Shane Long/ Rob Stanton (Uglybogus) (US)

Shane Long/ Rob Stanton (Uglybogus) (US)

Contrary to what you could believe when watching their pictures, the two guys behind Uglybogus perfectly well how to match colors for their posters. And not only red and white as you could believe if you take a close look at the picture on the right. Seattle is not only grunge related, there is some space between the timber shirt square to put a little bit of pink or yellow instead of grey and brown, but let them show you how …

Hello, of course as every Crewk interview, first question: what are we listening to when we come to visit you?

Lots of great local Seattle/Northwest stuff - My Goodness, Hot bodies in motion, The Pharmacy, MadRad, Champagne Champagne, Thee Satisfaction, Shabazz Palaces, Tacocat, Red Fang, Fresh Espresso, Blue Scholars, The head and the heart, Allen Stone.

Can you tell us more about yourself, who are you, where are you from, what do you do?

Uglybogus is Shane Long and Rob Stanton. We both grew up in washington state, Rob on the east side of the mountains, Shane on the west side. Shortly after meeting in art school at cornish college of the arts we decided to start collaborating on gigposters. Making posters is just a hobby though, we both work full time jobs as designers in the advertising world.

When did you start drawing?

We've both been drawing since our tiny baby hands could grasp onto crayons.

Did you follow any course or did you improve by drawing in the margins of your schoolbooks?

We both attended cornish college of the arts for their graphic design program, and both had internships at a variety of amazing design studios around Seattle, specifically Asterik studio (now invisible creature) where we learned form the great Don and Ryan Clark and cemented our love for screen printing and gigposters forever.

Today are you living from your art, or do you do something else for a living ?

We both work full-time at large corporate design agencies, its not as bad as it sounds though, we've learned plenty from working on huge international brands that we would have never learned if all we did was posters for local bands. Its a very rewarding balance designing for those clients during the day and then getting our hands dirty with screen printing and posters at night.

Are you collaborating with magazines/fanzines, regularly?

Not particularly, but we would love too.

Where does your influence come from? Is there any artists/graphists you particularly like, what are your influences?

For some reason the Pacific Northwest is an enormous breeding ground for extremely talented poster designers, so we had plenty of access to really awesome people around town while we were learning the ropes. I already mentioned Don and Ryan Clark at invisible creature, but we've also been lucky to spend some time with Jeff Kleinsmith and Jesse Ledoux (sub pop records), The Ames Bros, the legendary Art Chantry, Mike and Robynne from ModernDog, and lots more I'm sure I'm forgetting.

What are the principal steps in your work ?

We're contacted by a music venue or musician to do a poster, get the details, create the art, screen print the posters, then deliver them.

Do you do everything by hand or on computer?

Its really a mix of both, we see the computer as just another tool, like a pencil or a photocopier. Our posters always start with an idea, then we draw bits by hand and scan them in, source images to collage, photocopy them, scan them back in, reprint them, recompile the image, etc etc until we have the final design.

How long does it take you to do a poster?

The design process can be anywhere from an hour to several days, depending on how long it takes us to agree on a concept and be happy with the final design. Screen printing usually takes about an evening as long as we don't run into any hiccups in the printing process. We've definently had a lot of late nights though. Beer helps.

You have a very distinctive style, are you doing only what you feel like or if tomorrow somebody asks you an oil painting with horses running out of water with a sunset backdrop, is it a problem or are you up for it ?

Generally venues or bands commission us for posters because they already like what we're doing, but being designers we are always exploring new ways of creating images, our style might feel one way for a few months, and then change completely, but we always try to hang onto our roots. Its important to us the image is hand crafted, that the subtle details in the line quality come through and not be perfect vector creations whipped up on the computer. We're always up for a challenge though, oil painting might be our next evolution.

For which band have you already worked for?


Hundreds, haha. I'll spare you from a giant list and just say the most notable bands have probably been… Miike Snow, Girl Talk, Cold War Kids, Tegan and Sara, Menomena, and Rogue Wave.

For which band would you love to work?

Its always fun to work on posters for "famous" musicians, but we actually prefer to work with smaller local acts around town. We've really been into the new Seattle hiphop scene, we would love to do more posters for those acts.

Do you choose the artists yourself?

Sometimes a venue will come to us with a list of shows they need posters for, but most of the time we don't have much of a choice. We've also been lucky enough to do posters for the sasquatch festival every year, in which case that's more of a first come first serve basis, so we always try to snag the bands we really love.

What is the most difficult part in designing a poster ?

Coming up with art that not only is appropriate for the band or style of music, but imagery we haven't seen a hundred times before. We're not so naive to think that all of our work needs to be "original", that's just something that isn't possible, everything's been done before. What's important is that the design be functional and appropriate, if its also something that we haven't seen much of, that's a bonus.

Do you think you are part of a "Graphic Scene", if so who else ?

There's a very strange dysfunctional family of gigposter artists out there (most notably on gigposters.com), I don't know if we would call it a "scene", but these guys are some of the most intelligent and talented folks we've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I'd like to think we're a part of that family.

A bit of self-promotion, take advantage of it, it's free, where can we see your work , on the web or in real life?

http://www.uglybogus.com/ for our posters. Shane's personal portfolio is http://www.buddybogus.com/ and rob's portfolio is at http://www.robcstanton.com/

The best praise you received lately?

We were included in gigposters vol.2, a huge honor for us, so stoked to be in that book. http://gigposters.com/book/

What can we wish you for the future?

Thanks for having us!