A chat w/ my friendo Alex

Henlo

This past weekend I hosted my friends Stephen, Sara, and Matthias and we went around town and stuff yakno

It was a fun time, although the weather was ASSSSSS. We played lots of card games. They taught me this new game called “tonk” which we pronounced “tunk.”

I linked the directions above, but this is not how we played LOL.

After a dandy time hosting, I went over to my friend Jojo’s place to introduce him to my son, Bill. The air was really tense at first when they met… it was actually quite tense the entire time. They spent a LONG time just looking at each other like this:

I think if we brought him over a couple more times, they would be friends. There was hissing, but it wasn’t “gtfo i h8 u” hissing. More like vibe check hissing. I think.

Doods

Alex

I first met Alex in college in the first week of school. I was heading out of my dorm and he was signing in and saw that I had a big Amine sticker on my laptop. He asked me “yo! you listen to Amine?? We’re abouta go smoke a bit, do you want to come up?” At the time, I was a humongous square so I replied “Oh sorry, I don’t smoke” and left. I’ve always regretted that. Probably would’ve been a really sick ass time.

A year later, I was seeing a lot of drawings of this guy around campus:

I wanted to know who that was, so I asked around and it turned out that Alex had been throwing these up all around Boston. I hit him up, and our friendship bloomed. Fate brought us together again I suppose.

What's the wildest thing you ever did?

Oh well the graffiti thing. Probably getting arrested. I was doing graffiti in Boston for like two years, tagging up everywhere, never wore a mask, did it in broad daylight - fucking had multiple colored markers and spray paint and whatever - and then um eventually I got a graffiti detective on my case. What a stupid line of work, like a professional narc. Grow up.

They brought me in, slid a picture across of the tag and was like “you know about this?” I was like “yeah i've seen it around” and then they showed me like eight pictures of me doing it.

hahahahahaha

I wouldn't do any big spray paint throw-ups, you know. Nothing massive. Like most of the time, my tags were markers or graffiti crayon. I think the wildness of it was me thinking I wasn’t gonna get caught and then doing it incessantly. I did it in front of the police station. I did a technicolor piece in front of the police station, like spent my time with it, thinking “yeah these goofies, they're never gonna get me.”

Like the week before you got caught, I remember you telling me that you were invincible and that they were never gonna catch you.

I remember. You were like “aren’t you scared of being caught?” and I was like “NO!” I was like “I've been doing it for two years. If they were gonna catch me they would have caught me.”

Alex ended up doing 3 years with 6 months probation.

When I first met you and we started talking more about creative things, I was so impressed with how you're just off the walls, constantly coming up with ideas. You'd be halfway through an idea and then you’d interrupt your own thought with another idea. I remember being like “wow this guy's fucking crazy.”

So I wonder, does it ever happen where you have no ideas and don’t know what to do? Where do you get your inspiration from?

I was literally just there (Alex is an Associate Creative Director at Recess Studios). I just got home from a deep nothing phase and I'm like sitting there with one of my art directors and we're bashing our heads against the wall.

Honestly, you can't force it. If you start forcing it, you come up with some like half-baked bullshit. That’s not really it.

I think the biggest thing is conversations. If I cannot think of shit and I'm alone, nothing comes out. But if we can have a little back and forth - you say a thing, I say a thing - kind of like jamming and flowing, even if the ideas are pure garbage, I feel like we land on something a lot faster than if I’m sitting there staring at a screen. It pulls so much creativity together.

Not everybody's like that, like people like to be creative alone sometimes. But I think for the people that do like to connect, it works.

Normalize calling your creative friends bro.

You’re right bro.

I know your mom was a designer - is she still a designer?

She’s painting now. She used to have her own graphic design shop.

What were the advantages and disadvantages of having a designer as a mom, now that you decided to pursue a career in creative?

Good question. I think for one, it gave me a visibility in the type of work really early on.

Throughout my entire career and my studies and whatever - like I used to do freelance in high school - I would always send her shit. And it's like, we can talk about typeface, we can talk about color palette. I think that's a huge advantage, to be able to connect with somebody like that, like my mom. Which is really funny because she would fucking COOK me.

What were her critiques like?

A lot of the time they were good critiques. I famously am not great with color I'll admit that. She'd fucking tear me apart on my color palette.

I think the bad part was she grew up and learned design in a different world, so like when we had the resurgence of serifs, she's like famously anti-serif. She grew up on sans-serifs, thinking serifs are corny and lame. She'd have shit like that. These are generational opinions I think.

Honestly no real disadvantages other than that I was influenced by her taste, kinda like how you and I were influenced from our professors. Same shit.

I always think that it’s just so unique that your mom was a designer and now you are also a designer. I think it's a really sweet thing.

It was fun. She helped me with like, how much do I charge for a logo, what does the process look like, how do I deal with client relations, little things like that.

Did she want you to be a designer?

Well she was like “art doesn't make money. If you're going to do art, do design. And if you're going to do design, combine your major.”

My dad was similar. He was a carpenter and he was obsessed with art, like he even ran like an art school in Korea. But he told me the same thing growing up, that you need to be well rounded, you know. It doesn't do you any service to specialize in just art.

Exactly.

Thanks for entertaining me.

I love it man. that was fun.

You can find Alex’s Instagram above!

REX

Thanks for reading. May all your dreams and wishes come true <3