New Limited Graffiti Clothing Collab With Josh Grafx!

Hi, I'm Josh G, also known as Josh Grafx. Mechanical Engineer by day and digital graffiti artist by night. I'm from Newcastle in the North East of England but currently living just outside Stockholm, Sweden for work.

- Talk a bit about the collab born with us!

I wanted to incorporate the snowflake logo as I thought that was pretty sick and obviously use the colours of the brand. I’ve got some flow going on with the W, E, I and R all flowing with similar round shapes along the bottom and then the E, R, D and S all flowing with that tapered wave shape along the top. 

I'll try to keep this short. I've drawn all my life, literally since I was a baby but got introduced to graffiti when I was around 10 years old way back in 2002. I started boxing and next door to the local boxing club was a youth club where graffiti classes were put on. Local writers would teach the kids how to paint and both buildings were covered in burners from the kids practising all the time.

Being around so much graffiti and creative energy everytime I went boxing (3/4 times a week) really had an effect on me. I went from drawing Sonic the Hedgehog and all sorts of other cartoons up to the age of 10 and then once I started boxing I began to channel my creative energy into graffiti. I became OBSESSED! 

It just became the creative conduit for how I expressed myself. I'd draw nonstop at school and then as soon as I got home I'd be researching and drawing more. It was relentless. I loved it. 

Fast forward 18 years of on and off drawing and occasionally painting and I got an iPad during the pandemic to keep me occupied, started to post more online and then when I moved to Sweden 18 months ago I started to have a lot of time outside of work where I'd just draw. I started to post consistently online 2/3 times a week and my page just blew up. 

This one below is a pic of one of my first pieces when I was 13, it's so good man hahahaha

Haha I have no idea. The best I can come up with to categorise myself without putting myself in a box is "graffiti graphics and digital art" but everyone on insta knows me as the digital throwie guy. 

I draw inspiration from everywhere but instagram is pretty good for it. You can see someone do a theme or write a word and it can spark an idea inside you.

Mostly I'm just inspired to improve, be better and grow as an artist, essentially using graffiti for a sense of creative self improvement. 

Massive question this. I've got so much to say. I think graffiti is a lot more primal than people realise. If you boil it down to its essence, graffiti at its core is writing on walls, and our cavemen ancestors have been doing that since the dawn of time.

I think that's why everyone, no matter who you are, has this deep rooted compulsion to write your name on a frosty window, in a steamy shower, on your school desk, in the sand at the beach and so on. It's primal man! 

Graffiti has obviously evolved a lot since neanderthals learned to paint illegible symbols on walls- although you could argue that some artists are still stuck in the stone age haha.

But seriously, I love graffiti but I love every aspect of it. I love the bombers, stencil artists, king spray virtual artists, digital artists, all city kings, oldschool, newschool, straight letters, street artists, sticker slappers, style writers, train writers, vandals and so on. 

I love it all man, graffiti in the 21st century has evolved to be so broad of an artform that there's a form of graffiti creative expression for everyone and the digital space, while I think it's amazing for a bunch of things, it has its own challenges.

I can keep talking for hours on this bro especially how the digital scene fits into the culture and also the culture itself so I'll leave it there for now.

Loads! Probably too many to write from the past but by far the best artist on the planet at the minute is NYCHOS. The stuff that guy is doing man and the way he flows his intricate characters into his pieces while keeping it not hyper realistic and more cartoon/graffiti-esque is phenomenal. Pure creativity.

Other artists that are kind of on a similar path to me in terms of the "digital graffiti scene" are Toses, Baker, Torus, Mr.Ios, Mega Smer, Ego, Autops, Skom, Duro, Ipadprograffiti, Graffiti.Wildstyle, Graffiti.Skills. I hope that's everyone, there's maybe a couple guys I've missed but these guys get the digital scene and I vibe with what they're doing. 

Am I? fuck, hahaha. Not sure I want to be though. It sounds better than what it is sometimes. I get a lot of commissions and I'm so grateful that people like my work enough to pay me for a design but it can sometimes be a headache having your creativity confined within what the client wants.

Imagine a Venn diagram of things I enjoy drawing on one side and what the client wants on the other, the sweet spot is where they overlap and I think many clients don't understand this and expect you to do exactly as they say because THEY are paying YOU and the customer is ALWAYS right.

Not all clients are like this and I understand where they are coming from in all honesty. You're paying someone for a design that you're going to put on merchandise for the next 2 years, you want it to look right! I get it, doesn't mean I enjoy it. That's why I need to take breaks from doing commissions.

I'll be getting more products on my site this year so if that starts to become a success then who knows but at the minute I don't see myself quitting the day job.

There's a few. My SKOM and BLER throwies I think are sick. So much flow in them and they got featured on Jon Grim's youtube channel, The Artist Block. Also my SOKERONER style blew my brain when I done it, flowing 9 letters together.

My RASCAL throwie is a gappy style I'm working on at the minute and I'm pretty proud of that. Theres also my JOSH and CRAY burners which challenged me to figure them out. Those are pretty cool.

If you've decided that you want to pursue art full time (you know the difference between artist, illustrator and graphic designer) and you DO want to do this then you need to understand marketing and business.

Doesn't matter how good of an artist you are, if you have a shitty business plan or you don't know about SEO and how to run ads, get press and market your brand and products then YOU WILL STRUGGLE! It's not a case of being good at art so doing art and then expecting followers to become customers. It doesn't work like that at all and it's naive to think it does.

If you want to be an artist I would forget about uni. You don't need an art degree to be an artist and a far better use of your time would be to attend courses and classes on how to improve your artistic skills. Identify your artistic weaknesses and level them up. Life drawing, oil painting etc.

Even going to uni and studying business is a waste of time since you learn more about business and tax by actually running a business. If you insist on going to uni and you want to be an artist then digital marketing must be your priority. At least once you graduate you can get a job in marketing to develop skills that you can apply to your art brand.

Google analytics, social media ads and so on. Those are legit skills you need when selling products online and you will learn a lot about that stuff once you work at an agency.

Alternatively I would maybe suggest to leverage your skills and knowledge to get a degree that will be worth a high paying salary so that you can use that high salary to set up your art business, buy supplies and pay for courses.

Other advice I would give is to find a niche. Figure out what you're good at and what you like. What are others doing who are similar to you and what are they not doing? Could you do that? What skills do you need in order to do that? Try to dominate that niche and grow from there.

For example my niche is digital graffiti and my niche within that is digital throw-ups but I'm wanting to learn more about typography and calligraphy and develop artistic skills to create better lettering and see where that goes.

A word of warning though, being an artist is a lifestyle career choice. Similar to how all doctors do is work, all artists do is work. It requires multiple full time jobs making art, doing commissions, making merch, running ads, generating ideas, updating websites, making content, being present on multiple social media platforms, replying to messages, emails, learning new skills, writing for blog posts and so on. 

I hope I've made that clear, I've seen a lot of great artists become nothing because they followed the "I like art so I'm going to be an artist" path without realising that it's less about art and more about marketing. 

Love it. Be different. It's a positive identity of the graffiti scene which is full of outlaws, vandals, weirdos, misfits, bad boys, outsiders, rebels, rascals and so on. Celebrate your uniqueness and lean into it.