Continued from page 085:

Sadek: Oh, he’s great. He’s become a pretty good friend of ours. I think proximity has made that really possible, he’s also in the building.

Randall: But for payment for doing his website we’re really lucky. It’s another barter system. Instead of getting paid for his website, he’s doing portraits of each of us in his style. So, personalized Kaws pieces. That’ll be nice.

Sadek: Yeah, I can’t wait to get a hold of those.

Randall: Derek’s actually going to Japan on Sunday. Kaws has a show in Japan, and Derek’s going with him.

Gelman: Where is it?

Derek: It’s Bape?

Randall: Bathing Ape.

Gelman: Yeah, they have a new space. Actually it’s a collective show of a bunch of people. Futura 2000 and a bunch of those people. It’s really nice store.

Sadek: Another thing is Gwen Stefani is-

Derek: Can we talk about that? I guess so.

Sadek: [laughs] Well can we talk about it or not?

Derek: I think we can.

Derek: We’re helping to develop the identity for Gwen Stefani’s clothing line, Lamb.

Gelman: Lamb?

Derek: Lamb. L-A-M-B. Working with them to develop the identity and then the first season, supplying them with a range of images to apply to the garments they’re designing.

Gelman: You are grounded in this music, youth culture kind of-

Randall: I think we’ve done a lot of work in that arena, you know. We try to, do things that are beyond that also.

Gelman: Like what?

Derek: The U.S. Open campaign.

Randall: Yeah, we did- the U.S. Open, the tennis tournament-I don’t know if you remember last year, there was a great campaign, it was all green like a tennis court with the players, and it actually looked like they were playing tennis on this sort of flattened tennis field.

Gelman: Yeah, I remember that.

Randall: Well, we were asked by them to take that and push it to the next level, so we worked on that on all the billboards, ads-

Gelman: Is it up yet?

Randall: Oh, it’s over. It’s already over.

Gelman: Oh, so you did the outdoor campaign that was tied in with the television graphics. Who did the television graphics?

Randall: The in-house USA Networks team and us.

Sadek: Yeah, we collaborated in producing that.

Gelman: And an agency?

Randall: There was no agency. Just the in-house and us.

Derek: We knew the creative director because he left Cartoon Network and now is at USA, and we’ve done a lot of work with Cartoon Network in the past.

Randall: We’ve done broadcast for Cartoon Network, TNT-

Gelman: And that’s how you got connected with Curious?

Derek: No, that was through Wieden + Kennedy. That was for a Nike spot. We collaborated with them bidding to get a spot for Nike. We were called in to be creative directors on it and collaborate with Wieden + Kennedy, and we suggested a studio for production, so could get a lot of our ideas executed. They suggested a studio, Shynola, that was awarded the spot. We worked on it initially, and things kind of got weird and Shynola ended up finishing the spot out. But that’s how we formed the relationship with Curious.

Sadek: Also, Peter had sort of an in-between time; he had some things come up, got in a really bad accident, punctured his lung riding his bike and had all kinds of hospital bills and stuff like that. He had basically left to pursue some other things and deal with his bills and whatever else was going through his head at the time. He was senior art director of CNN Online for a while, and he was back in Atlanta, moved out to L.A. and decided that he was going to not do the corporate thing again.

Randall: And they are still a client. We still work with CNN Interactive on some things.

Sadek: I think it’s misconstrued that we are sort of pigeonholed into a certain market; we still do all these things outside of the market. And there has been a lot of internal dialog about, how do we push ourselves or make it more known to other people that we are perfectly capable of working in other markets?

Gelman: So basically you’re not limiting yourselves, that you just don’t do-

Randall: Urban market. Right.

Sadek: I think that’s what we’re the most known for, for one reason.

Gelman: But is there anything that you wouldn’t want to do?

Derek: [laughs]

David: Oh, I mean, there’s a million things we wouldn’t want to do.

Derek: It’s kind of client dependent and situation dependent. If we’re broke, and some company that we don’t necessarily agree with comes up and offers us a lot of money to do it, we’ll probably think a lot harder about doing. I don’t know if there are really things that-I mean, cigarette company stuff, I think all of us don’t want to do work for tobacco companies.

Gelman: Do you smoke?

All: No.

Derek: But I don’t know. If they approached us and offered us a lot of money to do something, we’d all have to sit and talk and think about it. It just really depends. I still think-most likely we’d say no. [laughs]

Sadek: Well, to that case, probably.

Gelman: Well, tobacco companies are paying for anti-tobacco campaigns right now.

Randall: We have actually gotten some tobacco money.

Derek: [laughs] Yeah, we have, actually.

Randall: We did this website called SWAT, which is the Florida leg of the Truth campaign. It’s Florida local, which is where it started. So SWAT is-the money that came from the tobacco industry for the campaign, and then we got paid to do the website.

Sadek: But like client size, or whatever, we are always open to consideration. Small clients, start up companies or more creative projects where maybe the budget isn’t the same as would be available for larger clients, we’re always open to hearing about a project. We wouldn’t turn away something based on size or scale alone.

Gelman: What are the components of a prospective job that makes you to take it? A certain interest in the subject? Money?

Sadek: I think it’s probably a-

Derek: Combination.

Randall: We strive to take jobs that we’re interested in. The reality is that you do have to take jobs that you may not be interested in, but that pay.

Gelman: Besides this book, what other products do you sell?

Randall: We do tee-shirts. Are you familiar with Gingham? 2K T-Shirts? they work with different artists like Espo-

Gelman: It’s a Japanese company, right?

Randall: Yeah. They sell all over Japan. We have two seasons of shirts, and the third is about to come out with them. We also do our own tee-shirts, and we do one-off shirts that we print ourselves.

Gelman: Where do you do that, do you do that here?

Randall: Yeah, right here. We just have the screens. We don’t have one of the machines, you know, we just put the cardboard in the t-shirt and do it right on the table here.

Gelman: Spray-mount?

Randall: Yeah, to a piece of cardboard. So these are the samples.

Sadek: We made this one-off label that we throw on the back. Then we just go crazy. A lot of things have just been ending up on paper that will then work over to t-shirts.

Gelman: [looking at shirt] Just spray-painted?

Randall: Yeah, some of it’s spray-painted, some of it’s screen printed.

Gelman: So they’re all unique.

Sadek: Yeah, they’re all unique.

Gelman: And who’s gonna sell them?

Randall: We sell them on our website, there’s a store- there’s a store in Manhattan right now called Vacant. Yeah, it’s on Mercer and Grand, and it’s a store done by the guy who does Fidget Magazine, it’s a fashion magazine.

Gelman: Isn’t it like a gallery?

Randall: Well, it’s like a gallery/store kind of thing down on-and it’s only here for a month, then it goes to Tokyo.

Sadek: This is another shirt, we did some for the 55 DSL store at Union Square. This was the shirt they printed up for that show.

Gelman: It’s beautiful.

Derek: Yeah, the printing quality is insane.

Randall: So those are things that we do, the tee-shirts, the book, we’re also exploring- Derek has been working on a project for about six years, five years, called Fax Wars.

Derek: With Peter.

Randall: Yeah, Peter Rentz and Derek started it, we all kind of got in on it. But we would each do a drawing of some sort, and it sort of stemmed from graffiti but has moved slightly beyond that, drawing and then faxing it to different people, they draw on it and fax it back. So Derek is going to do a limited edition, self-published, then try to get an actual book published. I am working on a publication that I’m calling Drawn; the first issue is thirteen different artists will give me a drawing and I’m publishing it, printed on newsprint, and the subsequent issues are just gonna have one or two artists per issue.

Gelman: And how often?

Randall: I haven’t decided. It’s probably not gonna be, like monthly or anything like that. It’ll be, like a few times a year sort of thing.

Gelman: Is there any, you now, overall message GH tries to put out there?

Derek: Quality. I think that all of us in whatever we, client work, artistic, we just try to do things that are well done and unique. I don’t know how unique you can be these days, but definitely try to do something that’s interesting and just done well.

Sadek: I think diversity, along the same lines. I think quality and diversity. It seems like we’ve had conversations with people here and there, and one of the things that is unique about GH as a company is the diversity that we offer, as far as the mediums that we work in and sort of the range of clients and projects that we have.

Gelman: Can you define this range?

Sadek: I don’t think there’s anything we don’t do. We haven’t mentioned it, but we’ve done some environmental design for some retail space stores, some boutiques, and web, print, broadcast design. There are toys sitting out on the table because we might be working with some people to develop some toys. The media is definitely moving into all kinds of directions, and range of clients is anything from a start-up record label or a small boutique to the corporate giants and everything in-between. And the collaborative process that takes place, we all sort of teach and influence each other in what we do, but we still bring original thoughts and ideas to the table.

Gelman: Is there an overall description of your style, or is it totally situational?

Sadek: I think there are many styles. Maybe they could be described individually, although I’m not gonna attempt that.

Derek: Sometimes you can see a similar feel across like a certain amount of time. You know, like a month’s worth of work that deals with a certain subject matter might have similar attributes, but most of the time it just depends on what we’re working on and the client situations. Sometimes we’ll have clients breathing down our neck telling us exactly what they want done, and a lot of times, which we prefer, we’re given a project and told "This is what we need to happen," and we basically just control the output.

Gelman: What happens if the client is breathing down your neck and tells you exactly what they want?

Derek: Well, that depends on the contractual agreement that we have with them for the project. Sometimes we’ve just stepped away from things-

Sadek: It depends on what’s at stake.

Derek: It definitely depends on what’s at stake.

Sadek: It doesn’t go over too well, though. [laughs]

Randall: And sometimes we just bite the bullet and do it.

Sadek: Yeah, of course. Sometimes we have to. There’s always certain financial issues, but the more that we grow and the more established we are, a lot of clients that we have now come to us for what we do, as opposed to, "Hey, we just need something done, and you guys are in the business. Execute this."

Gelman: There is an opposite situation, when a client comes with something and says, "I want something exactly like this [thing you’ve already done]."

Sadek: That’s a tough one too.

Derek: We steer away from that, and usually try to convince our clients that it’s already been done and we don’t want to do it again. We want to do something that’s unique to them.

Gelman: Do you usually succeed?

Derek: 90% of the time. Sometimes people will say, "We want this to look just like this." And it just depends on what it is that they’re asking for. But we don’t like to repeat ourselves, that’s for sure.