Sam. Mr. February. Always a pleasure. What’ve you guys been up to lately?

It’s 5 AM in Australia and we’re up bright and early for this Spearhead interview.

 My family moved to America at the end of March and we’ve been kind of stuck here with the immigration stuff, so I’ve been bouncing around and working on the new Stab EAST project; looking for waves and riding a bunch of different boards. This is the first time I’ve been stuck in one country for more than 6 months, so that’s been interesting. It’s definitely been one of the more wave starved years I’ve had. Other than that I’ve been working on Spearhead a bunch and getting excited about our upcoming projects.

Tell us a bit about Spearhead Unlmtd, what made you decide to launch your own platform?

Spearhead is a space to create. I honestly don’t know what it is, it’s not one thing, and through learning it constantly changes. We’re exploring. 

It’s mainly for fun. We’re making videos, doing art, making merch, stickers, and trying to put on some events. It’s just what we do really. Mikey is responsible to do something as a professional surfer and this is what we decided to do.

We’ll we’re really excited to release this collection with you. How did you hear about AWE and what made you want to collaborate?

Feelings when you first walked into the warehouse?

It’s insane. Seeing how much volume there is and the amount of existing clothing is insane. It never gets normal. It’s pretty overwhelming and knowing that what’s in there is pretty crazy, it’s a lot to be honest. Taking those things and appreciating them and bringing their value to the world again is really rewarding. 

Tell us a little about some of the themes and inspiration for the graphics.

Sam really killed the graphics. We’ve been working on Spearhead together since the beginning, I’ve learnt so much from him in terms of sharing the process and not being too precious about what we create, including the product we design. A lot of the references are from things that were inspired by and are pulled from other projects. Sharing it and not being precious and taking existing stuff… I guess some of it’s pretty bootleg but having a new outlook on using inspiration in a new way. Stuff I’ve been inspired by, messaging graphics and typography. We decided on a theme this year and time travel was one way of exploring ideas and different things, the past the present the future and creating. In researching space and time and adding in Africa and trying to bring a DIY approach. 

Again, this goes back to that statement about Spearhead being like a conversation. We’re sharing references we’re sharing ideas. Most of the graphics have come out of that, something we’ve pinched off of a record sleeve, the name of a song that we like, something that one of Mikey’s boys/sons are talking about. In relation to the t-shirts the graphics are recycled in a way. We kind of bootlegged them, changed them so it works with the product.