By Emily Gosling
Published on October 16th, 2017
The article is an interview of Hasan Rahim as a designer, how he got started, and his philosophy on design in his early work. The article describes how Hasan was self taught in design and that his first steps into the industry revolved around MySpace, skateboarding, and collage. He talks about following Nick Tershay from Diamond Supply Co. and how Tershay contacted him via direct message asking Hasan to design "some stuff for Diamond." This led Hasan to move to Orange County and live with Tersay paying rent in design work. It was during this time in his life that Hasan designed a shirt that set him a part and helped redefine skateboard street wear. He used Iron Maiden album cover art, added the Diamond logo, and edited the text to match the Maiden look. The article continues to detail Hasan's approach to design, his approach to collage and how he finds imagery for his collage work.
I was really interested in Hasan's approach to finding imagery for his collage work online. He uses Google image search and sets it for 'very high quality'. Instead of starting with the very first page he scrolls to page 100 and the works backward from there. This gives him a lot of different imagery that isn't related to the search. He ends up finding "weird, super esoteric, random stuff." I think this is a very creative approach to finding images and to push your art outside of any ruts you might be stuck with. Collage work demands different types of imagery and I can see where this would be a great way to find some interesting images to work with.
Reading this article made me wonder more about collage as an approach for design. It also intrigues me about the "aesthetic of '00s streetwear' and what that means. It is interesting because I currently see a lot of people who don't skate wear Thrasher gear, or people who don't listen to the Misfits wear Misfits shirts or non-heavy metal fans wear band t's. I assume then that the aesthetic or graphics are a stronger driving force or of more interest than the band or company they represent.