Forget the alarm clock.
Wake up with sunlight filling your studio apartment.
Have a little breakfast.
Draw for a while.
Pick up the Casio keyboard leaning against the wall and noodle around with the synths.
Walk around town for a little bit, maybe spend some time in the park.
Send your final t-shirt designs to SXSW and a couple of your favorite bands for final approval.
Laugh your ass off with your best friend.
Have fun.
And that is a typical work day for Ashley and Charley Brown, the Millennial visionaries behind Vancouver’s Perfick. And they are visionaries in the truest sense of the word—creating inspired, original work from a place that comes from their shared dedication to having a good time doing what they love.
Their style is at times crude, other times sophisticated. But most often, it’s somewhere in between. And it’s always unusual, expressive, vibrant and, well, Perfick. They aren’t following trends, so much as exploring their creative impulses. Convention be damned. The results are pure expressions of the life that inspires them—the kind of design that isn’t trying to be anything other than what it is.
The bulk of their success has come from t-shirt design. They’ve created official t-shirts for the 2011 South By Southwest Music Festival, bands they love, including Paramore, Wavves, Lemuria, and a slew of wildly popular originals celebrating their core value, “Fun.”
But ask them about their successes and they’ll blush a bit, moving on to another topic, like what music you’ve been listening to lately or how your dog is doing. The stuff that really matters.
Perfick lives their practice. For Ashley and Charley fun and creation are an ouroboros. The act of making stuff is fun. And the stuff they make is fun. Which leads to spending their days having fun, making more stuff.
T-shirts? Check. Illustration? Definitely. Comics? Why not. An exhibition at a local gallery? Sure. Maybe throw in an album of stand-up comedy, just for good measure (though you may never hear it).
They’re swinging from the brass ring that so many creatives dream of grabbing—doing work that is so fun, it doesn’t feel like work. That’s not to say they don’t do some paying gigs that are “work work.” Where many creatives use freelance gigs for the creative fun not afforded us by their nine-to-fives, Perfick does the opposite. They recently produced a corporate video for an international electronics component giant, in their spare time, of course.
With a natural, if not recognized, sense for what young people today want, these two designers are carving out their niche in new millennium bohemia. So far, the only thing holding them back is, well…
“I think we’re going to change the name,” says Ashley. “There’s nothing perfect about us.” We couldn’t disagree more.
Two gorgeous girls. Inspiring.