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Intro­duc­tion

Since 1993, House Indus­tries has sup­plied cul­tural DNA for the design com­mu­nity by stay­ing true to their sources, main­tain­ing a healthy obses­sion with authen­tic­ity and stub­bornly­stick­ing to tra­di­tional com­mer­cial art tech­niques. Their work has left its mark on a full gamut of genres—from billion-​dollar build-your-own plush toy empires to dimen­sional let­ter­ing for clas­sic archi­tec­tural land­marks. House Indus­tries fonts are skill­fully drawn from social and his­tor­i­cal inputs, then scream from bill­boards, wish happy what­ever from hun­dreds of thou­sands of greet­ing cards, serve as the basis for con­sumer prod­uct logos and add ele­ments of style to a wide range of main­stream media. They don’t claim to be the best type design­ers, illus­tra­tors, let­ter­ers or graphic artists, but they do a damn good job of com­bin­ing those dis­ci­plines and incor­po­rat­ing the tasti­est bits of cul­ture into every­thing they do.

What is your name, what is your job title and what do you actu­ally do?

Andy Cruz / House Indus­tries / House33.Owner / Art director

Chris Gard­ner, I’m the illus­tra­tor. What I actu­ally do is hap­pily burn through lots of pen­cils, ink bot­tles, paper and brushes while wait­ing for lunch hour to get here so I can hit the Wawa.

Adam Cruz / Illus­tra­tor / Paint­ing, pro­duc­ing, guitar-​ing, and taking out the trash.

At House Indus­tries; who is the most cre­ative and who is the least creative?

Andy: Depends on what day you call.

Chris: Hell, this place is a bub­bling caul­dron of cre­ative folks, everybody’s loaded.

Adam: Cre­ativ­ity see-​saws ’round here

How many times have you slept in the House Indus­tries Studio?

Andy: Rich (the other House partner/owner) used to. When we first started our studio was in the 2nd bed­room of his apartment.

Chris: Who has time to sleep?

Adam: Sev­eral, on late night paint­ing binges trying to meet deadlines.

Who are your favourite artists/illustrators alive today?

Andy: I’d have to say Adam Cruz and Chris Gardner…so much that we have them on the pay­roll here.

Chris: That’s a really hard ques­tion, there are quite a few alive at the moment thank­fully, James Jean is just ridicu­lously good, Rudolphe Guen­oden as well, and since I’m a comic nerd at heart, Joe Kubert, Enrico Marini, Norm Brey­fogle, Mike Wieringo, and my pals Karl Moline and Pop Mhan. My favorite artist of all time, Robert Fawcett.

Adam: Todd Schorr, A. Kawasaki, Eric White, R. Williams, too many to list.

If you owned the licence to Mickey Mouse; would you destroy him or embrace him?

Andy: Embrace. Assum­ing you wouldn’t have to deal with a Disney focus group. Our friends at Span of Sunset have man­aged to do some cool things with the Mouse recently.

Chris: I agree with Andy.

Adam: Embrace… and send him on a pil­grim­age pros­e­ly­tiz­ing the evils of ram­pant cor­po­ratism and greed.

Are you involved in any col­lab­o­ra­tive projects at the moment and is there anyone you would like to work with?

Andy: House33 x Pointer Brand, Agent Provo­ca­teur, Vanson Leathers…to name a few.

Chris: I’d like to work with anyone on my favorite artists list above, or Erin Gray from Buck Rogers.

Adam: Just here at House. I’d like to work with gallery owners to exhibit paintings.

What’s next in the pipeline for House Industries?

Andy: A few font collab things going…Alexander Girard, Tim Biskup and Sey­mour Chwast.

Chris: Lots of House 33 art on the table at the moment.

Adam: I’m work­ing on the second series of Artist Proof patterns.

Do we have to wait until 2013, so you have another 10 years worth of sto­ries for a House Book two?

Andy: We have enough to do 2 more right now…plus the House33 book. Prob­lem is find­ing time to actu­ally duh-​sign it.

Chris: See above…

Adam: It may be a while.

David Has­sel­hoff or Pamela Anderson?

Andy: Neither

Chris: I can’t hear you… bad recep­tion here in Delaware…

Adam: No comment.

The Incred­i­ble Hulk or The Hulkster?

Andy: How about just the Hulka­ma­nia logo?

Chris: Incredible.

Adam: Steel Cage match?

You can find out more about House Indus­tries at
www.​hou​seind.com

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Tags: Adam, Adam Cruz, Alexander Girard, Andy Cruz, Buck Rogers, Chris Gardner, David Hasselhoff, Delaware, Enrico Marini, Eric White, Erin Gray, House Industries Studio, Interviews, James Jean, Joe Kubert, Karl Moline, mainstream media, Mike Wieringo, Pamela Anderson, Pop Mhan, Proof, Robert Fawcett, Seymour Chwast, Tim Biskup, Todd Schorr, www.houseind.com