I’ve been a huge fan of Harrsion’s work for a while now, and I’ve wanted to interview him for Breaks Of 10 since we started the site. I remember when I first went on Defgrip and thinking finally a site that mirrored my view that there was more to life than BMX, and more to BMX than riding a bike. I’ve been hooked ever since. In all honesty, given the opportunity I could sit down for hours and pick Harrison’s brains about design, photography, online media, and BMX in general, however until I get that chance I’ll have to make due with this, not that it’s a consolation price by any stretch of the imagination. I caught up with Harrison over email last week, and could not be more stoked on the answers he gave. Ladies and gentleman, Harrison Boyce.
Photo by Nuno Oliveira
So Harrison how are you?
Doing really good, super busy, and realizing how much I suck at answering questions for interviews!!
How did you get into design, and how much influence did Seattle and BMX have on you creatively?
I grew up in a very creative house, so art has always been a big part of my life. I essentially got into design through graffiti. I was into graffiti but was more drawn to street art and stenciling. I wanted to create my own stencils, so I ended up learning photoshop… From there I started to create collages on the computer and my interests quickly drifted from the graffiti world to the design world.
BMX has had a huge influence on my life creatively. Even though it my seem quite different, there are a lot of similarities. When you ride BMX all the time, whenever you are not on your bike, you are always thinking about riding. Everything you see you relate it to BMX, like scanning every handrail you see as you are driving around in a car… It’s the same with me for design. When I’m not on the computer, I’m always brainstorming or getting inspired by random stuff I see on the street. Seattle has also played a big part in my life. I have strong memories of working on art and design projects whenever it was raining out… If I lived somewhere where it was sunny all the time, I wonder if I would have spent all my time on my bike and never focused enough of my life on being creative?
How did you get into photography, and do you think that the art/design side of your skills influenced this in any way?
I got excited about photography through riding bikes. I ended up in a photo class in High School, but wasn’t really into photography at the time. The only thing it really did for me was made me buy a camera that I would end up using a few years later. Not sure what really sparked my interest, but I started to shoot photos more just to document my life than anything. I started to travel a lot for BMX when I was around 18 and that’s really when I started shooting photos on a regular basis.
I definitely think art and design has influenced my photography and I feel like all three of those things are tied together. I’m really into telling stories visually and for me, the medium isn’t my focus, it’s the end result… and that’s why I think I am drawn to so many different disciplines… Right now, I’m working on some random art stuff for fun, doing a bunch of design work, sorting through a bunch of photos that I shot in Japan, and editing two video projects… I think having different types of projects helps me stay inspired and motivated.
What was it like when you started working for Macneil and how did that come about?
It was amazing to get the MacNeil job… I was 19 years old and I really had no plans as far as what I was going to do for a job/my future. I was out of high school, but took a few years off before I went to art school to ride. I really have no idea how I survived because I had no job, nothing going on, I just lived at my mom’s place rode BMX all day and messed around with art and design at night. I started this website with the help of my brother Hamilton called Elamenop. It was basically a local scene site where I talked about me and my friends riding BMX, posted my art, random designs, photos… whatever… It was all over the map, but it’s funny thinking back because it was a similar concept to what Defgrip is now. A creative website rooted in BMX… It’s also funny thinking back because I was definitely “blogging” before the word blog even existed.
Anyway, the site was pretty small (on a good day we’d get 60 unique visitors), but I was living in Seattle and traveling to Portland and Vancouver a lot, so it seemed like everyone in the North West BMX scene kind of knew about it. I was also sponsored by MacNeil by this time and had built up friendships with Jay Miron and Darcy Saccucci. So basically through riding I met Darcy and Jay at MacNeil and through Elamenop they were able to see that my brother and I could make websites… Not sure exactly how it went down, but they needed a new website, my name came up, Jay Miron called me and we ended up working out a deal where MacNeil traded Hamilton and I an eMac to do a new site. Hamilton and I were super excited because this was our first job and a pretty big one at that.
The website build went really well and everything just kind of took off from there. The next project I worked on was print ads, then t-shirts, and then I just ended up doing everything. The main factor that led me to get this job was working for free. I started Elamenop for no reason other than to do something creative and through that MacNeil could see that I had work ethic and could get shit done. I also took every opportunity that came at me. Even if it meant doing lots of work with nothing in return. I was a 19 year old kid with no experience other than random art projects I created on my own. I just knew that being a designer was what I wanted to do, and I did everything I could to make that happen.
So, the biggest project on you plate right now is Defgrip, how did it start?
Defgrip just started out as a fun project between me and my friends. We were always emailing links back and fourth to stuff we were into and eventually I thought it would be cool to put a blog together and share our links with more or our friends. I also really wanted to create a website that would bring outside creative influence into BMX.
Did you get a lot of stick when it started? Especially as a BMX site that also featured creativity, fashion and ‘arty farty’ stuff?
I think the biggest factor for getting the site noticed was the people involved. By the time I started Defgrip I had been riding and working for MacNeil for a few years and knew a lot of people in the industry. Having two top pro’s (Rich Hirsch and Mike Ardelean) helping with the site was a big factor in legitimizing it, as well as having Anderw McMuelln who just did the MacNeil DVD that came out as we were starting the site, and Nuno Olivieria – a pretty well known and respected industry guy who worked at Odyssey.
How did you pick the contributors and how much creative feedback do they have? Do you still have the final say on design and the features?
The first two people to start helping with the site were Rich Hirsch and Andrew McMullen. Those were two of my good friends and were the ones I was emailing links back and fourth to at the time. Mike Ardelean was in the same circle as us and back then, if you were a BMXer who was creative and into stuff outside BMX, you were almost just instant-friends… So that’s kind of what happened with Ardelean. After the site was rolling for a few months, I got a random email from Nuno who I had never met before. He was sending me a link to a new MF Doom album and we just hit it off from there. I think we started emailing sometime in the summer and I finally met him in person at Interbike in October and then asked if he’d be down to help out quickly after that.
We work together in a pretty organic way. All the people that help out with the site now are still good friends and we talk all the time. Mostly just through IM, but whenever we have ideas, we all talk about it. For regular blog posts, everyone has free reign and can post whenever and whatever they are into… Nuno and I do most of the features, so we’ll just throw ideas back and fourth and build from there. I take care of all the design, so I’ll usually work on some ideas, send concepts around to the crew to get feedback and make sure everyone know’s what I’m up to…
Tell us about some of the collaborations Defgrip has done, didn’t you do a shoe with DVS? Is it still available to buy?
We’ve been able to work on some really dope projects… So far we’ve done a shoe with DVS, a shoe and t-shirt with Lotek, and a seat with Duo. I think doing both of the shoes have been my favorite projects. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d get the chance to design shoes. The DVS project was just a super small run for fun. The shoes were never available, but hopefully we’ll get to work on more stuff in the future.
What do you see as your biggest achievement with Defgrip?
I think my biggest achievement with Defgrip has been the positive influence the site has had on other people. Like I said before one of the reasons I started the site was to bring some more outside influence into BMX and I really feel like we’ve accomplished that. Getting emails from readers saying stuff like they enrolled in art school because of Defgrip and hearing about people getting jobs through our blog posts probably has to be one of the coolest things ever. Also the relationships I’ve built from the site… Even though Defgrip is mostly a virtual thing that lives on the internet, I try to get as much real life human interaction out of it as I can. Every time I travel to a new city anywhere in the world, I have someone new to meet up with because of the site… and to me, that’s an amazing thing.
What can we expect in the future? What have you got in the pipeline for 2010 and beyond?
Our main focus with Defgrip is to continue working on as much original content as possible. We have few projects lined up with some pretty big companies over the summer that we are super excited about. They both involve working with team riders and creating original content for the site. We are also going to focus on clothing a bit more this year, just by doing more t-shirts and staying consistent with our products and trying to not have as much down time between each release.
We have also (kind of) launched Defgrip Studio as a platform for our freelance projects. Focusing on design, film, and photography, the site – defgripstudio.net – will act as a collective outlet for all of us involved with Defgrip to showcase our creative work. Right now, everyone who works on the site does it in their free time and has their own full time thing going… one day, hopefully soon, that full time thing will be Defgrip.
Related Links:
Defgrip
Harrison Boyce Portfolio
Defgrip Studio
MacNeil BMX
Harrison On Twitter
