TFS Interviews Rob Dobi

Rob Dobi is a multi-talented designer, illustrator, photographer and owner of Fullbleed. His designs have garnered tons of following from his remarkable works in the music industries and tee designs. In this interview, Rob shares his thoughts in his works and also offers a unique perspective in today’s starting up tee labels.

TFS: The Familiar Strangers
R: Rob Dobi

TFS: The imageries from your Fullbleed line are very simple, yet bring out a powerful message. How do you usually come up with these concepts and what kind of feeling do you aim to bring to people viewing your work?

R: I’m a big fan of conceptual art and how something so intriguing can be said with so little. Artists like Guy Billout and Brad Holland are able to take something so normal and turn its world upside down by just manipulating one little thing. That is sorta the same vibe I like Fullbleed to have, just taking aspects of everyday life and making bits of it unexpected. I’m not trying to make any sort of specific statement, just attempting to put some unique imagery onto t-shirts that might make people think for a minute.

TFS: It seems like everyone is starting a clothing line, and most of the time, all the new names seems to lack one thing; identity. This seems to be one of Fullbleed’s strongest traits. How do you keep Fullbleed being Fullbleed for such a long time?

R: I think one reason so many new lines lack identity is because they aren’t run by artists. Too many people think they can just start “_______ clothing” on a whim, set up a myspace, sponsor some dorky bands and things will masically happen. Hopefully the owners will be smart enough to hire artists and not do things themselves, but that is another problem altogether. 95% of the time most people putting a line out aren’t sure which direction they are going with it and will choose artists whose works couldn’t be any more different. I’m noticing in the last few months several upstart brands just scour emptees for designs for sale, just swooping up stuff that wasn’t originally their vision or idea. Sure, they might get some cool designs out of it from talented artists, but in the end it doesn’t feel cohesive at all, just feels like a puzzle that is put together with pieces from different sets.

There are exceptions though, look at a brand like Electric Zombie. Kyle has been working in the apparel industry for years and knows what works and what doesn’t. While he could easily design a line on his own he can enlist people to create stuff that he envisions and it all ends up working together.

Oh and to answer question, the reason Fullbleed has remained Fullbleed over the years is because I’m the only one who has any say in any of it. I’m also not about to compromise the aesthetic of my brand for current trends that will only last a few months. You will not be seeing skulls and kanye glasses on any of my shirts anytime soon.

TFS: You have two new designs up here and the styles are quite different compared to Fullbleed. What do you aspire to achieve differently from Fullbleed with this?

R: I’m just having fun drawing! I think most people who are only familiar with my Fullbleed work must think my brain only works in silhouettes. I just happen to keep my line like that because i like big bold simple images on tees. My illustration work is usually the opposite of my Fullbleed style and I rarely get to do intricate work for tees. It seems whenever I do custom illustration work for a band tee, I’ll spend hours on it just to have the work rejected, meanwhile, the piece I spent half an hour on gets accepted. This time I’m making the tees for myself and I don’t have anyone else to answer to.

TFS: You’ve designed for a lot of big names in the music industry such as Fall Out Boy, The Used, Less Than Jake. Are there any pros and cons working for such famous acts?

R: Not really! Working with bands is how I got my break, so any publicity is good publicity. Several people follow my work just because of the bands I worked with. For awhile I was afraid that I was painting myself into a corner with band merch and didn’t know how to say no to a potential client. Over the past few years I’ve learned to restrain myself and only take on jobs that pay well (usually the bands I’m not into) and take on jobs with bands I really enjoy (that hardly pay well at all) and that whole train of thought has left me a heck of a lot less stressed.

TFS: You seem to have thing against scenes from another project of yours (Your Scene Sucks). Did you intend to make a mockery out of the wannabes or the whole scene itself?

R: Isn’t the whole scene itself a bunch of wannabes anyway? I don’t know, the yourscenesucks.com thing is just one big ball of satire and more or less a means of self promotion / way to promote Fullbleed (and it works!)

I just find scenesters as a whole to be such funny creatures, every little clique has such specific rules and the fashion trends change so frequently that I can’t even keep up anymore. For evidence of this do a google image search for “blessed by a broken heart”. Now what happened there? Did they band get together and say “ok guys, here is the deal, skintight low rise girls jeans, vintage metal tees from hot topic, and shotgun wound haircut and that is final!” then two years later suddenly say “dudes, i’m all screamo’d out. Lets pretend we are an 80’s hair metal band!” the difference in styles in such a small span of time is mind blowing and shows just how fickle scenesters are.

I’m content with blank t-shirts from the gap and jeans from target, I don’t let music dictate who my friends are.

TFS: Your photographs of different abandoned buildings really brings a strange aura to the viewers (at least for me), especially the NY Asylum. What made you decide to take photographs of these various buildings? Also, do you have a different outlook viewing at the photographs compared to actually being inside the buildings?

R: I always had a thing for abandoned buildings, even when I was a kid my friends and I would ride our bikes to abandoned houses and explore them. Once I went to college in Providence I found that downtown was home to all of these incredible abandonments, a masonic temple auditorium that was never finished due to the depression, a former produce factory turned home to several of the areas homeless, a former foundry and countless other buildings.

Upon first entering these buildings I knew there was something incredible about them that had to be documented, at the time I had no photography background whatsover. I was pretty much self taught in the photography department although I think being an illustrator makes it come pretty naturally because composition and framing is really 95% of the photo. My camera of choice at the time was the Sony Mavica with a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 with floppy disks as its storage device. Let me repeat, floppy disks. With every passing year I saw more abandoned buildings and I probably upgraded my camera once a year.

The stories the empty hallways tell is unlike any other experience and just feels like you are either stepping back in time or you have entered some post apocolyptic world. The strange thing about it is these places are never really haunting to me (unless you are in Newark, NJ) the dead silence might freak some people out but I’ve doing this for a decade now so I actually have a sense of calm with just me, the shutter of my camera, and the crunching of paint chips under my feet.
I try to make my photos as true to the location as possible, so others can see what exactly lies behind the walls, I use only natural lighting and don’t fall for any corny photoshop work. An insane amount of post-processing or faux HDR doesn’t do the locations justice.

TFS: You mentioned that you graduated and “worked a job scrubbing other people’s dishes.” You quitted after a few months and started freelance fulltime. When did you get your big break in design?

R: I’m not really sure when the big break actually was, All i know was once i graduated college it was one of the most anti-climatic experiences of my life. I was handed a diploma from the top art school in the country and went home and lived with my parents for two years.

For the first six months post RISD I worked as a short order cook at a country club and hated myself. I would be so tired at the end of the day I’d go home and not even want to design anything. One day, six months after sending out mailers I got a call from Teen People (RIP) and they wanted me to work on some spot illustrations, the next morning I quit and made freelancing a full time gig.

By the way, Teen People spelled my name “Dobie”. Thanks guys!