dfrnt is an independent art brand started by two artists, Tony & Mia Cabrera. We focus on creative art across various media.

Apparel

A dfrnt IRAN

by dfrnt on February 15, 2011 in Apparel

With all that’s going on in the Middle East right now, I decided to wear our Iran shirt today and realized we might as well post it on the blog. It looks like Iran’s opposition movement is back in the news after the recent success in Egypt, although predictably, Iran’s oppressive regime is making sure opposing views aren’t heard by using any means necessary to silence them. We’ll probably put a video together soon to make all this clearer for those who don’t keep up with this stuff, although we’re not sure if there is any room on our ever growing to do list.

The images above are from our store, as usual, we do all the art and even got an official copyright certificate for the way we display our products. We still have a few of these shirts available, but supplies are limited. We designed that shirt way back in 2009 to support the initial opposition struggle that exploded after the debated election results in Iran, sound familiar. There was a lot of thought that went into it, but to keep it short, we wanted an original design that wasn’t in your face as far as the message goes, text for example. Instead we wanted one that caused observers to question the wearer about it’s meaning, once its explained, awareness is spread. Change in Iran is inevitable mainly due to its emerging young informed population. They may be brutally silenced for months here and there, but Iran’s opposition movement is in it for the long haul, we wish them the best.

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IT’S OFFICIAL, our presentation style is copyright protected

by dfrnt on October 16, 2010 in Apparel,Art

So, back when we were thinking about how dfrnt would be different, our product catalog images were one of the first things we decided to focus on. There’s a huge philosophy, tons of work and decision making we made to get them to where they are that we won’t go into here, what we will say is the following.

Basically, the product we’re selling is a photograph, the rest is an illustration. It’s that simple, to spice it up we also add color swatches describing the color of our merchandise, an of course the artist’s signature. We do this with everything we have for sale at our store, art, books, prints and apparel.

We applied for an official copyright for this technique, and we just got it. We’re pretty excited because part of what we’re trying to do is create new ideas, and this confirms and protects the uniqueness of our concept. We have another major copyright we applied for around the same time involving our art direction, hopefully that one comes through soon as well. We’re crossing our fingers….

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Time to be artists

by dfrnt on August 9, 2010 in Apparel,Art,Books,Life

Just wanted to summarize where we are.

Life

Tony’s job at an animation studio ended on Friday after almost 3 years, he thought up a 2 minute animation test to work on so that’ll keep him from getting rusty. Mia is about to finish bartending school. Plus we’re engaged now, so we gotta plan a small wedding, it’s in few months.

Books

Finally, we have time to move on these. We’re learning inDesign so we can A) design our next two books with it and B) put out digital iBooks and kindle versions. We’ll be out and about promoting our first book in 2 weeks, the digital version should be out in about 3. Aside from the Obama books, there’s 1 book planned that will be a compilation of short stories we’ve tossed around between the two of us.

Art

This is finally getting the proper focus, we changed our branding from Art & Culture Apparel to “dfrnt Art & Apparel”. Art comes first at dfrnt, yea I know, we started with books up there, but come on there’s over 100 drawings in those, that’s gotta be art. Thought, uniqueness, and appeal are our primary focus. That’s how we approach our apparel designs, prints, and books. We’ll be in at least 2 art shows soon, possibly 4. We’re finishing up our first series of traditional work, and starting on our second. We’ll also be visiting elementary school classrooms and giving little workshops to inspire kids to get into art, the first visit is next month. Let’s see, those Pin and Spool comic strips, we have a few more thought out so just gotta ink em up and post em. There’s at least two new properties we’ve dusted off recently to join Pin & Spool, they’ll be realized as comic strips as well, very soon, one may even be animated afterwards, it’s a ridiculously simple concept so it would easily translate to animation that wouldn’t take long to do. So that’s 3 official character focused comic strips, finally there’s a fourth property we’ll be developing and posting on this blog as well, it will be a video one. More on that soon.

Apparel

There’s so much we’re doing we decided we needed to focus on the art first for credibility’s sake, the books second to get the dfrnt name out to a bigger audience, and apparel third. The clothing industry is a beast, you need to be prepared seasons ahead and it’s really time consuming. Moving on we will only put out a new design when it’s an awesome one. You will only be able to get our stuff from our site or outdoor events we attend, and it will be made in limited numbers so act while it’s there. Don’t worry, we do have one of those awesome designs coming soon.

Business

We’ll be sending in the proper documents to the copyright office to protect all our work, and finally, learning and using quickbooks instead of spreadsheets.

Ok, tired of typing. There’s a lot going on as you can see, you should see the To Do list i’m working on. We’re not sure when we’ll have time like this to focus on our dfrnt work so we’re not going to waste a minute. Check back frequently and tell your friends, you’re about to witness an artistic explosion.

-dfrnt

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Company Update

by dfrnt on April 11, 2010 in Apparel

It’s been a while since we posted what we’re up to. We’ll keep it brief.

Apparel

Added all the necessary product images to our main site over at www.dfrntApparel.com. We are working on a brochure for all our current items. As far as more designs, they’re in the works.

Art

Added first series of art prints to our main site. Offering prints in a range of prices and sizes to make them affordable and accessible to anyone who likes our style. We are also currently working on 3 new paintings for a Santa Ana Art Show in May. The pieces are part of a new ongoing series and they will eventually become available as Art Prints.

Books

Our first batch of books is now available. Books have slowly consumed most of our attention here at dfrnt. Learning the book business is time consuming for sure. Currently we are both the publisher and distributor, but are looking to hand off some duties to a proper distributor. We’re currently looking into Ingram or Baker & Taylor. Our first book will soon be available in the Apple App Store. On top of all that we are in the middle of writing our second book.

That’s just a few of the things that come to mind at the moment, there’s much more like stickers and post cards, but more on that later. Add full time day jobs to that schedule and you can imagine the lack of time on our part, but we’ll continue to inch things forward. Thanks to everyone who has stopped by for the support.

-dfrnt

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