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MICHAEL CRIGLER
Mr. Birdhead
BY CAMILLE DODERO

Michael Crigler has more projects than a ghetto. The 26-year-old Brighton resident co-founded the Allston design firm Prank. He runs his own fashion line, Birdhead Design. He’s a prolific painter. He composes experimental poetry — and self-publishes it under the imprint Be Free Press. He sketches. He plays guitar in a nameless band. He designs letter-pressed stationery. And he’s angling to make the "man bag" popular.

A tiny-framed vegan with a floppy faux-hawk, Crigler looks younger than he is — maybe 18. His main gig is Prank, which features a client list that includes Fenway High School, Regeneration Tattoo, New England Comics, and the Phoenix.

But last Friday afternoon at Prank Design’s Harvard Avenue office — marked by a second-floor window with an enormous orange jackalope overlay — it’s clear that Birdhead is his baby. Crigler pulls T-shirts off a rack: a brown monkey face with a pink speech bubble that reads I AM WHAT I AM; a human skull implanted in a wormy apple. From a stack of bags, he shows off an Astroturf-laced handbag with a strawberry-vine pattern. And then he gets to the "man bags," with darker shades and more masculine images. Crigler explains, "In London or Paris or LA or New York, there are always dudes carrying bags with them. I carry bags with me. In Boston, dudes aren’t carrying bags. It’s like, ‘Get over it — it’s a bag.’ "

Crigler conceived the "fine-art" fashion line three years ago while living in Japan. (He moved there for a girl, natch.) At first, Birdhead was Crigler and a sewing machine. Three years later, Birdhead is a team of six, a line of T-shirts, bags, screenprints, and stationery, and an upcoming art/fashion show that’s scheduled for next spring in Tokyo. If Crigler sometimes frames Birdhead like a marketer ("It’s not only an aesthetic, but it’s like, um, a way of life," he says.), it’s probably because he holds an associates’ degree in business. "A lot of people are like, ‘You’re an artist and you went to business school? You’re a wack-job.’ Yeah, I was. But I knew I’d need it."

On his coffee table is Freedom is a Dream, a self-published CD that includes four of Crigler’s spoken-word tracks and flashcard-style poem snippets. The disc’s letter-pressed packaging and card design is so impressive that the "art piece" won Crigler his second BoNE Show award, a design honor bestowed by the Boston Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Sitting on the couch in Prank’s lobby, Crigler deciphers one of his cluttered, rebus-like poems. At first, the placard looks like a typography jumble. Then as he reads — I have seen grown men cling to their youth — a high-top Reebok emerges — as if they had just been kicked in the balls — then a pair of rubber gloves. "Once you read it, you kind of see that it’s not just a bunch of chaos — it’s actually a poem," he explains, citing Futurist founder Filippo Marinetti as inspiration. "You have to spend a lot of time with the poem, therefore you have to spend a lot of time with the message."

Freedom is a Dream wasn’t Crigler’s first record. In a previous incarnation, he was guitarist/vocalist of the Florida-based emo-pop band Forever and a Day. Crigler left the now-defunct band a few years ago, after it released two albums on Eulogy Recordings, the Floridian label that first signed Dashboard Confessional and New Found Glory. These days, Crigler plays in a nameless rock band.

"Most people, when they create so much they get burned out," he says. "I just happen to always have been able to play music and then paint and then go design a logo and then write a poem." He adds, "When I’m creating so much, it inspires me to create more."

Visit www.prankdesign.com | www.birdheaddesign.com| www.freedomisadream.com.


Issue Date: September 30 - October 6, 2005
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