Night Gallery: People won’t buy ugly sh*t
A conversation with designer Josh Zoerner
Welcome to Human Pursuits, the column that features need-to-know names and stories in media and other creative spaces. Today, a conversation with Josh Zoerner, founder of the New York-based clothing brand and design studio, Night Gallery.
I have 447 notes saved on my iPhone.
Some of them are useful – shopping lists, workout routines, bathroom codes for coffee shops around Vancouver (try 6497 at the Breka on Davie Street).
Many of them are not.
I use the Notes app to log my most inane observations and fleeting inspirations. I use it to keep my mind clear. I use it to commune with the divine.
Apparently, I’m not alone.
In January, asked me if I wanted to be part of Dirt’s iPhone notes collection. The project, which was created in collaboration with Night Gallery, offers “a tribute to the humble iPhone note”.
I immediately said yes.
NOTES features 100 phone notes from 100 contributors and is available for purchase HERE.
While I think the idea is brilliant, I was equally impressed with the book’s minimalist “dark mode” design.
And so it seems Night Gallery founder Josh Zoerner and I have much to discuss.
Our edited and condensed conversation touched on earthquakes, memorabilia, whether owning a business makes you a Republican, fighting for your creative vision, and more.
ES: I just experienced my first earthquake an hour ago. You’re the first person I'm talking to that’s not my wife.
JZ: That's crazy. Weirdly, I felt my first earthquake in New York. That was random of The Earth to do that.
ES: Was that the one that happened last year?
JZ: Yeah, the one that everyone in New York couldn’t stop tweeting about. Someone should have made a shirt commemorating it or something.
ES: “I survived the NYC earthquake”.
JZ: I thought I was having a back spasm when it happened. I was sitting on my couch and had been designing for eight hours. I thought I was getting old. Then the texts started hitting.
ES: Are you familiar with Nick Steinhardt from Touché Amoré? He has this really sick collection of L.A. earthquake memorabilia from the 80s.
JZ: I met Nick years ago when I was super young. We never really kept up, but I like his graphic design work a lot, and his collection is sick. Shout out to him for thinking of that because it never would’ve crossed my mind.
Disaster memorabilia is kind of a funny thing to get. I know people who have gotten really into war shirts. Desert Storm or Vietnam. It’s kind of the same category as old Enron or Lockheed Martin merch. In those cases, the irony can only take you far because some people take it seriously.
ES: I feel that way about the guy who’s trying to bring Enron back.
JZ: I think he bought the copyright or something and is doing a bit. I don’t know if it’s true but I heard he’s the same guy who did “Birds Aren’t Real.”
ES: Oh that’s kinda of cool, then. I love that guy.
JZ: Once somebody connected the dots for me I could really see it. I was leaving dinner when they put up an Enron billboard in Soho. It’s so dumb but it’s kind of perfect.
Just because you’re getting a check doesn’t mean you should bow to the person.
ES: Back to collecting, though. Are you a collector?
JZ: I try not to accumulate stuff that takes up too much space, but I am an avid book collector. I collect art too, but my collection is in flux right now.
ES: Are you looking for first edition books, or is it more just the physical object that appeals to you?
JZ: It’s a mix. My collection of art books has some rare stuff in it, like books inscribed by artists to friends or me. That’s pretty cool. It’s only been happening since I lived in New York and started meeting artists and musicians I admire. For me, books are more functional in the sense that I can reference them for design. There’s a utility to them. I can use them for real shit.
I used to do a bit of vinyl collecting, too, but records take up too much space. I was moving a lot and I hated it.
ES: I think books are material objects that are meant to be disrespected, but I know not everyone agrees. What’s your marginalia game looking like?
JZ: I’m a big fan of fucking books up. I tend to buy books that are messed up with marginalia. I really like it. That said, I’m not personally doing much to fuck them up because if I need to scan something, I want the page to be clean. But if I find an older book that has stuff written in it I’ll buy it.
I'm working on a project right now of paintings where I’m specifically looking for book pages that are fucked up.
ES: That’s sick.
JZ: I have some older books too, from artists as I mentioned before, that have their notes and thoughts in them. So yeah, big fan.
ES: Not to seamlessly connect this to the NOTES book, but it feels like that app evokes a similar sort of practice. People use it as a living diary, but then you find old entries, devoid of context, and they become something new.
JZ: There are definitely some similarities. At the book release party, I said that the book has a lot in common with Post Secret, but it’s way less dark. People would share some pretty crazy stuff with Post Secret.
ES: I was thinking about Post Secret just the other day because it’s been 20 years since The All-American Rejects released ‘Dirty Little Secret’, which famously included Post Secret in the video.
JZ: I was thinking about it a lot making the book. Like, “God I hope I'm not making a Post Secret book.” Laughs. The notes app is more stoic than those postcards. There’s only so much you can do in the app, which is great. And the notes submitted to us were, for the most part, really chill.
ES: The book is a collaboration between you and
. How did you two meet?JZ: We found each other on Twitter. She started following me because of Night Gallery, and we realized we both liked what the other person was doing, so why not work together?
Last summer we did a drop that was “suburban gothic” themed. It centered on an essay she had, and I designed around that idea. We stayed in contact. We wanted to keep doing stuff. She suggested a Notes app book and I thought it was cool.
The nice thing about working with only one other person is you can accomplish things quickly… When you work with big teams, things can get mired down and become too bureaucratic and political. You start to overthink the project. It can take six months instead of a week. Like, I was done this in a week. It can be that simple if you want it to be.
People are really smart now and they won’t buy ugly shit
ES: It’s not always easy to navigate the intersection of art and commerce. Or, at least, it doesn’t feel easy for me. Do you feel like you have a natural business acumen?
JZ: It’s not punk to talk about, right?
ES: Not at all. Laughs.
JZ: I’m not going to name the person, but I had this exact conversation one day with one of my favourite artists, who I’ve become friends with. I was talking about growing up punk, and how cool it is that I get to make money doing Night Gallery, but it feels a little crazy being a business owner. Like, does that make me a fucking Republican?
He said, “It’s probably a bit more punk to be your own boss because working for somebody else sucks. You get to figure it all out yourself.” And I thought “That makes sense”. He also said that as long as you’re not out here being an asshole and operating in a fucked up way, then it’s still cool because you're still building something. You can’t do nothing and be broke forever.
ES: So true.
JZ: This also led to a larger conversation about things he was involved in and things that I do on the side. It made me less weird about everything. I feel like living in New York, you’re constantly exposed to hustle culture. It’s weirder if you’re not trying to make money in New York. That’s why most people are here: so you can meet people and make money —
ES: And move to Connecticut.
JZ: Yeah. I’m not viewing my life in the city as this giant cornucopia to reap from. I’m trying to work with people intentionally. I think you can approach business in a way that is not bad or sleazy or weird and still stay true to some sort of ethos. I’ve been living off Night Gallery for the majority of the time that I’ve lived in New York. It’s now my full-time thing and it’s been fine.
To answer your original question: I think business is only bad if you don’t understand math. I highly recommend founders get an accountant as quickly as possible. They’re very cheap. Form an LLC, too.
ES: I don’t have an eloquent way of saying this but why do the work that you’re doing with Night Gallery? Like I understand that it’s cool, but what about it appeals to you specifically?
JZ: Night Gallery started because my old business partner and I thought it would be cool to make band merch that we liked. That idea died for a while, but then it came back during the pandemic because I was working a job I knew I was going to get laid off from. I needed something to keep me busy… So I started designing. I was lucky enough to have a partner who was really great at it, so she taught me. At first, it gave me a bit of an identity crisis. I didn’t feel comfortable calling myself a graphic designer, but I thought I had a perspective that was a bit more interesting than the run-of-the-mill band merch. We designed this Oasis shirt and we thought, “Sick, this is just going to be a thing for 20 of our friends.” But it went viral because of Throwing Fits. We got a ton of followers and a ton of sales. It felt like there was an expectation for us to keep going, so we slowly ramped up.
Fast forward to now, I’ve gotten over my imposter syndrome. I’m doing this because there’s a lot of bad merch out there. There’s so much bad merch. And I have no problem saying that. I understand why there is, I get the business perspective on why there’s bad merch, but there doesn’t need to be.
ES: Can you expand on that — what is bad merch, in your opinion?
JZ: With band merch, for instance, there is so much political stuff happening. Questions like “Can we get this shirt as cheap as possible?” “Is the design palatable for this particular demographic?” “How much money are we going to make for the artists?” All these different people have their hand in the decision so that it becomes weighed down by opinions. By the time it reaches the consumer, it’s totally bullshit Walmart merch. For an act like Aerosmith or Black Sabbath, whose legacy is cemented, this is a completely acceptable thing to do. But any artist that wants to engage with culture has to work with really talented graphic designers because people are smart now and they won’t buy ugly shit.
I’ve had to explain that having too many filters of politicking breaks the idea to people reviewing my work before. Like, do you want to do the cool thing you hired me for? Those moments of tension are important for creatives. You shouldn’t be afraid to punch back. Just because you’re getting a check doesn’t mean you should bow to the person. Like, you’re giving me the $5,000 we agreed to either way, so you’re going to listen to me.
ES: Totally. If they wanted someone else to do it, they would be paying them
JZ: You shouldn’t be worried that they don’t want you there. They hired you! They want your perspective. In the case of Night Gallery, I hope that means taking everything we view as culturally iconic and putting my own spin on it to reorient it in modernity. Seeing things from the past and finding a way to make it feel current… It’s got to feel real but it’s also got to feel authentic. Like, I designed a shirt for Yeah Yeah Yeahs. On the front, it said “WAIT”, and on the back, it said “THEY DON’T LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU”, which are both references to ‘Maps’. But then I was going through all these image ephemera I have, and I found these scans. They were flowers that an ex-girlfriend had given me to dry out. So all the flower imagery on the shirt is those breakup flowers, which is perfect because I see that as an obvious break-up song.
ES: In other interviews, you’ve mentioned that Night Gallery, as a business, is not necessarily about Josh. But I think what you just described is very Josh. You find ways to inject a story into a piece of merch, even if the public doesn’t always know you did it.
JZ: That’s true. So much of design is figuring out where you are in orientation to the work. Some designs feel impersonal, but others have a lot of personal stuff snuck in… They’re secrets for me.
I think of the movie Phantom Thread when he sews things into the lining of a shirt. I have those little moments in a design that make me happy but no one looking at the shirt would ever know. It’s cool. I’ll talk about it one day.
Josh Zoerner is a graphic designer and the founder of Night Gallery. He lives in New York.