I have seen recently more and more people biting my graphics… Poor street wear companies for the most, but also uneducated designers that spend more time on the web looking for stuff to steal. For lucky people like me, I went to design school… For unlucky people like some of my friends, they learnt how to develop a unique style by working hard and being creative. Tee Shirt Design (that’s what I do the most) is like producing a Hip Hop beat. you can be like Dj Premier, Dj Shadow, Just Blaze, Timbaland, Notz, Dre, etc… or you can be Puffy. If you in the first category, you will find a 2 seconds dusty sample and make an amazing head nodder’s beat. If you like Puffy, you will take a Sting song and loop it. You feel me? All I am trying to say with my poor english is that it’s ok to “sample” a graphic as long as you flip it, chopped it and add your own touch to it. So please!!! Don’t be the Puffy of design. Instead of posting the last 5 lame mother fuckers that stole my art, I decided to take a positive approach and show people some of my “crates of graphics”. Those photos are my inspiration. Most of it represent stuff that I have been collecting for the past 15 years. It basically represent who I am as a designer… So if you do mascots, scripts, mexican looking shit, cartoons, etc....I don’t own any style neither invented any style...But please, do your own....I didn’t find my stuff online overnight...It took a great amount of time, traveling and diggin’ to come up with stuff I design… Blessing!
My tools
My trip to Mexico
My Dad’s scale models
My Varsity collection
Hip Hop as a culture
The Modernist
Grown ups Toys
My Friends Artworks
Posted on December 07, 2007 at 08:00 AM | Previous Entry | Next Entry | Entry List | Email Entry | Digg
Responses to this entry
There are 8 total comments about this entry. The most recent comment was posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago...
thanks for sharing! care to share how your work space looks like? curious to see how you organize your stuff?
Show some bites dude!
Well they do say, imitation the purest form of flattery
curious what these bites look like as well…
keep the lessons coming!
Great positive approach to confront the biters. I too work in the t-shirt graphics, during the day I do stuff for Target, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Wet Seal, etc. I also run my own men’s and women’s line which I am trying to be innovative with. I get so many requests (for my work that pays the bills) to knock off graphics, I probably knock off someones design once a day, usually it is another t-shirt graphic form some semi-major store, like Urban for instance. Why is the t-shirt business the only commercial creative outlet where it is acceptable to knock things off, every company I freelance for knocks stuff off. I understand inspiration and I am inspired by many things, but stealing is stealing, and the t-shirt business excuses it for some reason. I was on the phone with an Art Director yesterday, and his exact words about a graphic I created was: “It needs to look more like the sample, make it look just like the sample” I did, because I need that check to eat, but it still bothers me. I think 75% of my professional work does not even get considered to go in my portfolio. I did not go to school for Design but rather Cartooning & Comic Art so I come from a background where if you plagiarize you are out-casted by everyone even your peers. That is it for my rant, hahaha, Thanks again for the post, I look forward to reading this blog, when I have time.
Peace.
Lets see those bites. 
lovely layout, professional work.
You never fail to amaze me with your work
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Please keep your comment on topic.
I am sorry to hear about the toy problems.
You made an excellent analogy about biting.
Unfortunately most fools want to be puffy.
Because it’s less work. Booooooooooooooo.
Now here is the silver lining. Biters don’t
create or innovate. That’s what you do and
that is why fools will always be ten steps
behind you. I know it sucks to see the hard
work diluted by some jackass but it is also
an indicator of your success.
I really like the fact you flipped it into a
positive lesson, shit is tight. It also shows
why you are at the head of the pack not
ten steps back.
Oh yeah your Pops makes some
cool models.
Peace out.