About
Mission
Boon Apparel aim to accomplish at least one of two goals with each design: To make you smile -or- To make you think. A good design can achieve one or both of these goal in only a few seconds.
Story
What is Boon? Well there are two answers to that question, both of which are pretty long. So if you really want to know I’ll tell you all about it but, you have been warned.
To answer the first and what I think to be the more obvious part of the question: What’s Boon? Boon is an illustration / design company started up by me (Steve MacKenzie) and a long-time friend of mine, (Hector Carrasquillo). The typical order of business for us is, Hector hits the streets in search of people or businesses in desperate need of some style — he refers them to me and I handle all the design and concepting work. The end goal of all this is to establish a brand that produces high quality, memorable design work and eventually have enough social collateral (and money) to launch our own designs every month. Right now we are a long ways off from that but every day is another step closer.
The other answer to “What’s Boon?” is in reference to the name and is also some what of a long story. Our Senior year of high-school we did basically the same thing as many other bored sub-urban kids, we played sports, music, drinking games, and video games. Some more then others but that was the more or less the fabric of our existence. The term boon spawned when we were told by a fellow geek that we couldn’t use the word “noob” outside of the gaming realm. So boon – being the inverse of noob, which I’m sure you already figured out – is our nerdy homage gaming and highschool humor.
About the Designer
I’ve been into illustration and graphic design for as long as I can remember, sometimes in my head and on paper are the only places that make sense. From a young age I started drawing and was instantly hooked, improving as time progress, taking private lessons and competing in small competitions throughout my high school years eventually lead up to me enrolling in the illustration program at UArts. The next school year I transfered to Multimedia. I’m still not sure exactly why I did this but it seemed like the right thing at the time. Three years later I graduated with a Bachlor’s in Multimedia (que the party horns and streamers). I’ve been out of the acidemia world for roughly a year now and I’m realizing the only work I actually enjoy doing is illustration and graphic design — go figure.
