Pigeon Magazine:
I wanted to talk to you because you do a lot of interesting stuff. I remember we met at “The Mummies” show a few years ago and you were selling those kick-ass shirts and art prints for the band. I still get made fun of for wearing the shirt of course, because it says “kick me” on the back, which is always just great.
Travis Haight: haha, love that shirt of theirs! I was helping them out by manning the merch booth a bit. The only thing that was mine out of all that stuff was the art print I did. It was a drawing based on some behind the scenes set photography I did while they were shooting for their Mummies film. All proceeds went to the band because it was my attempt to help raise money since it’s a project they’ve been working on for years and they wanted to wrap it up & needed some extra funds.
Pigeon Magazine: I know, I've been keeping an eye on it from afar.
Travis Haight: Yeah, I think it's just a really big production and they're doing it all themselves. John Waters was initially going to direct it, but they couldn't afford to do a union picture. So, they had to go more indie style with it. Fortunately, and unfortunately a bit. Still cool as hell though & it’s being directed by Jim Granato, who from what I’ve seen is doing a great job at the helm.
Pigeon Magazine: Wild shit! So I’m gonna deviate a little bit, but what got you into it all? The biz, as it were… Were you a kid? Were you an adult? Did you just go, "Oh, I like being creative and I'm gonna stick to doing that!”
Travis Haight: Oh man, just as far back as I can remember I knew my path would be that of an artist.
I think I was about four years old or something when I drew my first character, which he kind of looked like some ridiculous version of Dino from the Flintstones. Except, he was standing up and had a big old gut and was just all kinds of stupid looking.
I love doing it though. My parents were my biggest supporters. I think the main key to it all was that even though those early drawings really sucked, my parents were super supportive and just kept pushing me. They saw how into it I was, so they kept buying me paints, markers, crayons and pens and all that kind of stuff. So, I just never stopped going at it.
Photography didn’t come into the picture until I hit high school & I realized they offered some photo classes, so I started taking them every semester.
They only offered ‘Photo 1’ & ‘Photo 2’, but I took ‘Photo 2’ like four times and then became the TA where I just helped all the other students. I rolled film for everyone and helped them in the dark room. The teacher would just let me have access to as much film and paper as I wanted. So, I was in there constantly, just obsessed.
Between all the drawing/painting & then photography, it kind of just naturally led to a creative career.
Pigeon Magazine: So, you always knew?
Travis Haight: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Pigeon Magazine: Was it your mom or your dad that supported it the most?
Travis Haight: I think both really. Mostly my mom because she was the most present by default.
My dad was and is awesome but worked the graveyard shift at a mill and slept most of the day, so he wasn’t as present during waking hours in my early years.
Pigeon Magazine: So you were a TA in photo class, the “savant” of photo. You also do illustration professionally, and you make toys too? I thought I saw something like that…
Travis Haight: Unfortunately, I've only done one toy so far, though I’ve done drawings for several other header cards and backing cards for other toys. I'd love to go harder in toys for sure. I just need some financial backing or just dedicate myself to it completely. The one I have designed was this guy, “Foni-Oni” which was initially released as an 18” toy produced by Saturday Morning Cult, but it was very well received so we did a smaller 8” version as well.
Honestly, I would have liked to have redesigned the smaller version because this much detail on a smaller scale didn't quite work as well to my eye. I'd like to have simplified it more maybe, but whatever. It’s out there and they sold pretty well. We sold out of all of them!
Pigeon Magazine: That's amazing, dude. If you can sell out of something like that, that's incredible. So fucking awesome! You went from photo to illustration to making toys. Not something that a lot of people can say that they did. So, what what would you say was it that drew you to just kind of keep pushing it?
Travis Haight: I don't really know, honestly. After graduating from the Art Institute and then ASU, it was weird after college. Professional photography just happened to be the first thing to take off and keep me busy more than anything else. I pursued that hard for a while because I started working with magazines and it was going well and I was having a lot of fun with it. I was working mostly with both national and international tattoo magazines (Tattoo, Bound by Ink, Ink Fashion, Rebel Ink, Tattoo Savage, Tattoo Arte, etc.) as well as old school hot rod and chopper magazines (CK Deluxe, Traditional Rod & Kulture Illustrated, DEADBEAT, Hot Rod, Pistol, Kustom, Chop & Roll, The Horse Backstreet Choppers, etc) and then just random other stuff here and there (Bizarre Magazine, FRONT, Java, Thrasher, Kerrang!, Camp Out, Alt Noir, etc). Once in a while a newspaper or two as well.
However, as well as the photo thing was going, at some point when I left Arizona and moved to Portland, I was just like, “man, I miss drawing and shit.” That's always been my first love. I had seriously neglected it because photography
started going so hard, so it had been years since I did anything beyond a doodle.
After complainging about that to my girlfriend at the time, she said, “dude, make a new Instagram for your art. Just start drawing regularly and start posting it.” I ended up doing exactly that and I really have her to thank for pushing me to get back into it.
Shortly after getting all back into the rat fink, Mad magazine, underground comic art, lowbrow art stuff, I became an officially licensed Ed “Big Daddy” Roth artist.
Pigeon Magazine: So how does one become a licensed Ed Roth artist?
Travis Haight: Since Ed left this earth back in 2001, it’s essentially a brand and it's all owned and operated by his widow now. It was a bit of a pain and took about a year and a half to get set up and have a signed contract in place. So far, I’ve only made 1 official shirt and 1 official sticker but hope to do more soon!
Pigeon Magazine: So now what does that allow you to do?
Travis Haight: The way they do it is you can do any one-off things you want, as far as paintings or sculpture, anything like that with the Roth characters and it's all good. However, if you do anything that goes into production as far as like a bunch of shirts, prints or stickers, that kind of stuff, then you just have the contract in place where they get a royalty percentage and you have to pay the percentage up front. Once the artwork is approved, you gotta make a few samples and have them sent in so they can approve that the quality is up to par to bear the name Ed Roth. Once you get the sign-off, you can give the ok for it to go into production. It’s an easy enough process once it gets going.
I can’t say enough though, about how hard it was to get it setup. I had to harass people a lot to get any kind of movement on it. Which, that's one thing about me, I am not opposed to just harassing people and making shit happen!
That's how I started working with magazines too. I would just go to Barnes & Noble, take pictures of the masthead and make a list and just email the editor, the assistant editor, like anybody who I thought might have a say in who contributes photos, and just be like, "Hey man, I do photography. Can I shoot for you?" And they ignore you for like a year, ignore several emails, but eventually I’d start sending them some shit and getting responses back. I just kept bugging them and all of a sudden I’m working with a bunch of people that I’ve been trying to talk with for years. It has a cascading effect too, because once you’re working with one or two national/international magazines, you can start including that info when you harass the other magazines and it looks more legit and they all start taking you more seriously.
Pigeon Magazine: I'm so glad you said that because that is exactly where I wanted to get to. And it's no secret. Like I mean I know it. I just love it when people start talking about it because that's how you fucking do it. You have to constantly berate people through e-mail or similar if you don't know anyone. Be that annoying person!
Travis Haight: Yeah, it's kind of over said, I guess, but at the same time, I think most people don't take it seriously and don't really apply it. You truly are the master of your own destiny. The only reason I started working with The Mummies all the time and my other favorite band, Califone, is I just fucking hit them up. It was that simple.
I recently did the same thing and just set up a photo shoot with Wayne White, another one of my favorite artists. He’s such a badass and he's super down, so we put something together immediately. Simply because I reached out to him.
Just reach out to people and make shit happen!
Pigeon Magazine: I freaking love that and I love that attitude right there cuz that's what it's all about. Building off of getting the work… What would you say is your process?
Travis Haight: It's rather nebulous really. It's kind of all over the place. As far as drawings, I have a list of what I call “shit to draw.” Whenever a random idea pops in my head, I just add it to the list and then whenever I feel inspired, I’ll just chip away at that list.
With clients it's usually just an “asking a million questions” scenario. It helps get a strong sense of what they're looking for, the target audience, all the classic marketing kind of shit to make sure you're creating something that speaks to their audience and delivers what they’re looking for, even if they don’t really know exactly what they want yet.
On the photo side, I really like to wing it. I'll have a model or a band or somebody randomly hit me up and I schedule a date and a time, and we'll meet up somewhere and then we'll often not even know where we're going to shoot. I prefer actual locations over studio work, because it's kind of cold and boring in the studio a lot of the time. So, we'll just wander around LA or just outside of the city somewhere and just see what we come upon, what we can make happen.
It usually ends up working better than when I've hyper planned shit.
The other thing I like while winging it is that it can really be a challenge, right? You might end up not finding anywhere particularly cool looking or inspiring to shoot at and that's the challenge. It forces you to rely on solid foundational photography skills like perspective, composition, and how to make the subject pop and work in whatever environment you throw them in. So, it can be a little nerve-wracking, but it also makes it kind of a fun problem solving exercise.
Pigeon Magazine: In those approaches, what happens when people come at you and they don't like it? What do you do?
Travis Haight: I try to not have an ego in anything I do. In the freelance world, I’m hired to do something that's going to represent somebody or their company. So, I'll change it and work with them until we get to where they’re happy. I’m offering a service after all.
If they ask to change it so much that it's going to require a ton more time, or it’s just completely different/out of scope… I'll just be like, "That’s gonna cost ya.” It's fine. I'll do whatever you want, but had you told me this from the beginning, I would have done this the first try. Half the battle is trying to get a client to successfully articulate exactly what they want, when the person you’re dealing with typically isn’t an artist and doesn’t have the vocabulary. I’ve found that to be the biggest problem.
Pigeon Magazine: So, last question or last questions-ish. We'll see where it goes. What would be your ideal next client or project?
Travis Haight: Probably just more work along the lines of what I’ve been doing, like the few things I have in the works right now; that Wayne White photo shoot that I mentioned to you. I always want to collaborate with more artists. Do more portraits, both traditional and more creative. Documenting people doing work they're passionate about. I’m also currently working with old school punk band LA's Wasted Youth who just did their first show since the 80’s at Alex's Bar in Long Beach. I got to do the flyer for that! Alex ended up putting me in touch with the band and the band wanted to use what I had come up with on the flyer for their name as their new logo, which I’m super stoked about! So, I got to do that and I’m going to work with them more on some projects like stage banners, shirts, etc.
So, I got to do that and going to work with them more like do some shirts maybe.
Pigeon Magazine: What would be your advice to anyone that's maybe right where you are right now or maybe just starting out?
Travis Haight: To anyone starting out… I used to frequently get asked when I first started working with magazines all the time, and the first thing I’d always say is, “straight up, don't go to art school!” It’s a ton of money and the teachers would act like they were checked out and/or didn't even seem like experts in what they were teaching. It all just seemed like a big bogus bullshit scam and I’m still paying back the loans decades later.
And then the part where they're supposed to help you find a job afterward you graduate was such a massive joke. They didn't do shit. They would send me a list with like a link to a Craigslist job posting, which was something I had already found myself and applied to. Like, “…what the fuck are you guys doing?”, haha.
During all those years, I learned the most outside of college by doing my commercial photography internship where I worked at a downtown Phoenix, AZ studio under the guidance of my photography mentor, Guilio Sciorio, and just I learned so damn much from him.
I always tell people to just find somebody that's doing what you're into and latch on. Ask a bunch of questions, see if you can assist, help wherever you can and just like start experiencing it and seeing how things function. Soak it all up like a sponge. Then start applying what you’ve learned to your own thing until you can branch off on your own.
Put yourself out there, share your work, keep doing work, keep practicing, and always just be doing shit. That's the main thing…just do shit! It’s how you get better, grow, and make connections.
Pigeon Magazine: 100 million%!
A pro-photographer and artist in every sense of those words. Travis Haight has been a designer for major brands like Pepsi and Asics in the past. He’s been a heavily awarded and featured photographer for publications like Vogue Italia, the infamous “Front” magazine out of the UK, Tattoo Magazine, Thrasher, and so many damn amazing editorials it will seriously make your head spin. Travis is also a licensed Ed Roth “Rat Fink” artist and has even made his own kick-ass toys! This dude is the real deal. When we say “FUCK NICHING DOWN” we really mean it and Travis has created his success by doing just that. Currently he is Based out of Los Angeles, California while looking for a quiet life somewhere off the coast of Oregon in the near future. We have been so delighted to have a sit with dear Travis and get the good words straight from the messenger's beak on building a creative career worthy of the punk-rock gods.
