or number it.

Each order also comes in a single width (8.0", 8.25", or 8.5", all the same price): for the wall it doesn't matter, for skating it does (size guide), and offering two widths means two orders.

What to charge (and the venue's cut)

Your cost per deck is 89 €, VAT included, plus the shipping on the order, shared between all the decks in it. What changes the sums at a gig is the venue, because some venues keep a percentage of whatever is sold at the merch stand, sometimes in exchange for their own staff doing the selling. Ask when you confirm each date: the percentage comes off your selling price, not off your margin. Here's how the minimum moves depending on what the venue keeps:

The 10, 20 and 25% rows are example scenarios to do the sums with, not the terms of any particular venue. The minimum is the price of the deck divided by what you keep after the venue's share, rounded up to the next euro: the point where you don't lose money on each deck you sell. It doesn't include shipping, the card-reader fee, whatever you pay the illustrator for the rights, or decks that don't sell.

Your margin goes on top of that minimum, and there's no right number. Three things that help you set it:

• A round price. At the merch table people pay fast, in the dark and sometimes in cash: a price with no cents, written big next to the sample.
• The same price at every date. If one venue takes a bigger share, the fan in that town shouldn't pay for it; do your sums with the most expensive venue on the tour.
• If you order more than you sell, the minimum goes up. Every unsold deck is a cost the sold ones have to cover. If the band starts selling merch at every gig, talk to an accountant about tax and VAT.

How to carry them from gig to gig

A tour van is a bad place for something flat and printed. Four habits:

• Flat, in their box, on top of the load. They arrive packed: leave them that way and take out only that night's decks. An amp or a flight case sliding around on every bend scratches whatever is underneath.
• Never printed side against printed side. They rub on every pothole: a sheet of cardboard or paper between each pair.
• Away from damp. Not a rehearsal room in a basement, not a van parked out in the rain: between dates, keep them indoors at home.
• The sample in a bag (a padded skate bag or an old blanket). At the stand, hang it with cable ties or cord through the truck holes, without drilling anything (how to hang a skateboard), or prop it upright against the wall. The deck arrives without a mount.

An edition for each date

This is the collector's version: the tour deck with the city, the venue and the date of each gig, like the screen-printed posters some bands make for every night. What you need to know before you promise it:

• Each date is a design, and each design is an order. A deck that says “Dublin” and one that says “Cork” can't go in the same order. Build a common base in the editor (the artwork, the band name) and, for each date, change only the text and place its order. Outside Spain, each order pays its own shipping.
• A few per date, numbered. A one-night edition is understood to be short. Since the number changes on every copy and the order is a single design, the number is written by hand, not printed: a paint marker on the underside, say “7/20”, with the band's signatures if you like, in a corner clear of the graphic.
• Order early and have them delivered home. The deck is printed in Spain, and we don't give a delivery date for orders outside Spain. Add the days it takes you to close the pre-order, have everything sent to an address where someone can take it in (not the venue), and load the decks in the van before you leave. We don't ship to Northern Ireland or anywhere else in the UK, so for a gig in Belfast or Derry, have them sent to an address in the Republic and bring them up in the van.

One more idea for the stand: the cover spread across several decks hung side by side, from 2 to 10, as a backdrop to the table. It's one design and one order, and each deck costs the same as a single one. With a square cover, three or four decks together make a rectangle close to it; whatever falls in the gap between decks isn't printed, so it works with an illustration, not with a face or the band name split in half (how a set of decks works).

How to order them, step by step

1. Written permission and the largest file you have of the cover, both from whoever made it (not a screenshot from a streaming app).
2. Design it in the editor, which is free and doesn't ask for an account: upload the cover, choose the background colour, type the name and the date, and check the deck in 3D, with the holes showing. Griptape is extra (9.95 € per deck) and, like every add-on, goes on every deck in the order or on none: for hanging, you don't need it.
3. Order the sample, hang it at the next gig and, with what you've sold, order the run.

If the decks are a present for the crew who tour with you rather than something to sell, the sums are different: what a custom skateboard deck costs. And if you'd rather talk a bigger run through with us first, there's a contact form on skateboards for companies; what we can and can't do for groups is in custom skateboards for your team.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Orders, widths, add-ons and deck sets: the Skateboard Personalizado site. First ownership, the acts restricted by copyright, moral rights and assignment in writing: Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000, sections 23, 37, 107, 109, 118 and 120, on the Irish Statute Book. Consulted in October 2026. This is practical guidance, not legal or tax advice.