Antidesigns: The Writings on the Wall
February 23, 2007
Graffiti. The forbidden aerosol arts that represent both the symbols of underground street culture and our society’s most conspicuous rebels. Although graf art increasingly appeals to today’s teenagers because of their badass glamour, the social stigma attached to its meaning continues to limit its growth. In recent years however, galleries in New York City began “legitmizing” the art by exhibiting graffiti work in-house.
The changing face of wall writing doesn’t stop here. Enter Antidesigns, a web-based Boston company aka TheAnti, which specializes in bucking the trend with their original T-shirt designs. Established in 2004, Antidesigns features an online platform for street artists, a satellite-mapped inventory of graffiti art in and around Boston, and they even do artistic projects in games, movies, and animation. Talking to co-founders Mark and Jason during their lunch hour, I discovered some interesting things about this innovative company. As the brainchild of two coffee-addicted Northeastern computer programming undergrads, Antidesigns transcends hip hop and other popular subcultures to bring us clothing art that is fresh, new and definitely one-of-a-kind.
Tufts Observer: It has been three years since you guys first started your company. What were some of the obstacles you’ve had to overcome?
Jason: Money was definitely an issue. We were just two college computer science guys who had trouble getting money. It was mostly out of pocket. It was also a challenge from the business perspective. We wanted to build here and build big, but it’s been hard to build in Boston.
TO: Define and explain your company name. How does it relate to your goals as a company?
J: It was an afterthought…it was a common denominator in what we were trying to do. We saw those “Jesus is My Homeboy” shirts and started to think, “Why do people buy what they buy?” [and] “Why do they do what they do?”
TO: On your website, you mentioned that this began as a childhood vision. How did you go about fulfilling it?
J: The best thing that happened was meeting Mark. I talked to so many people about doing something like this with the artwork and it never really happened. Everything just failed. Meeting Mark though, things started to change.
TO: Given the illegality and public stigma of graffiti, street artists are in general tough to track down. Where did you manage to assemble such a diverse team of designers?
Jason and Mark: Just meeting people—people started seeing what we were doing and wanted to be a part of it. People approach us on the internet or see our stuff and come to us out of the blue.
TO: Where do you draw inspiration for your products?
M: Graffiti; political things. Look at other people’s stuff. Everything can go places.
J: Stencils and different influences.
TO: Tell us about some of your current projects other than the T-Shirt designing so far.
J and M: We don’t ever stop! We just learned how to silk screen. We’re looking at shirts from other artists. We’re also saving the world!
TO: You set up a web-mapping of legal graffiti walls across the country and a regional mapping of street art in Boston. How did you do that?
J: We’re programmers and it was a community thing. We had looked online to see if there was anything like that out there. We couldn’t find it so we put it up and asked around. We ended up talking to Marc of the Wooster Collective, and he posted an article about it. It blew up after about a week, and now we get lots of submissions.
TO: Do you view your products as more of an expression of this powerlessness, or is it more of a challenge, a revolt against culture? What specific things are you challenging? What do you want your consumers to take away from your products?
J and M: [Laughter] Griping is good. We want to get something that we want to wear out there. There’s motivation too. Wearing our stuff, it’s like being the only one wearing it. People are going to buy what they want. Not everyone is going to want what is mainstream. It’s cool we’re trying to get in this.
TO: What’s the craziest Anti-statement encountered in your life?
J: I’m anti loud-mouthed northeastern bitches with those big turoc dinosaur hunter boots [Uggs]. That was a funny one.
Get your own dose of Anti shirts straight from the creators online at their website: antidesigns.com.
