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Last month in the bazaar portion of the XOXO Festival, I stopped by the Design Is Mine pop-up shop: Portlander Summer Allen was selling prints from various artists and designers that she'd featured on her site. One in particular caught my eye: it featured several Star Wars vehicles, done in a spray paint-and-stencil style. (See the Millennium Falcon below.) I discovered that the artist behind the poster, Harshness (aka Nicholas Hyde), is also a fellow Portlander, so I met up with him to ask him more about his amazingly geeky art.
Hyde has been creating his pop culture–fueled posters for about two years now, starting with Darth Vader holding a bottle of Jack Daniels and sporting some plastic sunglasses. Since then he's continued to refine his technique, and currently has over 250 posters in his Etsy shop. I pretty much want all of them.
Aside from Star Wars, his minimalist posters also include Harry Potter, X-men, The Avengers, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and a handful of Disney movies. Just recently he made his first videogame poster featuring — what else? — The Legend of Zelda. You'll find Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, famous movie quotes, and more, done in a minimalist style that you could hang in your den or your office.
While his illustration work is his primary occupation, Hyde also ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last month for the Bloombox, an iPhone dock that's also a planter, to be produced by a local ceramics studio. You can check out his posters at the Harshness Etsy shop. And if you're a dog person (Hyde had his little dachshund with him at the coffee shop) then he's also got a separate shop with dog-related posters (including some Star Wars mash-ups). New posters and commissioned work are posted on his Tumblr blog.
