The La Boca Studios Collection & Interview
T-Shirt selections and thoughts from La Boca Studios LaBoca.co.uk
The La Boca Studios Story
If you venture into London, then into the neighborhood of Portobello -- gritty and urban and neighborhoody all at the same time -- you may come across Portobello Road and the apartment style building that houses La Boca Studios. And you'd be standing just a few feet from where some of the best T-Shirt designs in the UK are designed and crafted. We chatted with Scot Bendall recently, half of the La Boca Studios team, and he told us a bit about how they started designing T-Shirts and about the mix of circumstances that led them to where they are now, in the thick of the design and T-Shirt worlds.
First, though, If you haven't seen the T-Shirts designed by La Boca for SixPack you should check them out, of course, and then buy one. When we first spotted these Tees on he web we popped out of our seats in surprise and mused amongst ourselves about how these were, really, truly great designs that mix perfectly into the cotton threads of SixPack's T-Shirts. Who designed these and how the heck did SixPack manage to both connect with this studio and pull off such a well crafted line of T-Shirts with them? Such shallow mystery is the life blood of T-Shirt aficionados like ourselves, though of course it isn't that much of a mystery. What stuck us after talking with the friendly Londoner's at La Boca wasn't their craftiness as designers or their 
design world connections, though both are ample, but rather that it shouldn't have been all that surprising that SixPack would get ahold of them.
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... They are, after all, doing amazing design work and doing just the right things to help the word of mouth spread.
If you're as curious as we were, though, you're also wondering how exactly La Boca got hooked up with SixPack. Here's how any designer can start collaborating with them: First, move into a shared office building in London housing small record labels and other creative types. Two: let the music guys take a peek at your design portfolio and design a few CD jackets for them. Three: be cool. Four: let it all brew as friends and friends of friends spread the word. Five: design the packaging for the soundtrack a completely random sex toy company wants. No, really, it'll be fun, but there's no need to put it in your portfolio. Six: keep at it and pick up the phone when other record labels, movie studios and magazines start calling wanting your design skills. Seven (our fave): set up a blog so that you can communicate directly with the growing number of fans who want to follow you and who remind you that it's just as much about them and getting feedback from them as it is about the client and the design. Finally, pick up the phone when SixPack calls.
Of course that formula may only work if you're a genuinely remarkable, smart crew who is also down to earth and appreciates the myriad of opportunities in life and who, for example, makes time to work on awesome kids books that your friends sometimes write. That's exactly the impression we got from talking with Scot.
The other creative mystery that surrounds designers and studios like La Boca's is how the collaborative process works with shops like SixPack and Graniph. Scot was kind enough to shed some light on this, too, and again it's not much of a mystery. SixPack, certainly one of the most cutting edge and venerable T-Shirt shops around, and who La Boca works closely with, simply commissions artists and gives them a short theme to work with, sometimes just a word or two. Artists like Scot, it turns out, have complete creative freedom over how to interpret that theme, and, surprisingly, whether there is any branding on the final T-Shirt. Of course in SixPack's case artists often work branding directly into their designs, which is remarkable in a world where branding of that sort seems to be going the way of the Dodo (and rightly so in most cases). SixPack, it seems, is in a league of their own, and we applaud them for that, especially since they receive accolades from shops like La Boca and who continue to work with them.
How SixPack's own aesthetic and style glows through all their T-Shirts came into better focus while chatting with Scot, too. Compared to Graniph or Threadless or Design by Humans, for example, SixPack very much has their own look and feel; a sharp, highly refined and still at times gritty spirit that is common through almost all their designs and contrasts highly with the more illustration-centric, or cartooney styles of some other big shops. Scot described SixPack's look as "retro futurism," which we thought was exactly right. In other words, how SixPack's T-Shirts turn out has a lot to do with the themes their editors choose, but the report that La Boca has with SixPack as a company and with the other designers they work with edits the style in it's own way. As Scot put it, SixPack has managed to bring together a group of artists who are all coming from the same place and bringing with them their own interpretation of the psychedelic, graffiti, punk 60's culture they're all interested in artistically.
Back in Portobello La Boca is working on some new projects with SixPack, among other things. It was an immense pleasure talking with Scot (Thanks!) and an equally immense pleasure browsing through their blog, print shop, and T-Shirts. Check them out and keep your eye out for their latest T-Shirts, books, and other goodies.
