Fashion Graphic Design Illustration Interviews Product

Creative Mess

posted by Mel Luff February 2, 2015

With an ethos to change the face of the tech world and banish the generic and monotonous styles that saturate it, Creative Mess is a UK based brand specialising in digitally printed mobile accessories. Working with creative’s from across the globe such as street artist Mr Penfold, Archie Mac London and cartoonist Wolf Mask – they’re forever seeking designers and illustrative talent to collaborate with. We spoke to founder and creative director Ant Fu.

Always having an interest in design, combined with a self confessed love of phone accessories, he told us:

“When I’m in Hong Kong I’m always looking at the latest phone accessories, but I always find that the designs are not really to my taste. When I come back to the UK I see exactly the same cases that were in Hong Kong … with the hole cut out for the apple logo aimed at the Chinese market. In China showing the logo of the phone is the most important thing and I feel that’s had an effect on the aesthetics of cases here. With my British love for good design along with my Chinese love for phone accessories I came up with the idea for Creative Mess.”

Ant describes the brand as “naturally evolving”, as a concept that never had a concrete plan or direction: “we don’t take ourselves too seriously and have a playful element”. Their vibrant designs, range from simplistic to psychedelic and allude to their founding principle that ‘everyone is different … so why does a thing you use every day, have to look the same as everyone else’s”.

For the skins the printing process is simple – a digital print onto 3M vinyl, and the hard cases – sublimation printing, the design digitally transferred to sublimation paper and then heat transferred onto the cases.

Starting initially with the work of friends and UK based artists, Ant wanted to create a platform for different artists to showcase their work. Now working with creative’s from further afield (Canada, the USA, Korea, Japan) Creative Mess work with a mixture of commissions and licensed pieces. Their latest collection is still a work in progress, collaborating with designer Ross Gunter, combining minimalistic design and optical illusions.