Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
With the emergence of digital mediums — NFTs, immersive walkthroughs — have you found yourself or your peers utilizing this new technological frontier to expand the scope of what art can be? I read a book by Milton Glaser, and he talked about the big difference between art and design: art is a really personal dialogue that you have with yourself over a long period of time. Everything you make has a direct relationship or correlation with the previous piece you made. It’s about exploration, which you don’t necessarily need in design work. In design, you feel more free to play with general aesthetics, approaches, and perspectives because each project is completely and absolutely different from the previous project. Steven Harrington: The ASUS Vivobook is kind of my first time applying artwork or my illustrative imagery to a digital device of this kind. So I thought it would be really interesting to play around with my world, almost meeting this visual representation of the future and tech. On the product itself, you’ll see this really playful world kind of meeting this space-like scene. It’s my way of playing around and being inspired by the possibilities of technology. Being a visual artist, it’s something that I use quite frequently within the production of my own paintings, drawings and products. So I thought it would be really cool to reflect the dreamlike qualities of being able to create a tech device. HYPEBEAST: Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your ASUS Vivobook and the process behind your design? After college, you dove into design work and started National Forest with your friend, Justin. How did that come about? I met Justin at Art Center and the two of us had a mutual passion for art, design, and drawing. At the end of college we both thought, “Whoa, we’re either going to split up right now and go work for different companies or we can do this together and try to figure something out.” It was a really big decision. We chose to put our portfolios together, create a business, and try to get jobs. And that’s what we did: we literally put our illustration portfolios together and hustled our work around.
As physical and digital realms in the art world continue to merge, how have you leveraged digital mediums to benefit your creative discipline? As a creator, how does the ASUS Vivobook aesthetically align with your personal taste and how does it enhance your creative process? Growing up, being born and raised here in LA, I’ve started to understand — upon my various travels in Europe, Asia and South America — Los Angeles definitely does have a certain weather to it, a certain kind of brightness that fuels the culture of the city. You wake up, and it’s 75 degrees out every single day, and it feels like you’re going to the beach. Everyone is less afraid to wear color — to celebrate color — to celebrate graphics and drawings. Somehow We All Seem Connected, Collaborative Exhibition with Justin Krietemeyer, Subliminal Projects, Los AngelesDid you always want to be an artist and designer? Like most kids, I grew up drawing and painting. My parents really embraced that and pushed me further into it. When I hit high school, I realized that I liked drawing and painting so much that I didn’t want to stop. Your artwork is known for capturing a Californian-infused pop aesthetic. Being based in LA, how has the city informed your work? It’s hard to decide what to focus on career-wise straight out of high school. You don’t necessarily know what your contribution is yet, or you don’t know what you’re good at because you haven’t tried enough things. How do you determine what to focus on? I figured it out through experience. What do you find yourself doing or wanting to physically do? I’m not talking about something you wistfully daydream about. There’s a big difference between what you actually enjoy doing and the daydream of what you want your identity to encapsulate.
SH: My most important work tools are ultimately just the pen and pencil. I am one of those people that was handed a pencil or crayon at a really young age, and I just kind of kept it around. I drew through early school then into middle school, high school, then into college and here I am still drawing. Especially within the last several years online and digitally, I’ve found it extremely important and inspiring to get my mind out of that space. It’s this big shift that I think we all [experience] — almost like dimensional, physical things around us have taken on a lot more meaning. Recently, I feel like you kind of get down into nature, you get out on a walk — it can be a simple fleeting [moment] that you can find meaning in. In the past, you were constantly crumpling stuff up if you’re embarrassed by it. Now the process is like a stream of thought, and I think there’s something that’s really liberating to the mind when it comes to developing ideas and creating. It’s more about the ideas and that stream of consciousness rather than the aesthetics of what you’re placing. I’ve found that to be really inspiring and helpful when it comes to the act of creating. Do you think one of the reasons you were able to develop such a strong voice with your personal work was because you had the commercial work as your bread and butter and there was no pressure no make money from the personal stuff at the start? It didn’t cross my mind then, but it does now. I completely agree with you. In Steven’s design, Disney characters interact with paint brush and palette, to celebrate the process of making art.I really liked that. I liked how he talked about art being personal poetry. Over time, I embraced that. Everything I make in my own time is poetry, even if it looks like an illustration or even if it starts to become client-based. It’s about letting myself explore new ideas and be intuitive with what it is that I like doing, which I’ve realized has to do with drawing. What was the first big gig National Forest did that made you and Justin realize you were making it happen? Right after we graduated, we got a pretty big illustration job for Rolling Stone. It wasn’t the cover, but it might as well have been. It was like, “Holy shit!”
No, but it has a lot of feeling. Exactly. That’s what I’ve tried to create. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I grew up hearing interviews with people who said, “Oh, I love telling stories.” Films are all about stories, and it’s about great storytelling. Don’t get me wrong—I love stories—but what about when you don’t want a story? What if you just want to feel something? What about the artist who believes there’s another language and grouping of emotions that you can’t express through words?I once heard a really cool interview with Tom Hanks. The interviewer asked him, “What makes a piece of art good to you, whether it’s film or music?” He said, “Every great piece of art asks the eternal question that we all have, which has to do with existence.” As generic as that sounds, it has to do with asking the eternal question: Why? Why are we here? What are we doing? What is this place?
Great Deal 
New Comment