Fat lines and fashionability boast a long history of perceived interrelat- edness, even if the reality is more often one of abject tedium and epic self-absorption. So we're most grateful for those whose work has conferred a certain cool on East London illustra- tion collective, publisher and retailer Nobrow. Thick, inky, life-affirming, unpredictable and free of synthetic bulking agents, the lines drawn by Nobrow's artists speak of excitement and enthusiasm, while the wider enterprise is largely dedicated to championing talents other than the staff's own.
"I'm not very stylish today," Sam Arthur warned O: Man on the phone as we headed to Nobrow HQ to take his photograph, "I've got gaffer tape keeping my hoodie together..." But that, of course, is part of the point: these are dedicated, hands-on workshop types, not fashion fops or digital designers who operate in a world without drips and stains. Along with co-founder Alex Spiro - long- time friend, fellow illustrator and "dictionary definition of an eBay junkie" - Arthur set up Nobrow's studio in late 2008 in a former commercial space at 62 Great Eastern Street, Hoxton. The following spring, the first issue of Nobrow's eponymous, biannual magazine appeared, and its beautifully printed original artwork from 24 artists and illustrators around the world had an instant impact in design circles.
That impact was largely down to Nobrow's self-evident dedication to beautifully made books and limited edition prints produced with old manual machines and without digital shortcuts. But it was also because - even though they have no rigid
rules about what styles and sensibili- ties are allowed under the Nobrow banner - the poppy, storybook style that characterised many of the artists they first worked with chimed with fashion's recent rediscovery of illus- tration. From the thick-lined T-shirt designs and flyers associated with the super-cool No Age hardcore scene in L.A., through the doodly detours taken by so many hipster tattooists from London to Brooklyn, to the prints on special edition Marni pieces in recent seasons, childlike illustration has lately been deployed in unexpected and chic places as a way of cutting through super-slick, retouched imagery with shots of pure personality.
Now, in late 2010, Nobrow's base- ment hums with the stirring of ink pots and the cranking of defiantly analogue print technology as the fourth issue of the magazine - complete with all new colours, fans! - is readied for a November release. Upstairs, adjoining the collective's studio (a repository of fruit labels, comics, objets d'pop culture and other designery ephemera that testifies to that aforementioned eBay habit) is a dazzling shop front full of primary-coloured prints, tiny- run artist monographs made in the basement, and more. The store opened earlier this year and takes the young imprint into non-papery territory with pillows, collectible figures and other 3D realisations of their friends' illustrated worlds. Latest titles include Spam Head, a pictorial tribute to the imagined faces behind the fictional identities on junk emails received by artist and O: Man contributor Kavel Rafferty. And, until the end of November, you can also see a selling show by Belgian artist Brecht Vandenbroucke during the store's weekday opening hours.
"The shop's going to be chocka with new books, cards, T-shirts and little things for Christmas," Arthur says. But the big ticket item this winter is a grand new book, A Graphic Cosmogony, eight months in the planning and made in collaboration with an Italian printer who's just as particular as the Nobrow mob. Like the magazine, it brings together 24 artists, but on this occasion each has been given seven pages in which to tell the story of creation. "It's the most ambitious thing we've done yet," Arthur says. Even omniscient deities gave themselves Sundays off when undertaking such epic tasks, but judging by their prodigious progress thus far, Nobrow won't even manage a lie-in before moving on to something bigger yet...
