A couple of years ago we met Lain Schibli at Bread&Butter Tradeshow. He was showing up at our booth and gave us some copies of Amateur Magazine. From the first moment holding the magazine in our hands we fell in love with it. Great topics, well featured artists, always dope cover artworks and a super nice look and feel. We are glad to collaborate with Amateur Mag and Lain found some time to design a couple of T-Shirts for us. To find out more about him and his magazine read the interwiew below. Enjoy! 

Lain, please tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a Swiss graphic designer going more and more towards art. I grew up on the countryside, but have always been fascinated by the visual output of big cities' street cultures such as skateboarding, streetwear, graffiti or streetball. Currently I'm living in Paris. One of my projects is Amateur Magazine - an artist driven print magazine.

You're from Switzerland. What do you enjoy most about your country?

I like the fact that the water from the tap is drinkable, I enjoy the clean rivers which are great to swim in - even in the cities. And I like to climb our mountains. Last but not least I am very thankful for our stable economic system.

How did you get started with Amateur Magazine?

Before Amateur, I organized live art battles called "Art Clash" - I started in 2005, when such events were quite unique - and I was part of an art collective called "Die Seiner" too. Through this I got to know quite a lot of artists.

Because of the fact that there was no Swiss art magazine in the style I like, I came up with the idea of Amateur. I was a greenhorn regarding publishing a magazine but I'm glad I made the step. I think that sometimes it is the best to start something without thinking too far.

Do you have any creative patterns, routines or rituals before starting with a new issue?

Not really. Although we have recently released the tenth issue, every issue is a new adventure.

If you could be an animal what would it be?

A common buzzard. I don't want to sound esoteric, but I somehow feel connected to them. And besides that, I think it is great to be able to fly.

What are your creative weapons of choice?

My brain, a scalpel and Adobe Illustrator.

What is your favourite magazine right now? Why?

Hard to say. The one I recently subscribed for is DAMn magazine because it has a great approach on design. But my longtime favorites are Lodown, because they are kicking it since decades, and Bitchslap because of their witty content.

Recent 4 Websites you have bookmarked?

http://fucknfilthy.com/

http://drasskoland.blogspot.fr/

http://issuu.com/amateur

http://www.donutchocula.com/

If you could only take 3 things and leave anything behind, what would it be?

I guess friends and family aren't "things", right? I'd take a weed seed, a huge sketchbook with integrated pen and my laptop.

Thanks for the interview, Lain.

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Just finished the drawing for a T-Shirt collaboration with Sneakerhead Moscow a couple of weeks ago. Contemporary! Available at Sneakerhead.

If you're near Cologne this weekend make sure to drop by at Showroom of Love!

See the "Vanguard & Visionary" T-Shirt series for this summer feat. William, Charles and Albert.  

Catch the second rap idols skateboard series on Facebook. The raffle starts today (April 26th) and ends on may 2nd at 12pm. All you need to do is share this post on Facebook and hope you are the one. Good luck to all of you out there!

Glad to be featured in the current issue of Sneaker Mag. Thanks for that guys!

Enjoy Yara going on a little rampage wearing our womens lightweigt jacket "Bat". Lovely!

Glad to have an interview in the current issue of Amateur Magazine. Also check out Beni Bischoff, Toast, Smash 137, Craig & Karl and much more. Many thanks to Lain, we really appreciate this.

Our friend Matthias Ellinger a.k.a. MOCKI suprised us with a gnar flick of his undoubtable skateboarding skills. But not only on board Matthias is on fire. He's simply a great personality and a true master to look on the bright side of life. Filmed by Hans Fink

For our current spring/summer 2012 collection we teamed up with german photographer Nils Mueller. Nils is best known for his Vandals series, which documents the world wide graffiti movement of writers leaving their name on public transport. After several years of working under harsh condititions on 4 different continents, Mueller has become one of most famous photographers to document graffiti. We're very proud we could join forces with him to bring these great T-shirts to light. A couple of days ago we asked him a few questions.

Nils, please introduce yourself
My name is Nils Müller, I'm a photographer and gallery director from Cologne, Germany.