MONSTER fooddrink MONEY MAKER endnotes
Photo: Matt Lusk
artisticlicense
questionauthority From “Surrender the Booty” shirts to Kyle Busch hats — Britton Ricketts might be the Outer Banks’s biggest art seller.
upfront
T-shirts are the original beach souvenir. Long before visitors left with “OBX” on their bumper, they went home with artwork on their backs. Today, with the right vision, a restaurant can make more money branding gear than broiling seafood. So when businesses want to spice up tired logos or hire a new mascot for hoodies or hot sauce bottles, they instantly know where to turn.
soundcheck
“Everywhere else is so corporate,” says Britton Ricketts, co-owner of Flying Fish Ink, a custom screen-printing, embroidery and graphic design business. “You don’t go to the city to buy a T-shirt, because everything’s Wal-Mart and Applebee’s, but you do here. It’s actually kind of a goldmine.”
getactive
But this goldmine took a lot of digging. Like one of his sinister comic book characters, Ricketts’ talent morphed from mild-mannered textbook doodles into a ravenous monster of creativity. As a teenager, so advanced were his skills and so quick his turnaround, Ricketts became the go-to guy for every art project from bulletin boards to school menus to yearbooks. After graduating from the Governor’s Magnet School for the Arts, the Portsmouth product moved to the Outer Banks in 1994, drawn to the relaxed beach lifestyle and the fringe boarding culture. By 1996, he found a tough but wise mentor in Guy Grazetti at Graphic Attack.
startingpoint
basically making the lame look cool and the cool look cooler. After servicing longtime accounts like Froggy Dog and Blue Point, Ricketts went freelance in 2000 and began drawing fresh designs for Quagmire’s, Goombays, Red Drum, Tortuga’s… “Anywhere I like to eat or drink, I probably did the logo,” laughs Ricketts. “I didn’t really turn stuff down.” Meanwhile, Ricketts supplemented his income through surfboard art, painting everything from the absurd to the terrifying for local shredders, which facilitated connections in the action sports industry. A sub-repping gig with Volcom Clothing and Electric Visual followed as Ricketts capped the pens and moved to Wilmington.
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Fledgling start-up or established business, he makes the lame look cool and the cool look cooler.
“I had quit drawing at that point,” he says, “but learning about fashion production and repping clothes helped me sell myself as an artist. You’re nobody until somebody knows you. Eventually, I knew the right people.” A serendipitous encounter with a newly sponsored Electric athlete, NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, at the 2005 Orlando Surf Expo provided a new creative conduit. Former 17th Street Surf Shop manager Ryan Kingsbury had just gotten the Media/ PR job for Kyle Busch Motorsports, and the franchise needed an artist for logo branding of anything KBM or Monster Energy Drink related. As luck and timing would have it, Kingsbury knew a guy. “It was exactly what I was doing before — selling artwork to make people money,” says Ricketts. “But now I understood details I’d never known before because I was stuck on the Outer Banks. It’s easy to make money here, but we’re not competitive in the real world. You have to go away to come back. Once Ryan got with KBM, everything clicked and I could start designing locally again.” Choked with accounts, Flying Fish owner Mike Stokes offered Ricketts freelance work before bringing him on as a partner this summer. “There are lots of good graphic artists and illustrators,” says Stokes, “but finding someone who can get artwork from a computer screen into a press and onto a shirt is invaluable. It’s such a specialized skill. Then he’ll turn right around and paint a skateboard deck that’s just insane.” Of course, Britton still paints skateboards... and surfboards and motorcycles, while drawing his own comics and KBM/ Monster artwork on the side, though much of that moonlighting ultimately yields more accounts for Flying Fish.
“I never had a goal to be an artist,” admits Ricketts. “I was doing plumbing because I had to pay rent like everybody else. But Guy told me, ‘You can always be a plumber if the art thing doesn’t work out.’”
“Surfboards and comics were never moneymakers,” admits Ricketts, “but they’re what set me apart as an artist. If you found a box of my personal work, which isn’t as formulaic or gimmicky as my graphic design, you’d never knew I drew it. I might be overqualified for lighthouses and birds, but if that’s what you want on your shirts, then I feel like I can draw you the most badass lighthouse or bird you’ve ever seen. No matter the job, I put in equal effort.”
Like the business name, Ricketts attacked graphics, injecting his own uniquely sharp aesthetic into propaganda for fledgling startups and established dynamos alike —
“On the other hand,” he finishes, “If you want me to draw you Dimebag Darrell as a toxic zombie, I’ll blow your mind.” — Matt Pruett
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