an interview with 35-ten-73

VERB SKATEBOARDS X ello

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What was your inspiration or the idea behind your
Verb design?
City streets, skating around, observinging and
interacting with random parts of the city. Movement
was my main inspiration. Although I don’t skate I tried
to express the excitement of what skateboarding on
the streets must feel like. I referenced a few classic
arcade games like Mappy and Donkey Kong to create
the dynamic vertical landscape, and to help give the
idea of levels and moving around fast.

What music were you listening to while you were
creating your graphics for the Verb range?
I had a lot of time on my own while working on my
design and I put a lot of effort into the ink stage of
the drawing, so I had plenty of hours to listen to all
the Brian Jonestown Massacre albums. I enjoyed every
second of it.


Did you have any formal art education, or are you
self-taught?
Yes I went to an art high school where we covered all
the basics, like art history, the methods and mediums.
We could choose two main disciplines; Graphic
Printing being the one – which included etching, lino
cuts, silkscreen prints, etc – and Design – by hand

– being the other one. That involved painting A1
posters with 0001 brushes and Gouache one too many
times! We also had about six different drawing classes.

After school I studied fashion design, which I really
enjoyed and learnt a lot from. So I’ve mostly been
working with my hands the whole time. I’ve also
taught myself some computer skills along the way.


Could you briefly explain the process you went
through in creating this work?
I pencilled a rough idea of the composition and
characters from there I drew the final pen drawing on
an A3 page. The colour part was done digitally. I like
things to be perfect, but with a twist, so I positioned
the colour shapes just off the line work to give the
illusion of an out-of-register printing error.

What sort of full-time work do you do currently? Are
there any other projects you’re involved with at the
moment?
I work for Love and Hate studio and we’re always

busy with something exciting. At the moment, we’re
keeping busy with illustration and exhibition work. We
also have a few new projects like Cool-De-Suck starting
out. We’re slowly shifting our focus towards products
and more tactile, functional items.