365 Days, 365 Designs: Roemello Agjmurati’s Creative Marathon
Meet Roemello Agjmurati. Headshot taken by Laura Pannone (Courtesy of Roemello Agjmurati)
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Roemello Agjmurati, aka Printmello. Roemello Agjmurati is a Staten Island based Graphic Designer who graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2019 and has since worked for companies like Verizon, Yahoo, and Walmart doing digital product & editorial design crafting unique web experiences and interactive stories. Roemello owes his grittier design style to his background playing guitar in punk / emo bands.
For those who might not be familiar, can you share your background and what led you to pursue art?
My name is Roemello Agjmurati and my friends like to say I do way too much. I’m a graphic designer that grew up here in Staten Island, I attended Hunter College for computer science before realizing how bad I was at math and then switched to the School of Visual Arts where I graduated with a Bachelors in design. Since then I’ve worked as a designer at companies like Verizon, Yahoo, and Walmart doing a mix of digital and editorial design. When I’m not doing design, I’m either playing videogames, practicing martial arts, playing with my dog Sam, or writing music for my band, milkglass. Music & arts go deep for me because in high school I used to front a band called Emergency Protocol, where I designed all our merchandise and tour flyers, and learned a lot about the punk & emo community from going on tour and just being surrounded by people who were making things because they wanted to, the raw-ness of it all is something that never left me.
Describe your work and artistic practice. What themes, mediums, or methods define your art? How do you approach your creative process?
My letterboxd bio reads “here for pain” and I feel like that sums it up pretty well. I’ve always been into stories and media that go into the nuance of people and emotion, not really good vs evil type stuff but the gray in between. Music is no different either, there is a beauty in people turning their stress, struggle, and dissatisfaction into art and it just feels so real. No wonder I gravitated towards being in punk and emo bands since sonically they focus on those same themes. It became a big part of my design style too, I loved the gritty DIY style of underground music posters, about people displaying information without a knowledge of design but you could still feel the emotion and the purpose behind it. Things were always kind of fucked up looking, maybe even on purpose, but it’s genuine. I try to emulate a lot of that in my design style, I do a lot of ink-bleed effects in my typography, I throw a lot of textures on things, and sometimes I care less about legibility than any other designer probably should. You don’t always have to understand what I’m making, as long as you feel something from it. As for mediums, I call myself “printmello” for a reason, I love anything thats printed. Despite working so much in the digital space my favorite thing has always been being able to hold designs in the real, posters and packaging are my jam 100%. I’ve made zines, cassette tapes, vinyl covers, book jackets, CDs, you name it. I love all forms of printed media and am firmly in the “prints not dead” crowd.
Design 350 out 356 ( Art courtesy of Roemello Agjmurati)
What inspired you to embark on the 365-day art challenge? Completing a piece of art every day for a year is no small feat. What motivated you to take on this challenge?
Honestly I did it because I was bored, I’m pretty impulsive. On a deeper note though I remember seeing Oversettext post on instagram that they had recently completed doing the 365 project and how it helped them enjoy making art again and work throughs some mental health struggles they were dealing with at the time and I really felt that. My band hadn’t been announced yet, and besides some smaller freelance projects here and there I wasn’t really making anything for myself outside of my main jobs. Working for big companies is cool and all but its a different level of creating because you need to be perfect, and you’re constantly having your work be critiqued by art directors, by clients, by people who aren’t even creative, it gets exhausting. I got to a point where I didn’t really feel like making things on my own because I would always be asking myself “is this good enough, what would people i've worked with say about this, I should probably change the alignment of the text, it looks amataeur….” so when I thought about doing this 365 challenge I was like “well if i have to make something every day I won't really have the time to agonize over it being perfect, so this might be fun”, and I just went with it.
How do you feel now that the challenge is complete? When you reflect on your journey, what emotions or thoughts come to mind as you look back on this year-long commitment?
It’s so weird, I remember being exhausted and relieved at the same time. I was so used to doing that every day that when I didn’t have to anymore it was like “oh what should I do now”. I’m proud of what I made though and it’s been nice to look back on it because it got me attention to work on some new freelance projects for peeps who found me through the project. It got me into a regular space of creating again though and just making stuff because I want to and feeling more confident in working with people who approach me for work. It helped me realize more of my “style” i guess, which I give the quote treatment to because I feel like I changed styles a lot during the project and will probably change style again in the future maybe, or refine my current style, who knows. A year ago I was sitting home bored thinking about why I call myself a designer outside my 9-5, now I’m having my first solo exhibition of my personal work and regularly muting notifications on my phone of people either liking my stuff or reaching out to me about things I’ve made. Its surreal for me to be selling prints somewhere and having someone actually recognize my work and being surprised to meet me in the flesh. It doesn’t happen a lot, but its happened enough for me to remember, and I never thought it would be a byproduct of me making silly little posters every day for a year.
Are there particular artworks that you're especially proud of or that hold significant meaning for you?
Design 362 out 356 ( Art courtesy of Roemello Agjmurati)
I tried not to get too attached to any of them because you really never know how people will respond. Like I remember working so hard on poster number 346, which was a matrix-y style design about a robot’s hand giving the middle finger and it said “computer, enhance” with a bunch of other flavor text on it. I remember finishing it being like “this is so smart and kinda hilarious, I feel like I snapped here” and it maybe got like less than 100 likes. Meanwhile poster no. 362 which has a skeleton laying down where I wrote “whats the rush? We all end up in the same place anyway” is currently sitting over 12,000 likes on my instagram and people message me about wanting to buy that one all the time. I designed that one so quickly and thought it was basically a throwaway and its probably the poster that most of my fanbase associates with me. It’s kinda funny to think about how your audience also defines your art sometimes. I’m not upset about it, because no matter what all these pieces are a part of me. I went though a lot of stylistic changes throughout the project too, and because of that I feel like number 365 is also one of my favorites, just because it culminated what I was doing at the time and still am doing now, and its mostly just this big graveyard image of people mourning the end of the project, and I kind of dig thinking of it that way? That the project was a thing that was alive for a year and then it kind of died, and I was sad when it ended but I knew I couldn’t do it forever, it had its place and I needed it to end to move on to other things, like having my gallery.
Can you walk us through your creative process for this challenge? How did your approach evolve over the course of the year, and how do you plan to apply what you've learned to future projects?
My process for this project was kind of….a lack of process? I wanted to make sure I didn’t overthink things so I would really just leave up to whatever popped into my head the day of, and I would just jump into photoshop and start making stuff. I eventually would keep a notepad in my phone of vague prompts, these prompts would either be something I said/ heard, or maybe just a general thought of mine that I’d like to turn into a poster one day and I would just jot them down and every day when I needed inspiration for a new poster, I would just reference that note. I made sure to keep the prompts extremely vague so they could be open enough for me to take anywhere, most of them weren’t even complete sentences or grammatically correct. It would be stuff like “john wick candle” which led to poster no.33 that says “is this john’s wick? I haven’t seen the movie”. Other times I would look at prompts and have no idea what I’m gonna do with them so i’d just skip and go to another one that resonated with me more. I still have a bunch of prompts in that list that aren’t crossed off, so I may turn them into designs some day. But each day was the same process, open the list, see if I liked anything that day or wanted to come up with a new prompt on the spot, and then I dove into photoshop. Almost all my posters were done in one sitting too, there were maybe only a few I could count on one hand that I worked at different moments.
Design 357 out 356 ( Art courtesy of Roemello Agjmurati)
Staying motivated must have been challenging—how did you keep yourself accountable? What strategies or routines did you develop to ensure you stayed on track throughout the year?
To fight my usual insecurity and perfectionism, I set a hard rule for myself that I would never spend more than 2-3 hours on a poster. It helped me stay in the moment too, since every day I had a deadline I had to meet. The other thing was I always made my posters the same day I posted them. People would be shocked when I told them “oh I gotta cut our hangout short I need to go make today’s printmello poster” and they’d respond with “you didnt make one yet? I thought you’d plan them in advance”. I liked being in the moment for better or for worse, it just felt more real to me, even if it was exhausting. I almost never made my posters in advance either unless I knew I’d be traveling, like when I was in Paris & Amsterdam this past October for a belated honeymoon with my wife Emily, she would not have been a fan of me working on my laptop every day while in another country. You never know when inspiration hits though, some days I really played it down to the wire too, I definitely remember posting some designs at 11:59pm and being like “still counts if its posted today”, but I never missed a day.
What music accompanied your creative sessions? Did certain genres or artists help fuel your creativity during this intense period?
I wouldn’t say any specific artists or genres were a key part of the 365 project but I would definitely say music as a whole was such an important aspect of me making these posters. I’ve got an absolutely horrible attention span, I can’t get anything done unless I have music blasting in my ears otherwise I get distracted. So music has always been part of my creative process, it might have to do with me being a musician too. I’ve got a personal thing about me where I try to check out one new album / artist a week, so every time I worked on my posters I’d be like “ok lets spin something to block out the world.” I listened to a lot of Lil Uzi Vert, Touche Amore, Sweet Pill, Sampha, Can’t Swim, & Hot Mulligan, since most of them had new releases last year. I was all over the place. I will say though that when I’m feeling really distracted, the noisier the better. I remember being stuck on the collab release from JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown “Scaring the hoes”, that album definitely got me through a lot of posters for a while.
Design 286 out 356 ( Art courtesy of Roemello Agjmurati)
Were there recurring themes or motifs in your work? Did you find yourself revisiting specific ideas or visual elements throughout the challenge?
So much of my stuff was about me reacting to the world around me & current events. I remember when I found out about Jordan Neely being killed on the F train, I made a poster of his name with a halo over it. I was tired of hearing of yet another black man being killed and his name becoming a hot button topic for “public safety” that I didn’t want to make anything that day, but I did commit to making posters about how I felt, and I was definitely feeling a lot about that at the time. Quite a few of my posters are about the genocide in Gaza and reconciling with me being on social media for inspiration but also scrolling past realtime war atrocities, its not a good duality, it wasn’t really good for my head, and it’s not something I can individually fix, but it’s also something I didn’t want to pretend wasn’t happening either. I wanted things to be real, I wanted people to see these posters and get a sense of me and what I care about, so some of my posters are dumb jokes, basically memes, others are about racism and injustice, others are little moments to maybe inspire people to get outside of their comfort zones, and others are about me wondering if I’m good enough to be doing anything at all and if any of my efforts matter. it’s inconsistent, but its real, and thats me I guess.
Tell us about your upcoming show featuring artwork from your 365-day challenge. What can attendees expect, and will any of the pieces be available for purchase?"
The show is called “365, proof of life” and its gonna be a 3 day gallery at Hub 17 in Staten Island where all 365 of my posters will be printed and on display for the first time ever. It’s got a lot of personal meaning to me because I used to book shows for my old band at Hub 17 when there were like no other places that would allow all ages shows, so it just felt right to have it happen there. Ken, the owner, cares a lot about the arts community and more people need to know about it. I’ll also have some of the more popular ones available for sale in a few sizes + some other merch items like tote bags. It’ll also be the only place where I’ll be selling prints of the poster that I made to announce the show, so there’s a little in-person incentive for you to come out. Everything is in limited quality but if there's something you want that I don’t have, I also will be putting new inventory on my online shop too.
"365, Proof of Life" an exhibit by Printmello on display August 29th - August 31st at Hub 17 ( Flyer courtesy of Roemello Agjmurati)
Where can people find you online?
My latest up to date stuff is always on IG @printmello , it also has a linktree in the bio that has other links like my main website https://printmello.space , my online shop https://printmello.myshopify.com where you can buy some prints from my 365 project, and some other links to an interview I did with Made of Millions foundation about the work we did together last april where I designed their Mental Health Month Merchandise. If you wanna keep up with my new band too, we’re on IG @milkglass.band and have our first show coming up one week after the gallery, September 6th at Mother Pugs Saloon. We’ll be playing with King Like Mom & Modern Day Machines for their dual release show.
Jahtiek Long is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, community organizer, and co-founder of the Shaolin Art Party. He loves photographing the island and playing the ukulele. Jahtiek is passionate about shifting the narrative surrounding Staten Island and showcasing the vibrance of the borough. He’s also really excited about all the new Ramen spots popping up. @Jahtieklong