Tyler Spangler

July 10, 2019

Tyler Spangler is an artist who designed a T-shirt together with Samsul (12). The proceeds will be used to renovate her school which was damaged by earthquakes.

Go to the Tyler Spangler x Samsul T-shirt: women // men //

The Simpsons. Surfing. Californian sun. Psychedelic styles of the 60s. It all comes together in the colourful, poppy, psychedelic artwork of digital artist Tyler Spangler. To his clientele Wow-list! – Chanel, Nike, Red Bull, Samsung and Volcom – he now adds no one less than Face This. Working together with 12 year old Samsul in creating a beautiful new Face This T-shirt and helping the SDN 1 Senggigi school on Lombok.

Tyler Spangler x surf-, skate- and fashion brands

Type Tyler Spangler in Google and you get 1.680.000 hits. Interviews, galeries selling his work, his Instagram-account with 191.500 followers to ‘Tyler Spangler Nike’ as search topic in Google suggest. This – as he describes himself – Psychology graduate & Art Center College of Design dropout who ran an illegal punk venue for 13 shows until police shut it down/Freelance artist, has grown to become a most wanted digital artist. Surfing, skate- and high end fashion brands love using his creative work and talent. “That’s the fun part of it all, to see how people react to the art you make”, he states.

Samsul’s drawing, which he created on the pier of Senggigi

The unstoppable Tyler Spangler

Tyler Spanglers style is original, somewhat chaotic, sometimes disturbing but above all fun. He himself described it (source: Howlnewyork.com) as ‘A grape flavored popsicle dipped in the ocean and placed on a rock to melt’. In his work he combines a scale of media types like illustration, photography, text and visuals blending it into stunning digital collages. Tylers productivity and energy seems unstoppable. Over the last three years, Tyler Spangler created six 440-page books filled with his own designs and worked on numerous collaborations worldwide.

Tyler Spangler x Face This

And now there’s Face This. As a ‘lover of collabs’ Tyler Spanlger did not hesitate one bit in saying yes to helping create a vivid design for the brand new T-shirt collection. “It seemed like a lot of fun, it’s for a good cause and I simply like working together with others in graphic design. I did it before with students. It can give a new perspective on your own work. Collaborating with a child is new to me, although I am thinking of creating artwork my 3 year old son. The Face This project is a trigger in really making his drawings into a collage”, tells Tyler Spangler from his studio in Burbank, California.

The artist at work…

Telling Samsuls story through a Face This t-shirt

For Face This Tyler Spangler was linked to 12 year old Samsul to create a T-shirt that visually tells his story. Samsul was asked – like all the other kids for this project – to make a drawing about his favourite spot in Senggigi, Lombok. No doubt it was the beach to see the fishermen catch small fishes. So, a school bench was put on the beach for him make a live drawing of the fishermen. “He did a drawing with black lines to which I added colour to pop it up a little bit. This collab was challenging because I mainly work with photos, a line drawing is different. I made a lot of revisions and it took a while for getting the balance right. My idea was approaching this completely open minded and turn my child brain on and see what happened. Really fun!”

Samsul loves fishing on the pier of Senggigi

And inspiring? “Oh yes. Amazing seeing Samsul’s artwork. Because it reminded me of the line drawings I used to do in elementary school, before computers were so prominent. It is actually so much fun to experiment with the basics. It reminded me of the time when I was younger. OK, I am 33 years old, but I still feel like I am in my teens. I think it is important to never forget what excited you as a child and hang on to that as much as you can. Like, if you are interested in art and creating, it is a magnificent way of living. But, whatever you decide to do, if you do what you like you’ll find happiness, I would say to Samsul”.