When people ask what I do, I tell them I’m a writer. That’s what I do. I write blog posts, ads, taglines. And stories.
But as a kid, I wanted to draw comics and make cartoons.
At fourteen, I spent a month working at a large printing company in Maribor, Slovenia. It’s been gone for years now. That month, I earned seven million dinars — the currency we used back then.
Meanwhile, I drew a twenty-page comic about two cavemen. That took me half as long, and when the weekly newspaper 7D published it, they paid me five million.
For a few days, I was a millionaire. Unfortunately, those millions weren’t even worth wiping my ass with. So much for my career in comics.
But I was writing, too. I’d written the story for that comic, and I was constantly tapping out more stories on an old typewriter.
Then life happened, as people like to say. You make a bad decision here. Take an opportunity there. Drift along for a while. Before you know it, you’ve ended up somewhere you never expected — or particularly wanted — to be.
In the late ’90s, I experimented with 3D modeling and animation, making logos and products move around for a handful of clients. Somehow, that led me into what we used to call “desktop publishing.”
For a while, I designed books, newspapers, and magazines. Then a business partner and I started a design studio, which gave me a place to bring together everything I loved doing, everything I was curious about, and everything I still wanted to learn.
Those were good years. Unfortunately, I was a lousy manager. The studio folded after a few years. Thankfully, my business partner and I are still friends.
For the next few years, I did whatever kept food on the table. I worked as a doorman, a security guard, a photographer. I looked after a company’s visual identity in a marketing department.
And through all of it, I kept writing. Nothing I was ready to publish. But I kept writing.
Then, in 2009, I came across a job listing. An agency in Maribor was looking for an art director. I quickly pulled together a portfolio, a résumé, and an application, then sent it all to their creative director.
A friend of mine had been working there for a while. When I showed up for the interview, he told me they’d hired an art director two weeks earlier.
“But you used to write, didn’t you? We’re still looking for a copywriter.”
Hell. Yes. I became a writer at an advertising agency. This was back when Mad Men was everywhere.
A year later, I moved to another agency, in Kamnik, where I spent a long stretch as creative director. At one point, I came up with a campaign inspired by my time as a security guard.
You never know when an experience will come in handy. Even one you were pretty sure was a complete waste of time.
After that, I spent several years on the other side of the table: the client side. As an in-house creative, I wrote and designed things for retail and tech companies.
And I kept writing stories.
Eventually, I started publishing them, in both Slovenian and English. First on a blog I’d set up mainly to publish interviews with other writers, especially crime and noir authors.
Some of my stories appeared in international anthologies. I also published others on Amazon as bilingual ebooks. Then came my first short story collection, published as an ebook. A second collection followed, this time in English and available as an ebook on Amazon.
I also created and ran a crime and noir fiction festival. The idea was simple: five writers would spend a weekend writing five stories, then present them. The festival ran for five years and wrapped up with a collection of twenty-five stories.
Eventually, a major Slovenian publisher published my first novel. I’m currently working on another story collection, with a sequel to the novel somewhere further down the road.
After spending most of my creative career telling other people what their brands should do, I decided it was time to put some of that advice to the test. On a brand of my own.
Ribafish brings together pretty much everything I’ve done over the years. The drawing. The writing. The design. The occasional questionable decision.
All in one place. On one piece of fabric, to be precise.
A character meets a line of text, and together they have something to say. It turns out that’s a pretty good way for me to express myself.
And if someone sees a little of themselves in what’s on the shirt, it helps them express themselves, too.
So I guess I did end up making comics after all. You just wear them.
(But I’m still a writer … That’s why this clothing brand has a blog.)