Meet Michael Derry | Graphic Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Derry and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, every day, we about how much execution matters, but we think ideas matter as well. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
I was in a bit of a career slump. I wanted to do something different. Something unique that could be a signature style and get me a bit of attention. I had been working as a corporate graphic designer and art director on other peoples’ projects for a long time so my portfolio was a big mix of a lot of things. I asked a designer friend of mine to look at it and give me her opinion. The main thing she pointed out was that every project looked totally different. I didn’t have a “signature style.” I had just discovered Instagram and to me it was pretty much just a bunch of beautiful people in their underwear becoming famous for doing nothing and I loved it. Social media without the rage! I thought it was literally the fruition of what Andy Warhol said. How in the future, which is now, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. So I thought Instagram is the new POP Art and I love POP Art! I decided it would be fun to do some sexy, satirical, socially conscious POP Art images of my own and put them out on Instagram. Maybe people might see my work and want me to do something like that for them. People started to respond so I kept doing them and making them a bit more edgy. My strategy worked because I now have a few different partners I work with on a regular basis projects that are stylistically much more “me.”

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My art is satirical, socially conscious, bright, bold, sexy, and fun. Most of all, I want my work to bring people joy. I like to take inspiration from popular culture, current events, my friends and family, and my “tribe.” I think what sets me apart is the way I go in on hot button issues with a sense of humor. I combine references from pop culture in unique ways, such as putting Bert and Ernie together in leather gear. I won’t shy away from controversy if I feel I can do it in a way that is thoughtful and funny and technically well done. I sometimes agonize over the smallest brush stroke or line weight.

My professional path has been very long and windy. I started drawing before I got to kindergarten and in grade school I started acting in local musical theater and writing my own plays and comics. I put on my first show in 5th grade. It was a “Fractured Fairytale” type parody that included a joke about Snow White sleeping with all of the dwarfs. 5th grade.

Trying to decide a major in college was not easy because I wanted to be an artist, an actor, a writer, and a super model but I eventually landed on illustration. After graduation I had a hard time finding steady work (what DO you do with a BFA?) so I got a job at Roscoe’s, a big, famous gay bar in Chicago. I continued with the occasional freelance illustration job, acting in commercials and theater, and writing. One of the managers, Matthew Harvat, had me work on fliers and giant foam cut outs for some of the big, special events and the holiday cards, so I was a bartender/graphic designer for Roscoe’s for a while.

Then I decided to move to LA to escape the midwest winters and break into entertainment in Hollywood. I got a job as an illustrator and artist on a new magazine called BENT. They wanted a slice-of-life type comic about gay life in WeHo. Having just moved to WeHo, I found a lot of material in my own life to write jokes about and “Troy” the comic strip was born. The comic ran in BENT for about a year, then started getting picked up by other papers until it eventually was syndicated all over the world. I had a lot of friends in entertainment, so I was invited a few times to meet with producers and directors about making Troy into a TV series but every time, they always needed the characters to be made straight, or at least to give Troy a straight, female roommate. Will and Grace was VERY popular! Finally around ‘07 I had finished writing a feature script for Troy that I and my manager both loved. We had a director and a producer and I was so excited that my movie was finally going to be made. Then Dubya wrecked the global economy and our funding vanished. So I decided to stop waiting for other people and I took my feature script and cut it down to 15 minutes and created an animated short of my own. Once again, having friends in entertainment really paid off because I got some really great, talented people involved and the short was very well received and it screened at film festivals all over the world.

Since then as art director, I helped create Plug.DJ, I worked on some major ad campaigns, several animated shorts, published several “Troy” collections, created my POP Art brand Derry Products, and worked on the animated sequences in the very excellent and deserving of a feature film follow-up, Baz Luhrmann Netflix series “The Get Down.”

Then, a couple of years ago, out of the blue I got an email from my old friend Matthew Harvat, the manager of the bar I worked at just out of college. He runs CircuitMOM productions and their dance events draw tens of thousands of people every year. He had seen my recent work on social media and asked me to come do graphics for their events. I have been doing the graphics for their events for the last couple of years and it feels great to be back with my very first “patron.”

I am currently working on “Maxxie La Wow,” an animated feature about a drag super hero with my friends Bill and Karen from Plug DJ. When I first read the script I got a bit choked up because of so many similarities in humor and tone I saw from the stories I wrote in Troy.

My career has been a very interesting, twisting, sometimes confounding journey through the Chicago club scene, publishing, entertainment, animation, and corporate commercial work.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
LA is a great tourist destination so my job with out of town guests is usually pretty easy. One of my happy places I go to often is Runyon canyon. It’s in the middle of the Hollywood and the views on a clear day are pretty great. I’ve been going there in the mornings with my dogs since they were puppies and they’re ten now. My aunt was in town a couple of years ago and only had a few hours and wanted to see LA. I took her to the top and said, “Here is LA” because you can literally see the entire city from up there. Biking along the beach from Santa Monica is very fun and you can stop along the way in Venice and have fun in all the little beach shops.

I like to cook so I usually like to make a meal for out of town guests. There are a seemingly infinite amount of restaurants, but over the years my partner and I have made our Friday Night Date Nights into an exploration of the LA food scene. Every week we have to pick a new restaurant that we haven’t been to yet, so over the years I’ve found a few favorites I like to take out of town guests to like Don Cuco in Toluca Lake near my place. It’s the first place my friend took me when I moved to LA and it’s still one of my favorites.

Weekends in the summer in LA, you have to go to a pool party! There are plenty of hotels in Hollywood that have rooftop pool/bars and a few of my friends are DJ’s so that is always a possibility. Or we could luck out and one of my friends might be throwing a party up in the hills. The pool party in the Hollywood Hills is the quintessential LA experience.

And believe it or not, when I have out of town guests, we will usually go see a live show because yes, there is theater in LA. I’ve seen many big, Broadway shows at the Pantages, which is gorgeous and has amazing productions. But I have also been to a lot of small, 99 seat theaters seeing some pretty fun, interesting, experimental, off-beat stuff. Last time my partner’s parents were in town, we took them to see a production of Dream Girls at a small theater where a friend did the choreography. There was no set really and folding chairs, but it was an amazing cast with killer performances.

And then at night I’m sure we’d end up in WeHo on the strip drinking over priced cocktails and venmo-ing drag queens and go go boys. I don’t think any trip to LA is complete without a bar crawl in WeHo.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’m going to give a Shoutout to Bill and Karen Drastal and Chubby Beagle Productions, the production company I am working with on the animated feature “Maxxie La Wow.” They are both talented, professional, ambitious, and fun to work with. I met Bill and Karen working at Plug.DJ. We are all character designer/animators and got into a great groove working on the dancing avatars, icons, and environments for Plug. When that job ended we all started working on various other projects, but over the last couple of years, we’ve reached out to each other on things that were too big for just one person. When the Maxxie job came up, they contacted me right away because they thought my style and sense of humor would be perfect for the project and I think they were right. We’ve been working on the movie for almost a year now and it is probably the most “me” of any project I have ever had the privilege of working on and I cannot wait for the world to see it!

Website: https://michaelderrydesigns.com/

Instagram: @derryproductsinsta

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpderry/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fmichaelderrydesigns.com%2F

Twitter: @michaelderryart

Facebook: DerryProducts

Other: https://derryproducts.com/

Image Credits
Michael Derry