Category: Uncategorized

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Introducing…

‘When I was a kid, my Granddad had books and books about history. They were the only things that had pictures in. He used to tell me to draw Montgomery, or Mussolini – I even drew Hitler. He wasn’t an artist, he wasn’t an art critic, but if it didn’t look like Mussolini he’d say so. That’s the only art lesson I had.’

‘I used a little pencil that must’ve been six years old; he used to cut it with a little knife. And I always drew inside a cigarette packet. Whenever I’m stuck for ideas, I sit and open up a cigarette packet – that’s where the idea for Saatchi & Saatchi came from. He’s still over me now; in everything I do, in every decision I make.’

It was the death of his Grandfather and mentor that prompted young Arron Bird to abandon his 9-to-5 warehouse job and pursue a more artistic vocation. Having witnessed the birth of British graffiti in the early Eighties, he had been honing his aerosol skills illegally on streets up and down the country for eleven years, under numerous pseudonyms. A friend lent him £1000 to get a batch of t-shirts printed – which sold quickly – but they were soon back on his doorstep. The print was washing off. ‘My first business experience was to sue the printer,’ he smiles. ‘I’d left my job and it was hard. We never had much; now we really had nothing.’

Blind Mice Clothing had meagre beginnings in 1993, but a successful lawsuit left Arron with an improved batch of tees and enough money to repay his friend. Sweeping and cleaning in the printers cut down costs, and the process continued in their high-rise flat in Wolverhampton – where his girlfriend sewed on the labels. His were fresh designs to an untapped market: although many skateshops turned him down, Ideal in Birmingham stuck by him. BMC flew off their racks.

Popularity grew, and the brand went from strength to strength. It has been said that Adrock from the Beastie Boys wore BMC on stage. There were BMC-sponsored club nights, and successful launches for new ranges. But it just wasn’t making enough money, and in 1997 – when well-funded American brands started seeping across the pond, and rival UK artists pitched their oars in too – it all got too much. So Temper let go of the well-chewed bone and decided to design for other people. Enter Airwalk.

‘I did two t-shirts for them,’ he recalls. ‘One was the fastest selling they’ve ever had in the UK; 10,000 in the first four weeks, and it carried on selling for six years. So quite a few t-shirts.’ But inexperience left a loophole in his first corporate deal, and the initial flat fee was all he saw. Some money trickled in from album covers and live demos, but when Temper organised a group of thirty graf writers at the Sprite Urban Games he found himself at the end of a runway. The following year he was spotted by Coca Cola, and took off on the largest graffiti campaign the UK has ever seen.

As the new millennium dawned 100 million cans and bottles hit the streets, thrusting his brand right into the hands of the general public. The year 2000 was pivotal not just for Temper but for the culture that raised him: alongside Sprite came the first solo show by a graffiti artist in a public gallery, and a dream commission to paint Saatchi & Saatchi. It also saw his first dedicated studio space: a dark shell without water or electricity, but a welcome change of scenery from the flat nonetheless.

Temper chose to detach from commercial projects, and began work on his first fine art collection, The Good Die Young. Two years later it was finished, and he was awarded his current studio. Six ground-breaking collections later he’s halfway to saying hello, and this folio is just a snapshot of his career to date: ‘I always said my first twelve collections would be my introduction to the world – then you’ll know who I am. I’ve never had backing from people like the Arts Council; I’ve got backing from people that believe in me and share my vision. And I’ve had to introduce myself to the world.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Outroduction

Breaking on lino in the dead of night. Spraying the final touches to an outline, beads of sweat prickling as a siren draws nearer. MCs battling it out in a sweaty underground venue to a baying crowd. All of these things are alien to me: they’re not my background; they’re not my culture, and having known Temper for two years I’m still scratching the surface of what fuels his compulsive creativity.

But I think he’s enjoyed such phenomenal success partly because his journey is a universal one. He’s changing the face of the culture that made him, not simply by exposing high-quality graffiti to the public – and by playing with the context in which we view it – but also because he justifies his work as an expression of his soul. In his words, ‘I don’t spray paint, I spray me.’

When I first met Arron back in 2003, he told me that inspiration hits him in the chest like a punch. It’s that primal need to pour the contents of his head onto canvas that makes him an artist – in that respect, the fact that he uses a spray can is circumstantial. But it’s also deeply relevant, because when Temper became the ‘face of graffiti’ after putting his mark on Sprite he gave a glimpse of what drives some illegal writers too. Sometimes it’s mindless defacement of public property; that’s why it’s illegal. Sometimes it’s about expressing yourself in the rawest possible form, making your mark on the world.

Temper remains fiercely true to his roots, openly disregards artistic pretension and superficial society, and keeps to a small circle of trusted friends. Working deep into the night in a sleep-deprived haze, aerosols rattling around in his cavernous studio, it must be a lonely process at times – and it’s obvious from the sparkle in his eye when discussing his fans that their personal feedback means the world to him. But what strikes me most is the creativity boiling over the surface; the number of collections stored up in his mind and ready to rush out when the dam breaks. Somehow, when Temper tells you he can paint every day until he dies and still have more to come, you’re compelled to believe him.

Hip-hop culture is all about stepping up your game, and the future can only be a global one – but hoisting himself up from nothing has seared the need for a rock-solid grounding in every aspect of Arron’s life. He’s got a lot of canvases to paint, and prefers to build a tower to the stars than shoot a rocket that soon comes plummeting down. Right now, he’s still digging the foundations: to steal the artist’s own metaphor, this book marks a full-stop at the end of the first paragraph in his artistic career. The way he talks about the next five years is enough to make anyone tingle with anticipation. Now is the calm before the storm; the slow-motion leap before the fight begins. It’s safe to say that Temper will be around for many years to come.

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Move Collection

‘I didn’t want to see faces; I didn’t want to see limbs. I wanted them to look awkward. That awkwardness is what I call reality, as an artist. When you watch someone do a backspin you don’t see their feet, you don’t see their face, you do not see their features – and that’s the purest essence. Painting breakers static isn’t reality. What makes you excited about breaking is the speed of it; the not seeing. If I see somebody doing a windmill, the faster the windmill is the more excited I am. I wanted to capture that on canvas.’

Move’s apparent unreality stems from this quest for realism, based on lightning-quick charcoal sketches of breakers, djs and sportsmen invited to perform in Temper’s studio. But as a result, it’s not an easy collection to have on your wall. ‘You look at it and it feels like it’s shaking; it’s going to give you a headache,’ he observes. ‘But if art was always about playing it safe – doing collections because they sit right – I wouldn’t be an artist.’

‘This isn’t a natural way to paint. I think that’s why nobody’s painted like this, or probably will for a long time. It’s not a style that comes comfortably: you have to look at everything in double vision. You know there should be a leg there, or a foot there, but you’ve got to ignore it. You’re working in blurs – it doesn’t look right, but it’s not supposed to. If you watch something move and then stop it, the honesty of that stop is what I’ve painted.’

Wordplay in the lengthy title of each piece acknowledges landmark names in the history of the culture: ‘The Tables Turned for Hercules’ is a respectful nod to Godfather of hip-hop Kool Herc, while ‘Charlie Chased Them Through the Short Cut to Islamic Africa’ flags up pioneering djs Charlie Chase, DJ Shortkut and African Islam. There’s reference to Harlem Globetrotters’ founder Abe Saperstein, renowned breaking crew Street Machine and Bubbles, the UK’s first female breaker.

Keen to get the entire subject out of his head and onto canvas once and for all, Temper poured out this pioneering 50-piece collection in just a month. ‘I can get someone to quote this: I did not sleep for four weeks. Literally didn’t sleep. A few power naps. To be truthful, after I’d done the collection, I collapsed in exhaustion. But I enjoyed it.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Too Good to Die Young

The Good Die Young drained the life from 27 colourful characters. For Temper, the next stage of his bereavement process was to splash it back in glorious celebration of what made them iconic in the first place.

‘When I lost my Granddad I was very, very angry,’ is his example. ‘But when you come out of that place you start thinking about the good times you’ve had; his personality. I celebrate his life in my mind – the perfect image of him. That’s what I wanted to do with Too Good to Die Young.’

Of course, a full-colour portrait using freehand aerosol is in a completely different league to greyscale. ‘Technically it was something I had to prepare myself for,’ he says. ‘If it were that easy, everybody would be doing it. It’s got to look realistic. Comfortable.’

Some of the earlier black-and-white portraits certainly have a cold intensity that makes you shift in your seat. ‘Hendrix in The Good Die Young is looking at you straight on. It’s almost like a stencil. His eyes are staring; he looks like he’s in the wrong place, like he didn’t want to die like that.’

‘With this collection I wanted to remember him in the sense of his life; that perfect image of him. And the only thing you can do with Hendrix is put a guitar in his hand and put him on stage, pulling that face he pulls when he’s feeling what he’s doing. That’s a celebration of his life.’

Judging by the overwhelmingly positive feedback from diehard aficionados, the essence of these great legends courses through the fibres of each canvas. ‘Every single one has its own community of fans. I could start a fan club for each painting, and that’s going to be one of the highlights: true fans saying there’s something more than just the painting there.’

Seven pieces took nine months to complete, and it was emotionally draining as well as technically challenging. Contrary to popular belief, it’s still not finished. ‘I actually stopped, because it started working in reverse,’ admits Temper. ‘Instead of being more comfortable with my bereavement, I opened up old wounds. I’ll go back to it again when I feel emotionally prepared.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Saatchi & Saatchi

‘I’d been speaking to a guy called Chris while preparing the Minuteman show,’ begins Temper. ‘He had an office in London he wanted me to paint. Lovely guy. He was very creative – I knew that – but I didn’t know he was a Creative Director.’ When an opening finally came up, the two arranged a date and the company’s name was revealed. ‘But I didn’t know who Saatchi & Saatchi were,’ he grins. ‘Totally alien world to me. Even when my manager showed me what they’d done, I kept it on the level of me doing something for Chris. It’s the sort of job you could get quite nervous about.’

Saatchi’s Creative Team felt their surroundings had grown stale. Temper’s open brief was to inspire them, and he had a weekend to do it. ‘Chris wanted to surprise them, so I started at 7pm on Friday and went straight through to 8am on Monday. I had two or three 45-minute sleeps, but apart from that I was painting non-stop. There were coffee machines everywhere; that’s what kept me going.’

The result is nothing short of a 45-foot-long masterpiece. ‘I wanted to link the word ‘Creative’ with the word ‘Temper’ and I thought, we both look for a reaction in what we do. That was the middle word. So the piece actually spells out ‘Reaction’, with the ‘o’ giving birth to little Trobots – representational drawings of my ideas.’ Beginning with the artist running to London with spray cans in his hands, it then launches into a multicoloured explosion of creative symbolism.

There’s a character standing in a whirlpool, holding his brain while electric sparks pulse from it. A crossroads, one route drooping to represent ideas with no mileage. But those ideas, instead of being scrunched up and binned, become a paper aeroplane that flies into the artist’s temple: ‘Even my wasted ideas are ideas,’ he says simply. A thick white border frames the work top and bottom but it bursts over the threshold in places, not to be boxed in by anyone.

Delighted with the result, Saatchi dubbed him an ‘aerosolic visionary’ and invited him back to paint the office next-door. This time he had just seven hours to spare, no large area of wall space and no clear concept in mind – his only brief was to keep to the walls. So he freestyled all over the carpet, the ceiling and the sofas. ‘They’re creative people, and they trust me making a creative decision,’ he reasons. ‘I wanted it to feel as if somebody had just come in with a couple of cans and gone bang, bang, bang. It worked really well, but was nothing like the first one.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Signature Sprite Can

‘I won everybody’s vote for eight weeks on the trot. Undisputed. It was obvious it had to be my work, which was very nice to know,’ grins Temper. After a phenomenal live performance at the Sprite Urban Games 2000, he was one of four artists put forward to design the sponsor’s new packaging. His work instantly hit a nerve: they wanted him, and they wanted his brand splashed all over their drinks cans. 100 million of them.

‘The success rate was unbelievable: Coca Cola were shocked,’ he recalls. ‘It was originally meant to be a UK promotion, but people got in touch from Germany and Belgium so it obviously went European. I was already well-known on street level, but from the general public’s perception this took me to a different level. I was on television, radio, magazines, and people were actually holding my tag in their hand. It raised my profile in such a massive way – untouchable, really.’

On one hand, the ‘all graffiti is vandalism’ case could only be weakened by such a high-profile commission. But by rocketing into the public consciousness Temper risked becoming a scapegoat for graf’s less popular forms. ‘Everyone was asking me, is graffiti art or crime? I had to take a lot of things on the chin.’ Luckily, he dealt with it pretty well.

‘I protected my culture, and I communicated it to the public without diluting it or overexposing it,’ he insists. ‘I was conscious throughout every interview that I never damaged illegal writers, and only talked positively about how it’s an individual thing and can inspire. A lot of people got new commissions because their local Council began to take it more seriously. I changed graffiti for the better in this country, and I know this is talked about as one of the stepping stones to what graffiti is now.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Popcorn Collection

For a dyslexic child struggling with words, comic books throw open a vibrant universe of storytelling where characters come to life before your eyes. ‘I wanted to pay homage to one of the greatest things in my life, which is comics. What better way to execute this than by making an image out of words? You’re flipping the script: the whole thing just made sense.’

The final piece in the jigsaw is the title: not only had most of Temper’s childhood comic strips now become film reels, but studying the multilayered texture of the canvas was not unlike looking into a box of that familiar movie snack.

‘I’ve never seen anybody paint like that; not with aerosol,’ he admits. ‘Each canvas is a reapplication of a similar stencil 18 to 20,000 times. That’s an awful lot of stencil work. But nobody ever looks at Popcorn in that way. It’s that good; it doesn’t look stencilled.’

Every cloud – however much it drenches you – glitters within, and this revolutionary style came about by chance. Asked to spray a canvas for exhibition sponsor Airwalk, Temper planned an abstract piece and began stencilling on their logo. But with his back garden serving as an impromptu studio, he became pressed for time as the light failed and the skies opened. He needed a quick solution.

‘The gutter and soffit at the back of my house just gave enough shelter for the canvas, but I was wringing wet,’ he recalls. ‘I just started reapplying the logo to create a face. And that was the application; it was like an accident on purpose. I wanted to do something good, but that saved me being there all night.’

The style evolved, and after the glowing reception for ‘Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing’ – a growling reference to his proud Wolverhampton roots, composed of thousands of Temper tags – it lent itself well to the Popcorn idea, already part of a lengthening list of proposed collections. It’s an ongoing project, and comics remain an important part of the artist’s life.

Batman is a particularly strong influence: ‘He has every bit of ammunition that he needs to combat anything that gets in his way,’ Temper tells me with a sparkle in his eye. ‘He lives in a batcave. That’s kind of like me: I lock myself up in a studio. I haven’t got my boats, I haven’t got my helicopters, but they come out in forms of style. Anything that I need to achieve, I’ve got the ammunition to do so. Temper’s the Batman to Arron Bird, if you like.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Minuteman Exhibition (2001)

As the first solo exhibition by a graffiti artist in a public gallery, the Minuteman show was a huge turning point for the culture. Housed in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, it put Temper face to face with the Pre-Raphaelites. ‘Prior to the exhibition I didn’t know what Pre-Raphaelite was,’ he confesses. ‘When I went into the space that I’d be exhibiting in – I’d never been in an art gallery before – one of the guys gave me a crash course.’

‘They were beautiful oil paintings, but kind of elitist: when you look at their work it’s so easy to feel insecure. But he told me the Pre-Raphaelites used to do a lot of drugs, were into wife swapping. That took away my insecurity in a way,’ Temper smiles. The work of Birmingham-born Edward Burne-Jones caught his eye, in particular ‘The Depths of the Sea’ – a mermaid clutching a sailor, at first glance attempting a rescue but actually gripping him beneath the waves to drown him.

‘Some parts of the establishment didn’t want to give space to this thing called graffiti, so in true Temper fashion I tried to change their perception,’ he goes on. ‘That painting took Edward Burne-Jones four years, so I decided to paint it in four hours. I called it Post-Graffalite.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be disrespectful: I wasn’t suggesting that it came even ten percent to achieving the same artistic highness. But I enjoyed doing the painting, and what was the point of being the first graffiti artist in a public gallery without actually making a few statements? It did make a couple of the non-believers believe.’ The vast majority of the 38,000 people who visited the exhibition, many of whom didn’t expect to like the work, had nothing but positive feedback to give.

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

Decade Collection

‘Ten years, crunched into an easily-digestible visual thing. For some people it’s just funky little characters. But it’s ten years of my life; a bubblegum version of the things that went on during that decade.’

Inspired by the Sex Pistols and Rock Steady Crew artwork, Temper developed a distinctive painting style first seen in ‘On a Creep Tip’. Despite a lukewarm reception at its first public showing in Birmingham, the piece’s value snowballed after it was pictured beside him in a Sunday supplement.

‘I was petrified that someone would rip off that style of drawing,’ he confesses. ‘Obviously that painting had been in thousands of Sunday Times all over the country.’ So Decade was born; partly to stamp ownership on the Temper technique, and partly to pay whistle-stop homage to his formative years.

From breaking on lino in the early hours to spraying outlines with Goldie, each canvas scratches the surface of one of countless episodes from 1982 to 1991. ‘Mic Check… 1, 2’ recalls a time when the Wild Bunch, later Massive Attack, were rapping and beatboxing in the Dungeons in Wolverhampton. When the UK scene was still defining itself, shortly after hip-hop spread across the pond, the canvas proudly brands the MC in red, white and blue.

Much more than just a series of snapshot experiences, Decade charts the artist’s development. So immediately after the shady furtiveness of ‘Creepin’, ‘On Time’ marks a turning point: ‘I was into youthful things,’ he smiles. ‘Then my girlfriend came along and showed me a different way of living.’

The collection is an edgy, colourful tribute to the colourful decade from which the Temper phenomenon was born. ‘Out of those ten years I could tell you a thousand stories, not just ten pictures. But there’s no way that I’d change any element of my life, good or bad.’

Read other copywriting case studies

In 2005, I collaborated with renowned graffiti artist Temper to produce a limited-edition 60-page book exploring his career so far.

Read more about Temper’s portfolio

The Good Die Young

Losing eight of your close family in a lifetime is devastating. Losing them in a single year is enough to tear your life apart. Racked with grief, Temper dealt with it in the best way he could: he picked up an aerosol can and began to spray his soul onto canvas. After two years of broken sleep, The Good Die Young was complete.

‘This was the start of me challenging myself: on canvas, mentally, technically, publicly,’ he asserts. ‘It was my introduction to this part of my life. People paint icons because they think they’ll sell – for me, this is a craft; this has a soul; this is about life and death. I put it down. I put it on the line.’

More than just ground-breaking, it was officially the UK’s first ever conceptual collection by an aerosol artist. The Good Die Young captures the bereavement process. It’s the work of a man questioning the nature of life itself; a man trying to make sense of a world in which your family can be plucked one by one from your grasp. The same world in which modern icons, adored by millions, can be cut off in their prime. And in a cramped, mouse-infested studio in Wolverhampton, Temper brought the likes of Hendrix, Lennon and Gandhi together in the black-and-white shades of mourning.

He had been stripped of his own relations, and these great figures – united by their vibrant lives and early deaths – helped to contextualise that loss. Each has a certain resonance: ‘Lady Diana’s complexion – the redness of her cheeks; her placid eyes; her hair colour – is so, so similar to my cousin Helen, who died when she was only 25,’ he confides. ‘And my uncle David was like Martin Luther King; he was a schoolteacher. He dropped down dead in front of a classroom full of children.’

‘Some people in the collection – like Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix – are linked with family members that I cherish, who are alive now. There’s an awful lot of reasons why they’re there. But the original idea was about bereavement; they had to be familiar figures for people to understand what loss is.’

With bars across the windows, no running water and no electricity, Temper worked deep into the night in the aptly-named Lucifer’s Loft, and half of the paint that spattered his 27 canvases was sprayed by flickering candlelight. Although not a religious man, the symbolism of the act struck a chord with the artist: ‘It was reminiscent of what you’d see in a church, when people light candles for those they’ve lost,’ he muses. The soft, atmospheric glow also brought a deeper subtlety to the wholly greyscale collection.

‘When you lose someone you feel angry; bitter; confused. You can’t understand why that person’s gone, and your mood in general is very black-and-white,’ he reasons. ‘I was confused; I questioned life, and there’s a numbness there. It also puts an age to the collection: the human brain conceives black-and-white as things past.’

‘It’s about people’s lives – their time – and that time being ended. But when I created these paintings, time was no object. I spent my time ignoring time, to highlight the end of time,’ Temper smiles, pleased to have summed up two years of emotionally-draining work so neatly. ‘To spend an hour working on a highlight; a day on a shadow, or getting the actual shape of an eyelid right to emphasise the soul of that person… the sacrifice of time to create that is what makes me an artist.’

Read other copywriting case studies