Morning Breath. - By the skin of our teeth: the art and design of Morning Breath

CONTENTS

JASON NOTO and DOUG CUNNINGHAM founded Morning Breath, Inc., in 2002 and are based in Brooklyn, New York. Doug and Jason split their creative energies and time between commercial and personal work. Over the last decade the two have been nominated for a Grammy, showcased in numerous design books/publications, and have been invited to speak about and show their work around the globe.

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BY THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH. Copyright 2017 by Morning Breath, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-234861-6

EPub Edition December 2017 ISBN 978-0-06-234862-3

FOR THE LOVES OF MY LIFE

MY WIFE JESSICA, AND MY SON SEAN

DC

FOR MY LOVING WIFE HEATHER,

AND MY BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN FIAMMA, AND MATEO

JN

Photo Credit: Daniel Portrait

DEFINING A GENERATION

BY MIKE GIANT

As someone who was born between the early 1960s and the early 1980s, I count myself as a member of Generation X. We grew up under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, the watchful eye of the PMRC and their war on explicit music, and the fear of persecution for using illicit substances. We grew up consuming massive quantities of high fructose corn syrup and meat from genetically-modified animals. It was a heavy time to be a young American.

My friends Jason Noto and Doug Cunningham, known today as Morning Breath, were born the same year as myself, 1971. And like many kids of our generation, we felt it necessary to find worthy diversions from the pressures of life in America at the time. It didnt matter that I grew up in Albuquerque, Jason in New Jersey, and Doug in Daly City. We still found the same things in the world around us to keep us inspired and motivated.

The first things I remember seeing that really got me excited were the comic books of the 1970s. I know Jason and Doug still share my fascination with the design, inking, and printing techniques of comics from that era. We were particularly drawn to the humor and simple sophistication of Mad magazine in particular. They were the best thing out. The simple color palettes, bold lines and exciting page layouts from those old comics and Mad magazines continue to influence my own work, the work of the Morning Breath studio, and many other highly influential artists and designers of our generation.

At a K-Mart in Albuquerque in 1979, I discovered the band Kiss. In my hands was the Love Gun album. The cover artwork took my breath away. It features the band in full leather and makeup on a foggy, temple stage with a harem of similarly-clad horny ladies in the foreground looking up at the band adoringly. I had to own it. I cautiously asked my mother if shed buy it for me. It was the first time Id asked her to buy an album for me. She looked it at it, smiled and put it in the shopping cart. I was so psyched. I remember playing it the first time and staring at the cover artwork, getting lost in a rush of sound and imagination. I was hooked. And it should be no surprise that Doug and Jason were experiencing the same things in their respective homes. In their cases in particular, music and art made a truly lasting impact. Twenty years later, music packaging became their main income source and also the medium in which they gained the most professional notoriety.

I started going to car shows with my dad in the early 1980s. In Albuquerque, the shows featured a great mix of lowriders, hot rods and off-road vehicles. I loved the candy-coated paint jobs, the pin-striping and the Ed Roth monster t-shirts. Doug was seeing the same stuff in Daly City. Lowriders cruised his streets too. And Jason must have seen some sweet muscle cars in Jersey. During the early years of Morning Breath, Jason had a clean, old Nova parked in his parents garage in Garfield. He took me for a ride to the Jersey Shore one time and it was one of those moments where we felt like wed known each other far longer than we actually had. We felt a connection to our share experiences as kids, American kids.

Punk hit my neighborhood around 1985 and I took notice. It was bold, brash and handmade. It was a culture, an ethics system, not just a sound or a look. It spoke about things that made sense to me in my early teens. Id see fliers for punk shows around town and take them home because I couldnt resist the graphics. At the time, there werent magazines about punk and the internet hadnt been invented yet. Often the fliers were the only printed vestiges of the punk scene that I could find. Finding records and zines was even harder. But kids like Jason and I were digging for that stuff back then and remain avid collectors to this day.

Around the same time I got hip to the punk scene, I started skateboarding. After a family trip to San Diego I bought my first skateboard and never looked back. The biggest thrill of my life at the time was walking into my local skate shop and choosing a new deck from the 100 or so choices on the wall. Like the local comic shop, record store and head shop, the skate shop was packed with visual stimulus and anti-establishment propaganda. To this day artists like Jason, Doug and myself, as well as many of the defining artists of Generation X, grew up in and around the world of skateboarding. Skate artists like Van Courtland Johnson, Pushead and Jim Phillips set precedents that many of us continue to be inspired by today.