The Infectious Blog

Cult Japanese manga artist Junko Mizuno is the latest artist off of the Infectious printing press. She’s most famous for writing graphic novels and putting a warped twist on fairy tales like Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Hansel and Gretel. Her ultra-beautiful and ultra-violent girls have been described as “Precious Moments… who don’t just pull at your heartstrings, they pull out your guts”. When Infectious invited Junko to join the family and design artwork specially for a car, she envisioned a design that created momentum and referenced car culture. Keep checking in as we slowly reveal more and more of her sultry witch flying on a hot rod broomstick.

Here at Infectious we are in the middle of doing an extensive series of test installs, to make sure that we perfect the art of installing vinyl on a car. A critical (and challenging) part of what we do here, is figuring out how to create car art that is foolproof to install. Shown above is part of Jon Burgerman’s Lunar Park design, creatively applied to the hood by a 28 year old engineer at IDEO. The whole process is reinforcing one of the things we love most about this project – that the customer gets personally involved in applying the art to their car. We’re about halfway through the install research and will share more of our insights as we complete the project.

Emil Kozak, describes his art as “clean, positive and free”. The Danish artist is currently residing in Barcelona and has collaborated with companies like Vans, Elements and Burton (can you tell – he’s also an extreme sports addict?) He used his Spanish traffic experiences as the inspiration behind his car art.

Emil created two designs for us. Sunday Driver is inspired by a drive for a relaxed Sunday surf with his surfboard (which he has named Milo). Monday Driver’s aggressive imagery is inspired by that harried drive to work that all commuters know so well. Keep checking in for the first photos of Emil’s art installed on a car: he’s done some stunning things with negative space.

We’ve been trying out a few offices over the last year and we’ve finally found a place we want to call home. Infectious HQ is situated on Dore Street in San Francisco. Legend has it that the street is named after an infamous lady of the night who plied her trade there a hundred years ago. Other trivia about our new home: a couple of blocks down from the office is the venue for the Up Your Alley section of Folsom Street Fair, reportedly home to some remarkably public circle jerks. None of the Infectious Team have attended yet, but we’ll be sure to give you an update come next September…

Introducing our San Francisco team (from left to right): Tim, the boss, Konstantin, our tech guru and Joey, the artist relations lady. It may look like junk that Joey is standing in front of, but in our eyes, they are canvases ready to be beautified with vinyl art and hung in our offices.

Not only is Blaine Fontana an accomplished artist (check out his “templing” characters on his website), he recently shared with us that he is also a sushi chef and a bonsai tree cultivator. Blaine’s latest obsession, the relationship between animals and urban environments, is the inspiration behind his beautifully graphic car art.

Blaine grew up in Bainbridge Island, WA and started his art education on the streets of Seattle and Portland. After one too many brushes with the law, he hung up his cans and moved onto further education at the Otis College of Art and Design in LA. He did some Art Director stints at Metro Pop magazine and the fashion label Drifter, but now he’s come full circle and is back nesting in Bainbridge Island. We’ll soon be posting an interview with Blaine on his profile page, plus some photos of his studio, where you can check out his random Buddha head and magnificent Dunny.

Someone who’s taking the concept of car art even further than Infectious… maybe even a little too far. A British artist called Ptolemy is recycling discarded hubcaps he finds on the sides of road into fish, lizards and husky dogs.

Because his source material is roadside detritus, each creature bears the scars of its previous life as a decorative wheel disc with scratches and dings. With his animals he is apparently trying to make a statement “about our wasteful society and about our prejudices towards value”. It’s not a cheap message either, with each unique sculpture clocking in at the $300 – $1000+ range. http://www.hubcapcreatures.com

San Francisco artist Erik Otto is nothing if not versatile. He has diverse styles, from wonderfully drippy fine art (see his current show The Calm Before the Storm) to the graffiti-style speakers you see in the picture above. He also works in diverse media, from painting on reclaimed materials to film (he has just shown one of his productions at Sundance).

Erik has even had a bit of experience working with vehicles: he once painted a friend’s van in exchange for help building his studio. But Erik was still impressed when we drove down to his studio in a car emblazoned with his artwork. So much so, he invited his friend artist Blaine Fontana, to join the Infectious project. Stay tuned for more details.

British artist Jon Burgerman is famous for his doodle artworks, a style that he describes as “wonky, wibbly, odd, happy and dumb”. His work has appeared in galleries around the world, in boutique hotel rooms, on vinyl toys, and in fashion campaigns… but never before on a car. Everyone at Infectious is a fan, so we approached him to see if he’d be up for the challenge.

John loved the idea, and is now one of our founding artists. His car artwork is the first that we’re putting into pre-production – and last week we did a test install on one of our friend’s cars. The owner loved it, but his two young sons love it even more. For everyone at Infectious, it’s hugely exciting to see our project become real in front of our eyes.

One of Infectious’ favorite artists, Fafi, has teamed up with M.A.C make-up and dreamed up three new saucy Fafinette characters to adorn a limited edition make-up range . The collection launches in the US on February 13th, worldwide a month later. So ladies, if you’ve ever had a secret hankering to paint a heart on your cheek like a Fafinette, ask your sweetheart to get you the perfect palette for Valentine’s Day.