Waste is an award-winning design studio based from the East Midlands mecca of Nottingham. Their varied work runs through design, illustration, typography and mixed media, bringing fresh imaginative thinking to print, fashion, web, advertising and packaging. Waste have worked with retailers such as Next, Burtons, Old Navy and also has had work commissioned by houses such as Tommy Hilfiger and Pierre Cardin. Projects for Milk Studios in New York, Base Studios, and Nottingham Trent University tops off a hugely impressive and varied client range. Waste’s distinctive style has turned heads in the past, and will continue to do so long into the future. An artistic assault on the retina dripping with distinctive playful undertones, be prepared to get Wasted.

What’s your name, where are you from?

Norman Hayes, from Nottingham.

Waste has recently moved from 2 persons to just yourself?

Dan started Waste with me 3 years back, but he’s recently become a dad, and so is moving into a different stage of life which is fair enough! Waste started as a couple of friends with similar styles, and it’s going to be a little wierd going from a studio with two people in it, to now being just me. It feels like I’ve gone backwards almost, but actually I’m still equally busy, and actually better off becuase my overheads are literally zilch!

How did you get into the creative artistic side of life?

Dan and I worked 5 years before we could even think about starting our own business we studied graphic design at Liverpool John Moors University, taught by some of the best. It was such a good course one of our tutors was a guy called David Crow, whose proper old school graphic designer, and he was really well known. All the tutors had their own thing going on so they weren’t just there to teach, which was really nice. Then through that i idolised, this studio Burn, I really loved it. Then when I left I sent some work in there, and it was like a dream. There were only two of them; I’ve only ever worked in small studios. There were three of us working together in Liverpool. I worked there for two years, they taught me the most out of anyone. Then I moved to Leicester where Dan was working. A guy called Adrian started the business, but then got a job in America, and kept the business going while he was living over there. So he put Dan in charge. Dan then got me in and we both kind of just ran his business. It was really good training for Waste. Because we basically ran a business for three years with no financial responsibility, as it was in his name, it was a bit of a play ground. It did get frustrating because we wanted to do a lot more corporate work, than he would allow. We were also doing Waste on the side as a personal thing, and it was sort of taking off and we wanted to include it within the company, but he was really worried we were just going to leave so he made it really restrictive. Which in the end made us leave, rather than just saying you do what you want.

How would you describe your style, and what inspires you?

Far and wide. Our inspiration comes from school cartoons, old school like Ren and Stimpy, Garbage Pail Kids, from my generation. Hot rods, I quite like the old hot rods scene, I got to nostalgia nationals and see all the pin striping and generally the graphics. I guess thats where this sorta comes from Ed Roth, he’s a classic hot rod dude. Old school skate graphics, Santa Cruise, Jim Phillips. Sorta grew up with all of that. Alot of people can see our influence straight away, there are alot of old school skaters who like our graphics. We use a lot of bright neon’s. Aside from that, pretty much anything that i pick up. German graphic design, I appreciate a lot of their stuff. There’s just too much really, its endless! Putting your own twist on things is really important! Sometimes it’s not just what inspires you but also the brief you are given, you can just do your own spin on it! We have always been into character design; it was a little bit cuter i think, when we were still at the Leicester place. Waste was started as an alter ego, in like 2003 and we used to do a lot of cuter things, we have gradually adding more and more detail into our work, it’s become more and more perverted! I feel it needs to go back to being a bit cuter.

What is WASTE up to at the moment, what projects do you have bubbling away?

Floodit is one of the best things we do, socially speaking! It’s a music and art night for bringing different crowds together, screenprinters, artists, musicians and anyone else who’s around! Live screen printing, well known artists producing live pieces, and some of the best alternative music. It’s always really busy every time we put a night on and we’ve run them in Nottingham, and also at “Queen of Hoxton” in Shoreditch London which was a bit of a collaboration with another design consortium Studio Output. For our most recent Floodit event, we invited Jon Burgerman along, and had a four piece band called ‘Part Chimp’ who are known for sounding like war. They were so noisy that bits of the building were actually falling off because it was vibrating so much.

So would you say Floodit is the main thing on the agenda at the moment?

I think on a personal level, yes. Waste is its corporate business, and graphic design studio first and formost, but because we get involved in alot of stuff on the side, exhibitions and events etc, its sometimes blurred into being thought of as what we do. Alot of our clients come to us because they’ve seen us featured in custom kicks or whatever, but that isn’t necessarily what we do all day every day! Some people focus too much on the independent alternative side of things because thats the exciting stuff. I enjoy both the corporate and indy stuff equally, the corporate usually has tighter guidlines and its nice to have to work to brief and be pushed in that respect. Alternately i do like to get a job where its all your shit exhibiting on a tshirt! I think ive got the best of both worlds, but sometimes the street world can put a lot of constraints on me.

What sort of stuff have you done in the fashion / retail arenas?

Our fashion work ranges widely from creating designs for tshirts, look books, swing tags, anything to do with branding. Recently we’ve been asked to do a lot of guest artist ranges, one of which is a few pieces with Tommy Hilfiger: Waste vs Hilfiger. Tommy had seen us at the customer exhibition and wanted to do some stuff, we were like, “we draw like slimy monsters, how does that fit into your customer base!”. It turns out they work with some guest artists every year and the past few artists have been really good, so we were definitely interested to get involved in that. I thought it was only going to be local thing in Amsterdam where we did it, but it was released across the whole globe which is pretty awesome. For the tees we had to respond to the American flag and i managed to do a really messed up Uncle Sam and a melting Micky Mouse, it was really warped!

What’s the big picture?

Waste has been around for 3 years, and we have done a lot in three years, but the next thing is employing younger people. It’s a shame that Dan has left in that respect because it would have been easier having another person to help train an intern / worker up. We’ve struck a deal with the guy that runs the building we used to have a studio in which allows us to use the basement to run print screen workshops and I want to get involved a bit more with teaching people how to screen print. It’s a passion of mine, old traditional skills, i really like having to mix my inks, prepare the screens, really get involved in it. This will only happen when I can get some new people in with me though, I envisage the studio turning into a membership sort of thing, where you can have an induction, then you can join and use the facilities at your own leisure. Maybe have screen printing nights, sorta like Floodit, but on a smaller scale.

If you could have one thing?

We did this bear character that was actually one of our first real characters we designed. It has a really simple form, its just basically a bear, with a little hood, and it has a dick. So another dream would be to get a vinyl toy made. We do actually have friend that have managed to break that market so we bought sculpting our own toy, and we were going to make our own version of it. We are still working on the idea but the actual character works really well as a toy because its round and smooth. The plan was to get that custom made in white vinyl, and everyone to customise their toy.

To all the budding artists, how would you advise getting work out there and noticed from your own experience?

Getting work is a black art I still don’t understand how we’ve got to where we are today. We’ve just been persistent and done a lot of national and international exhibition, been featured in many magazines and design publications and generally built our studios name through personal and self initiated projects. We’ve never done the obvious and sent our portfolio out to clients we want to work with it seems our business is gained by word of month which is a nice place to be because our clients know and appreciate our work so there no need to prove ourself before they give us a project.

Words by Sophie Perrott and Tom Bracewell