create or conform
To anyone who’s ever put together IKEA furniture without reading the instructions first, you’re my people.
Growing up I had the notion that risk was bad, if you wanted to find success in life you had to know your subject from A-Z. So with this in mind, when I decided I enjoyed using Photoshop, making logo’s & album art for the homies, the next step to turn this into a career was to study graphic design, right? Well, in secondary school I picked two GCSE subjects, IT because I liked computers and Graphic Design because I was sick at Photoshop… Easy grades? NOPE.
The first year in Graphic Design was a disaster. My teacher was a cliche. The arty farty, computers is cheating type. If you couldn’t draw, you weren’t worthy and he made this very clear, near enough all my assignments were graded E for effort. So I switched to Wood Work. This teacher was a lot better - former military guy, super stern but equally understanding and took his time with us. I had an issue you see, I didn’t enjoy the theory part, the writing, explaining why - I just wanted to do and he understood this. He accommodated me whilst explaining my grades were based on the theory not so much the practical, so aslong as I could articulate my ideas & process afterwards - he was happy.
I spent the following months playing with lathes, getting busy with the electronics. In the end I crafted a lamp, it had an LED poking out of a polished aluminium pole, wrapped around it was two moulded neon green & orange perspex sheets, atop a meticulously lathed pine wood slab. I the had to detail my whole process and draw blueprints of something that already existed - I think I did good and I got a B!
My IT class, I’ll keep it short and sweet. Great teacher, really enjoyed his lessons but our final project was creating a guide for first time computer users; a step by step guide showing them how to login, open internet explorer from the start menu onwards, how to use google - complete with screenshots. We did something similar with Excel & Word… long story short, I didn’t care - would hapilly erase those two years from memory.
Exams are done, I’ve completed school! I’ve got pretty good grades, life isn’t doom & gloom but I’ve gotta find a job or continue with my education. So I decided to go to college, I figured one teacher wasn’t going to crumble my dreams so I went to an open day for a Graphic Design course - honestly on first impressions I loved it, the tutors were cool and they had iMacs in the class room, i was sold!
The first few weeks were good but after creating the umpteenth scrap book from material we’d collect on field trips to museums and galleries, I got bored. Like REALLY bored and now we’re introduced to the theoretical aspect of the course. I wanted to scream but once again, the tutor was cool, he wore skinny jeans and had piercings - tres cool! I endured the first couple lessons but truth be told, I’d purposely bunk off or just not show up.
I respect art history and all that stuff but why am I being graded on my understanding of the Bahaus movement and why Helvetica was made rather than what I’ve been able to create & apply from it? This was the begining of a spiral downwards and pretty soon I found friction with my tutors which all came to climax and I was asked to leave.
This was the final straw for me, I figured there’s absolutely no way I can be a graphic designer. The steps to sucess are too high and I clearly don’t care enough about it so who would even hire me?
I’m now out of education so you guessed it, I had to find a job! A family friend worked in construction so I did some labour work for a few months, then a temp job as cold caller - I wasn’t getting enough commissions, got fired. Then my worst nightmare came true, I was working fries at McDonalds - how the ambicious have fallen.
For the first time in my life, I was experiencing everything I’d be warned about. “If you fail school you’ll end up at McDonalds”. About 2-3 months into this job I was asked to clean the toilets. I’m not quite sure what came over me but I quit on the spot. God forbid - my brain just ticked. I was a fairly new recruit during the christmas period so maybe this was some sort of rousing, plus with the low pay and low hours I wasn’t into it. I went home.
For some time, I dreamed of owning a clothing line and at college my peers very much into streetwear, I didn’t really have the money to keep up so I created my own tee’s. I’d make designs of at the time cool but with hindsight corny qoutes. I looked into production, screen printing etc but once again no funds, no fun - besides WTF am I going to do with 50 “KMT“ tees.
This is when I came across iron on transfer paper, oh snap! I bought a pack for like £8 and got some blank tee’s from primark, went home and wasted all my mums printer ink, but guess what.. I was fly, and nobody else had it. Over some weeks, I managed to sell a few plus i’d make the odd custom 1/1 design and print them. I wasn’t rich but I was enjoying myself and not cleaning toilets.
With time I learned more about other production methods, then found a local service for small business owners and got the tools necessary to grow. Things were looking up, I’d found a dropshipping company. They would print on demand, handle shipping and returns, I just paid a little more than i’d pay wholesale. My only cost was marketing and promotion, which was basically free. Facebook circa 2011-2013 was a vibe, “like & tag 2 friends” competitions were the rage so I built a following quick!
As I mentioned earlier, I had homies who were making music & djing, at this time dubstep was the rage. I approached producers & labels, offered them my design & merch services for a split of the profits. Back then few had considered merch because of upfront costs, logistics or they just didn’t have ideas, but there was a growing fanbase and I had the tools to exploit it.
My first collaboration was with Funtcase, I made a design for a popular track of his “Gorilla Flex“ and pretty much overnight we sold out - I found my niche and kept at it. I was still operating at a fairly underground level from my bedroom, but that’s not at all how it seemed from the outside. More producers, labels and even promoters reached out - I then managed to find investors for the company, stupidly letting go of 45% for not much money. I didn’t care though. The money allowed me to upgrade from a 40GB HDD PC running with 246mb RAM to something a bit more powerful.
The following years were crazy, the business went from 3-5 orders a month to 20-50 orders a week. I was leveraging contacts I had to make others & gifting tees to promoters for AAA passes. I was flying, but one thing I forgot to mention - before things really took off, I enrolled onto another course. This time I thought Interactive Media might be my bag but to be honest, I found myself very much in the same situation. With a focus on media, the course was primarily about film making with a few short modules sprinkled in covering music production, web development & photography. With my previous experience in education leaving me very jaded, I dragged my feet through the two years.
My main focus was the business and quite frankly it’s funny having tutors tell me my work was wrong when my little bedroom business was growing from doing just that. I recall one interaction with a tutor when I handed in a project, we had to create a mini doc about homelessness. We interviewed some people working for a charity and filmed some B-roll around town, I took some creative liberties and sountracked the 2min clip with a Burial track to make it really emotional. He said I’d created a music video - lol. With hindsight and respects to the tutor, my approach was very avant garde considering the brief but at the time I shutdown for the rest of the course and did the bare minimum.
From 2011 - 2013, I’d done really well for myself. I went to plenty of shows, rubbed shoulders with my many of musical faves. However, like many things that blow up quick, complacency set in and I got very clouded. The business started to suffer, I was in no way prepared to be a charge of a company outside of being it’s creative lead. Many bad decisions were made, we failed to grow with the fan base we’d cultivated, their interests and the music scene as a whole.
I really appreciate those years of my late teens and I love myself for fighting for what I believed in and seeing it through despite all the challenges I faced. I ran into the dark with nothing but pure passion, not knowing what would come of it just pure balls on the table energy. The person I am today was shaped during this period, for example I knew nothing about code but I needed a website and with no money to pay anyone - I just learned how to do it, this was definetly the spark that led to the path I walk now. After the company was fully evaporated and I took time to figure out my next move, I found myself in a Jnr Developer role and the rest is history.
