Dylan Malik Orchard's Blog, page 3
March 4, 2021
4/3/2021 Newsletter
Copied here for non-subscribers…
It’s the end of the world as we know it…
(The properly important bit: As of the start of April the majority of the designs I sell on DylanOrchard.com will be gone)
Well, not quite the end of the world, but certainly the end of some things. Like DylanOrchard.com for starters. At least as we know it.
Given the effects of lockdown and Brexit over the last year (and into the foreseeable future) the way I was doing things has kind of become obsolete. This last year there’s obviously been no markets or festivals, the postal system has been creaking under the weight of demand, (non UK) shipping prices have shot up and now, increasingly, my suppliers are having issues too. Not much worth complaining about and during this last, long, period where I was limited to online anyway it was more a matter of living with it than being able to make any real changes. Now though the sunny skies of the outside world are in sight, apparently, so rather than stagger on trying to make some increasingly unworkable issues work I’ve decided to make some big shifts.
Come April and re-opening the majority of what you can currently see at DylanOrchard.com will be gone. What will be left will be the artwork and prints, as well as a more consistent feed of stuff I create, rather than stuff I sell.
There are a couple of reasons for this but the more practical/important issue is that it’s looking unlikely that I’ll be able to offer the same t-shirts/sweatshirts/hoodies in the future. In theory the supply chain for them will level out at some point but waiting for that to happen isn’t really an option. So instead I’ll be switching to a new manufacturer and new styles/fits. What won’t change though is the FairWear and Organic (GOTS) certification – one way or another I’ll be sticking with those regardless.
Another side effect of recent events is that I’m going to have to change the shipping costs for all international orders, possibly ending delivery to some places completely. I’ll do my best to avoid that but at a certain point it stops making sense expecting people to pay the delivery prices they’d have to and I certainly can’t eat those costs myself.
At the same time as making this switch I’ll be dropping a lot of designs though and moving away from DylanOrchard.com towards a new label for the clothes end of my artwork. It’ll be… different. A smaller range, more of a clear cut and consistent style and all under a new name and site. Hopefully a good thing and I’ll send out more details when we’re nearer the time. For now though this is partially a heads up to let you know that this is the end for a lot of stuff, so if you’ve had your eye on something now might be the time to go for it.
As well as selling the new designs and artwork online under a new label I’ll also be back out in the world from the 12th of April, assuming the government stick by what they’ve said so far. My usual markets are certain but I’m also applying to whatever other stuff I can to make up for lost time and again I’ll release some updates on that when I know where in the country I’m likely to be.
And that’s the end of the important bit. I’ve included a couple of words below about my other reasons for changing the way I structure things if you’re interested. If not though I hope all’s well with you and yours and as always I’ll keep these mailouts as few and far between as I can.
– Dylan
Something extra:
Over the course of this year and beyond the practical stuff the way I do what I do has had to change a lot. Ever since I started with the art thing I’ve viewed it as something like a living experience. I learnt to love drawing and creating visual stuff by travelling around. I’d install myself in the corners of pubs, bars and cafes to scribble. Getting inspiration from going to places, seeing things, talking to people, getting the odd look over my shoulder and enjoying the immediacy of people appreciating it. A way of interacting with people and sharing what you create which followed through when I started selling more work and doing the clothes. Markets, festivals, chatting to people on the street about my work – that was the pay off as much as the minimal living I could make from it. All of that, of course, was shut off when the pandemic hit.
It’s still been a productive year in its way, I’ve drawn a lot, gone further into the digital work and started writing again, but none of it has been framed by the freedom and all important sharing that got me into this in the first place. So far, so meh to be honest, I’m certainly not complaining about it all and having to do things differently is no great sacrifice in the scale of things. But it has motivated me to start thinking more seriously about where I want my work to go and how I want to share it in future. Separating out the fashion end of things from the rest is a part of that. I’ve decided that, as much as I enjoy doing stuff that has a practical place in the world I also want to give more attention to bigger projects. What they’ll be – I don’t know. At the moment there’s a whole mental mess of ideas and projects finding form in the back of my mind but some will be emerging in finished form sooner rather than later. Hopefully I’ll be able to share more on what comes out as and when it, well, comes out.
Anyway, side note over.
– Dylan
August 1, 2020
Laikanist Times Giveaway
Laikanist Times is the story of one planet divided by a few million years and a fistful of species divides. While the Bald Chimps are seeing apparitions and finding God (or possibly Dog) the dogs are indulging in some quantum meddling and the humans? Well, they had their time.
To break up the monotony of plagues, recessions, the end of days and all the other sundry woes 2020 is heaping on us all I’m offering my novella Laikanist Times for free through ’til the end of August. And it’s 99% guaranteed to not include any pandemic inducing diseases, but don’t quote me on that.
Free Downloads:
Guide to eBook Readers, if you need one…
Book Two in the (eventual) trilogy is also out now and available direct from this site as I slowly and carefully step away from Amazon.
Laikanist Times Book Two by Dylan Malik Orchard£2.99
Add to cart
June 18, 2020
Laikanist Times: Book Two
Well, it’s taken 6 years to get here but here we are. Laikanist Times Book Two is finished and available for purchase.
Book one was my first real attempt to actually get my writing out there. Written in a fug on one of my first trips to the United States it was a frenzied, joyous abandonment of common sense and literary credibility. Scrawled down in basements and bars across the continent, it was a testament to the revelatory experience of writing what you like and liking what you write, guileless and unplanned. An experience that I’ve only really captured since when I started drawing for the first time, recapturing that child like glee of creating stuff without caring who saw or expecting anything from it. But finishing off Book Two was a pretty goddamn close thing.
A few people liked my first effort, plenty more probably didn’t, but who cares eh? Certainly not me, because I’m back once again with a follow up and with book three waiting in the wings too. Although given my natural love of procrastination we might be another six years from any kind of resolution there. But at any rate, you can buy Book Two here. And, for now, you can download the first one for free below. A promotion I’ll probably cut off by the end of the month. If you like it, share it, on social media or Goodreads or wherever else. I’ve made the choice to abandon Amazon for Book Two because, frankly, fuck ’em, and it’ll be available solely through my site. Which of course means that no one’s likely to see it unless they hear about it from you. Which is fine by me, I’ve a lot more trust in people sharing what they like than my work ever proving commercially viable enough to be given a platform. And maybe rightly so, who am I to judge? Anyway, grab your free download and enjoy.
–Dylan
January 9, 2020
Brixton Soup Kitchen Fundraiser
The fundraising designs I had up for Brixton Soup Kitchen are now, officially, down. Overall a couple of hundred quid was raised for a very good cause and, all things considered, I think it went pretty well for a first attempt at something like this. Certainly it went well enough for me to want to run similar things again and I’ve already got a new cause lined up although the design is still in the works.
I just wanted to make a quick post here to thank all those who forked out for a shirt and also give a special thanks to Lee Healey and Barney Farmer who gave a percentage of their sales to the campaign too.
Keep an eye out for the next campaign and in the meantime there’s always plenty of my other stuff available here on the site. And if you’ve got a few quid going spare, unlikely I know given Christmas, then check out Brixton Soup Kitchen and throw it their way.
November 21, 2019
Barney Farmer – Coketown
“Pasts remembered,
pasts forgot,
pasts denied,
passed are not.When childhood friends meet again to reminisce and compare scars a fresh wound waits just around the corner. One rainy night at the wrong end of town, and a pub crawl along Memory Lane takes a hard right down a dark dead end in Barney Farmer’s second novel, Coketown.“
Not really a review, more a general, glowing endorsement today for Coketown by Barney Farmer. I consumed it in a single sitting but don’t confuse my binge reading for a lack of depth (or length, fnar) – as easy as it was to get lost in I’ll still be going back for a second read.
Like Barney’s first book – Drunken Baker – Coketown is, to be honest, a dismal read. Beautiful too mind, definitely immersive, thought provoking, richly written and all those other good things. But dismal too. The story he tells and the world he writes about are both delivered with heavy honesty and as always honesty isn’t necessarily joyful. There’s definitely something sublime in that though, seeing reality recognised without adornment or falsified profundity to make it more palatable. Even more so if you can recognise it bleeding into your own experiences and your own living landscape.
Too often people try to lay a veneer on the mundane. They erase the absurdity and the poetry and the sometimes grimness of it to create something that can be sold to an audience which, a lot of the time, wants an acceptable translation of life more than a raw version of it. And, to be honest, that’s boring. People trying to beautify or dramatise or use words to disassociate a story from a recognisable human experience pretty much always end up being dishonest. Something that neither of Barney’s books have done. Which goes back to the dismal part, they’re both reads that’ll stab at you a bit, leave you feeling a bit more aware than you maybe wanted to be of the world you live in. But as I said, that can be sublime too because, at the very, very least, it’s a pleasure to read something which affirms life as it often is and even if that can be a dark thing it’s made lighter by a writer who shows that none of us are alone in it.
Anyway, as I said, not a review. Would be a terrible one if it were given the rambling. But I can definitely, without a moment of hesitation, recommend both of his books – go buy them. Now.
You can get Coketown here
&
Drunken Baker here
November 1, 2019
Red Flag
It’s that time of year again. They’re making a list, checking it twice, trying to find out whose votes they can suppress – Boris Johnson’s coming to town. And to mark the occasion I’ve done this limited run design which I’ll be selling up until January 1st.
I’ll be sending all profits on to Brixton Soup Kitchen. I did consider donating to the Labour Party itself but while I am a member and supporter and definitely see the value in helping in any way possible to win the election – I couldn’t feel right with it in the end. Elections may cost a lot to campaign for but Labour has access to 100ks of members and a lot more support through the unions. People who are out there trying to help people through, especially around Winter/Christmas, don’t.
I’ve been planning some fundraising designs for a while now and this is the very first of them. How well it’ll go I have no idea but if you like the design spread the word, my capacity for marketing has always been pretty non-existent so every little helps.
And just to be clear everything about this is unofficial – I’m not endorsed by Labour, Brixton Soup Kitchen or anyone at all for that matter. This is just a thing I’m doing, so we’ll see how it goes.
–Dylan
October 28, 2019
New new new designs…
Been a while since I’ve added anything here. Sure, it’s been a while since I last wrote anything, mostly because I’ve been too busy with the art stuff.
Talking of which, new designs below…
On the writing front – more stuff to come I promise. About time I got around to dealing with the backlog of stuff I do have.
August 8, 2019
Site/Stuff Update
You may (or may not) have noticed that this site has undergone a bit of a face lift for the first time in a long while. The motivation for that has been the gradual shift of all my LaikaRevolution stuff onto this site. LaikaRev will still be there for a while for those using old links but as everything I do there is coming here I won’t be updating it with new products or projects.
Along with the site change I’ll also be changing the product as far as the shirts go. Due to supply issues I’ll be switching over to 100% organic cotton for pretty much everything. Still GOTS certified, still FairWear, still printed in the UK using water based inks but with a different fabric, new colours and a slightly different cut. To be honest though that’s mostly behind the scenes stuff, from your side you might notice a bit of a shift in colours but not much more. What you might notice is new products being added. I’ve already got a new range of designs lined up (four so far) which will be added with the rest and I’m also looking at adding hoodies and a few other bits. Nothing is certain yet but hopefully something to look forward to.
Writing wise big stuff is coming too. I’m currently editing a new novel into shape and so far so (relatively) good. No deadline on that though, it’s always a slow process bringing something like that to the point where you’re comfortable letting go of it. Keep an eye out for updates though.
You may also be seeing me out and about in the real world too. I recently started doing Greenwich Market in London and, depending on how business goes there, it may become a regular thing. So fingers crossed on that one. If not I’ll still be on the hunt for a place to set up shop. Online stuff is all well and good but having your feet on the ground and meeting people is always better, even if I don’t show it after 9 hours on my feet in the cold/heat.
Anyway, think that’s all there is to add for now but more to come soon with a bit of luck.
Dylan
June 21, 2019
On The Road
Some disorganised pics from my recent trip to the US…
(Click to see them the right way round)
June 18, 2019
The times they are a-changin’
Last year I took my first crack at sharing my drawings with the world, slapping them on t-shirts and selling them via LaikaRevolution.com, as well as going out to a lot of festivals and markets to tout my tawdry wares. It went pretty well, I think. Certainly enough people seemed to like what I was doing for me to do more (and more) of it. Which was nice.
More recently I’ve been adding more prints to LaikaRev too, as well as original pieces which I’m hoping to move into selling more of. As the summer looms I’ll be back out trying to push them out into the world too.
Along the way I’ve run into a few moments of uncertainty one of which I’m, only now, trying to deal with.
I started Laika Revolution because I wanted to keep the (more commercial) t-shirts separate from the (less commercial) writing and art. A bit delusional, to be honest, given that even where I do sell stuff nothing I do is ever particularly commercial. Sure, I make a point of not doing anything with an end product in mind and certainly not audience appeal. But like a lot of people I keep an elevated notion of the arts and literature in my mind. I half hold myself back from just doing stuff because I think that some of the stuff I do should be at least aspiring to the high faluting worlds of the creative arts, rather than just being personal creations that I enjoy sharing with the world. Bullshit, really. Everything I create is part of me, the only barriers between a fairly heavy book of prose and poetry and a t-shirt is that a very well embedded and heavily imposed set of social norms make me feel like one is ‘proper’ while the other isn’t. Following that I basically end up degrading myself because I’m so used to looking up at gatekeepers whose standards are, in reality, more or less completely alien to my own.
The conclusion I’ve come to, after a year of trying to push my work out into the world is that I need to get over that. And the fairly minor thing I’m going to do to achieve that is bringing everything back under my own name. Over the next few months I’ll be adding a lot to this site. All the LaikaRev products will be available here and so will original art. Two finished books which I’ve been sitting on for a while now (Laikanist Times 2 and an untitled novel) will both be released in some form and if you’re lucky enough to catch me out in the real world it’ll be my own name on the flyers and nothing else.
An aspect of that is that I’ll be fixing, again, on the DIY ethic that I’ve always leaned towards. Less relevant with the visual stuff, where that’s basically the default way of doing things, more relevant with the writing – where it isn’t necessarily. For a while now I’ve sat on a couple of projects thinking about trying to sell them, or at least modifying them to the point where trying to sell them might be something more than forlorn hope. I’m done with that too to be honest. I like my culture Indy.
Anyway, this is basically just a declaration of intent. Lots of new stuff will be coming here soon and I hope you’ll have a look when it does.
Cheers,
Dylan
