A writing workshop becomes a spoken word piece thrown out from behind the mic at Dust Temple. Years later whilst studying graphic design at Shillington College I use the copy alongside an image I shot of one of Peter Drew’s ‘Aussie’ wheapasting pieces in the city (Brisbane, Australia) to practice my indesign skills. I then roll it all out as a spoken word tour concept creating a poster, t-shirts, tour booklet / zine and stickers. I collaborated with heaps of people to get this done and in the process may have come up with a cool new method of wheatpasting.

This project amped up the printer.

They get jaded grinding out boring shit too. Our first meeting lasted three hours. Where we chatted about and worked on the poster and the t-shirts and stickers.

Was wild seeing her work with my files. What was also very cool was to see just how much work goes into things like t-shirts and also that it becomes very manual if you want to get them right.

I learned a lot in those three hours. And in return I offered the printer something I don’t think she had felt for a long time …

… genuine excitement about possibility.

We had no idea what paper to use for the poster. The original idea was to wheatepaste it up on a city wall. And so just use some sort of normal paper of even a super thin newsprint / butcher paper. At one point she was showing me something behind one of the printers and we stumbled across an old sticker / sign of hers. That is the moment we decided on the material we would use for the poster.

This is a material that is essentially a removable sticker. So in the process of doing all this I think we may have come up with aa really cool way for street artists to do their thing and  practice their craft and not mess up the place or get fined / arrested in the process.

My printer’s name is Syl. She’s epic. @sillyink www.sillyink.com

This brief provided me the freedom to pull together every aspect of design and creativity and problem solving ability. I could leverage and make use of my own content – my own words and philosophy and my own images and imagery. I used pencils and cameras and knives and tape. I used illustrator and photoshop and indesign.

I found the space to think deeply on everything. To reference when required. To even search for more. To iterate and scamper design. To go crazy with the eight/s and throw caution to the wind when I felt something required it.   

I made everything up.

And then made everything real.   

I used no mockups. To roll out the poster and the t-shirts and the zine and stickers I had to constantly shift and move and revise things. I had to adapt often. Redesign things. I didn’t just throw the one piece of work onto a whole stack of different objects. I had to consider each one as an individual piece. With it’s own constraints.

I had to collaborate with heaps of people to get this done. And I had to go find them. I walked the streets through west end and the city and in northern nsw coastal towns like kingscliff, mullumbimby and byron. I jumped fences and searched for spots. I shot photos and looked for where security cameras were placed. I walked into said Hi and asked questions.

There are no smoke and mirrors here. Everything is real. From the ideas in the words to the ideals in the credits. From the pieces of work to the places and relationships. To the love of the work.

This was super fun.

And I could do this stuff all day.