Interview from the zine 'The New Scheme' issue #2 April 2001 By Stuart. Introduce yourself. "I am Peter Pan, who are you?" - no, just joshin' My name's matt, I usually go by mca when i'm doing my drawings. Most people don't confuse me with the M.C. Adam Yauch, but once I saw a thing in this zine "Pink Tea" where the girl was like, '...have you seen that evil design, it's what MCA of the Beastie Boys does on his time off...' it went something like that, it made me laugh anyways. Ummm, I'm not sure what else to say about myself, I live right outside of Boston, which is cool + I'm a Libra. How did you first become interested in drawing? I have been drawing ever since i can remember. My Grandfather was a big influence on me in this department and definitely contributed greatly to what I'm up to now. How did evil design first start? Mr. Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman). He was the inspiration. Remember the mug shot in the paper when he got arrested? I took that and turned him into the devil, and wrote "Evil" under his head, just because of all the persecution in the media that he was going through. That was the spark. I started making shirts of that image with the "Evil" written under it, so when it came to come up with some other designs, I just kept using the evil tag. How has it grown, and what all do you do now? It's grown basically because I haven't stopped doing it. It hasn't like taken off or anything yet, but slowly more people find my stuff or get stickers from a friend and write for more, or order shirts or whatever. I have done some work for people which has gotten me a little recognition. The shirts I did for Weezer are mainly what kids ask about, which is cool. What is your goal for Evil? My Goal... I just want to keep doing what I'm doing. I'd like to do more freelance work for people I'm into. I recently did a t-shirt design for a cool band out of Mexico called Titan, be on the look out for them. Also Listen.com just did this sticker pack thing, which I was a part of, that had five designers do a different sticker. Shepard (Obey Giant) did all the layout, they came out cool. I just did a sticker design for Money Mark, so things are starting to pick up. As far as my shirts and stuff go, it'd be cool to be selling them worldwide, it just takes forever when you try and do it all yourself. So another goal would be to expand on that and get more stores to sell my stuff. How do you print so many stickers? Well, basically friends that work at copy stores are a big plus. I also recently started making vinyl stickers at the sticker guy company and they've come out really well. Have any of the sticker designs ever gotten you into trouble? Only once, It was when the Real World? was filming the Boston season. We (me & j.j.) thought it be a good idea to put a ton of stickers on the street where the kids were living. But we didn't figure that they'd have a cop on constant patrol right outside the house. Anyways, we put up one lousy sticker and in the distance I saw a shadow of the law, so we walked real fast, crossing streets duckin' over here and there but the ol'flat foot caught us. He was real punk too. He kept trying to scare us by going, "One more noise outta you (to j.j.) and you'll be spendin' the night in jail!" I had my bag and he was like "I know how these work, where's the secret compartment?" So, then he made me empty my whole bag on the side walk and I had an issue of Ben is Dead in there and he goes, "Ahh, a grafitti magazine!" Anyways, I had to go to court and the judge basically said don't do it again. It wasn't a big deal at all. What does the future hold for evil design? We have some new things in the works, some collaborations. We're going be rockin' a little of the Wu-Tang style, as all the members of the Evil Design crew break out with solo joints. There's Ronnie Hiromi, Sumo Santos, my man Godzeero and the newest member, an italian designer who goes by the name of Carmine. The Carmine Collection which will be the first project to hit. So there's a lot of things in the not so distant future for all the kids to enjoy. How can people get ahold of evil? Write to us at: Evil Design POBX43481 Somerville, Mass 02143 Email: evildesign@aol.com www.evildesign.com You can order shirts online at Garment-District.com or at SaulGoodman.com Closing comments/words of wisdom? Thanks for supporting evil. back to press main page