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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1518973
Beginnings Aaron first became interested in art thanks to his cousin Thomas, a successful artist who moved from their Michigan home to New York. When he came home to visit, he brought the tools of his trade. “He'd always have the coolest sketchbooks and pens and things. And it was kind of a fantasy quality to like, wow, these are these neat.” He fell in love with the tools. Doing art gave him the chance to use them. The following Christmas, he found a sketchbook and set of colored pencils under the tree. He started drawing and kept at it. As he got into his teens, he fell into skateboarding and its alt-culture that gave him a break from the color-inside-the-lines culture of high school. “They had their own music, they had their own style, they had their own clothing, their own language, haircuts...” and that suited him perfectly. The renegade attitude of the skater crowd can still be seen in a lot of Draplin’s work particularly his popular posters. Another thing that moved him was the power and universal appeal that could come out of simplicity. He treasured the graphics on the Lego boxes he had when he was a kid. “They worked where I live, they worked where every little kid was living, you know, they were clear and legible. And there was something beautiful about that to me.” But when he was getting near graduation time, he realized he had to make a living. He wanted to draw, but he also wanted to be pragmatic about it, even if it meant a sort of nine-to-five creativity. “The influences were like being broke. I didn't want to be broke.” That approach is something Aaron hung onto, even as his business started to grow. He shied away from using lots of credit and just built things up gradually as he could afford. That holds true for everything from his Mac’s display to his house and studio. Another obvious influence is music, going beyond the wall of vinyl albums in his studio. He was friends with Aerosmith’s guitar tech and that led to a lot of backstage time at big name concerts. “He’s just shuffling around backstage, and he goes, “That’s Mich Mitchell.” Later, he found himself shaking hands with Jimi Hendrix at one of his last U.S. concerts before his death in 1970. Over the years, he’s done album covers for some indie bands and they all have the look of having been done by a real insider in the music world. After years of working for other firms, he finally decided to start his own, but only after he had saved enough to make a go of it without huge lines of credit. It took more time to grow that way, but he had no trouble finding clients for his unique approach.