Hey everyone! I'm Grant, an LA based writer/artist and long time friend of GSS. Welcome to the start of a new blog series for the website that will be published in addition to the Love Letter every week. Get Some Sleep is so important to me, and I'm excited to share the brand's past, present, and future evolution with all of you here. We'll be going through the daily minutia and interesting projects that happen every day in the operation of the brand.
The GSS warehouse is an extremely unique place in its ability to bring ideas to life almost immediately. The other night we spent a while ideating- trying to come up with something cool. This is an unusually difficult process. Generally, ideas come to me throughout the day and then I rush home eagerly to make them. Yet on this particular day we had a goal- make some 1/1 shirts on extra raglan blanks from our LA manufacturer.
I’m at the airport right now reflecting on that specific night from about a week ago. (I’m flying home to LA after visiting family for the holidays.) Recently I’ve thought a lot about my personal creative process. It’s hard to just sit down and make something, but on that day, it was our goal.
I’d spent a while that night drawing to see what I could come up with- it was a good challenge to work differently than I usually do. Daniel was drawing too but after a while I think we’d both become frustrated that nothing good was coming out. This is when we split into two different approaches. I had a good bit of text I liked but no drawing to go with it- so did he. Interestingly, our methods diverged. He decided to just go with the text and print the shirts with that. I decided to spend a while continuing to draw.
I’ll focus on his process first. He cut out vinyl on the cutter in order to make a negative of his design. Then he applied it to a blank screen printing screen and printed the shirts that way. This is extremely interesting as usually screens are burned in order to be used for printing. The space that isn’t burned allows ink to pass through, and hence you get a design. Employing an entirely different strategy, his vinyl sticker was what restricted the ink and allowed for a design to pass through. I’m sure its been done before, but I felt it to be a particularly novel way of accomplishing his goal. He printed 10 of the shirts and then gave them away via instagram.
On the other hand, I spent a while longer drawing, trying to find the perfect design. This is different for me as I normally just rock with whatever my first thought is and see it through. Really though, there was a lot of value to employing some refinement to my work. The final design was much more unique and cute, and I felt the reworking gave it some charm that my drawings don’t always have. I spent the rest of the night peeling vinyl and heat pressing it onto a shirt- completely different than what Daniel did.
If there’s a conclusion to be drawn here, mine is that there is no one approach to art. We both made shirts the other day but the processes were entirely different from one another. I believe that to be a really good thing. Working mutually along side someone allows you to gain a nuanced perspective into what would improve a design or its execution. This is paramount to a good creative process and really allows you to go from no inspiration to something great. It’s not always the case that inspiration grows your creation, rather, just working at something for a while can really get you most of the way there.
I made a little tiktok about Daniel’s process which you can find here.
Thanks so much for reading the blog this week. We’ve got some really cool new stuff coming in the new year and I’m beyond thrilled to show you all what’s next.
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