Everpress celebrates the beauty of collaboration with new collection

Creator-led apparel company Everpress has launched a new collection which highlights the power of collaboration in design.

In Collaboration features the work of creative pairs, and includes input from the likes of Studio Moross creative director Kate Moross, type foundry Pangram Pangram and graphic designer Anthony Burrill (Me/We, by Anthony Burrill and Tom Baber pictured in page banner).

Helping creatives who “want to, or have to, try new things”

The inspiration for the project came about as the Everpress team noticed that, more than ever, creatives were experimenting with collaborative work.

“We were discussing as a team that we’d seen more inter-artist collaboration taking place,” Everpress head of creatives Nick Law tells Design Week. “It’s an exciting trend and we thought me might be able to amplify it with a project like this.”

With so many creatives’ careers disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, Law says the aim was to amplify this trend of co-creation as more designers are “wanting to, or having to, try new things”.

“It was conceptualised before we even knew what a Coronavirus was, but the timing is interesting, given that many artists currently seem to be experimenting with new ways of working.”

The stories behind the collaborations

According to Law, the Everpress team gave their collaborators “very little guidance” – instead telling them to “just create a design together as a synthesis of their styles”. A short story of how the collaboration came about accompanies each T-shirt.

Kate Moross’ design with their partner – tattoo artist Emily Malice – for example, explores how some collaborations involve the mixing of practices. In this case, the T-shirt was created by the pair in quarantine by merging Moross’ digital techniques with Malice’s hand-sketching in Photoshop.

Meanwhile, the ceramicist-illustrator duo Liv & Dom, who are identical twins as well as business partners, explain their Roman tile-inspired design was created in reference to the “stay at home lifestyle” that so many have had to adopt because of the coronavirus outbreak.

And the story behind the design from illustrators Holly St-Clair and Martina Martian explores the ways in which technology can connect collaborators, even when they’re on opposite sides of the planet, through “WhatsApp calls, DMs, emails”.

“We’re hoping [the stories behind each T-shirt] will be useful to any artist who has been wanting to collaborate, but wasn’t sure how to go about it, or inspirational to those who hadn’t even considered it,” says Law.

“Better than we hoped for”

The collection sees designs from all manner of collaborators, including “siblings, twins, business partners, lovers, friends, and mutual Instagram followers”.

The final products are influenced not just by the relationship between the creatives, but also through the medium that relationship is supported by.

“I would have presumed that the designs from collaborators who knew each other previously, especially those who live together, would have been more coherent,” says Law. “But I’m amazed at how well the artists working remotely brought their artwork together.

“Then end results are actually even better than we hoped for!”

Coronavirus affecting creatives

As is to be expected, the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the creative industry. From disrupted supply chains, to events being cancelled, universities being shut down and businesses losing clients, it is a troubling time for creatives.

With all this said however, Law says he and the Everpress team have noticed a significant outpouring of support.

“It’s amazing to see how buyers are rallying round creatives,” he says.

The In Collaboration T-shirt collection is available to pre-order now from the Everpress website.