These young entrepreneurs have parlayed their innate creativity into an up and coming business
Drawing on street walls and lampposts is still considered vandalism in the Philippines, but a group of young artists are making big bucks by bringing their street art to the corporate world.
Consisting of 11 young graphic designers, Web developers, and writers, WeeWillDoodle! has been making waves by applying its unique form of doodles to companies and art fairs looking for an edgy and youthful feel for their products.
A HOBBY TAKES A BUSINESS TURN
Cofounder Paolo Ferrer, who admits being surprised by the group’s new-found popularity, says that the group was formed simply as a way of letting off steam with friends after a hard day’s work.
“We started doodling as a group around April 2007,” he recalls. “Our first collaborations were done on cartolina and bond paper. We passed pieces of paper around in the office while taking a break from our hectic schedules, and gradually that piece of paper became bigger and bigger. I guess everyone knows the feeling of bliss that comes over you once you get lost in a doodle that you’re making at the back of your school notebooks.”
Ferrer describes how their big break came: “A friend, Nelz Yumul, had an art exhibit in May 2007 and he had the wild idea of including our doodles as ‘fillers’ for his solo show. People reacted positively to our doodles, and before we knew it, we already had a group exhibit in the works ourselves. We called it ‘WeeWillDoodle!’. It was supposed to be only a one-time thing—an ‘art fling’ for many of us who were not deeply into the local art scene.”
But the exhibit generated such a healthy buzz that corporate sponsors and clients were soon knocking on WeeWillDoodle!’s doors.
Says Ferrer: “I think people can relate to our work because it’s all hand-drawn using mostly stuff you can get at National Book Store or 7-11 [the convenience store chain]. It’s not a cold computer-generated image. There’s an honest, human element to the work that makes it fresh to people who are bombarded by visuals made with the use of Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.”
ON THE UPSWING
Since then, the group— armed only with different colored pens and markers—has worked for companies and government agencies like Ecko Unlimited, IPO Philippines, MTV, T-shirt Project, Tomato, Dentsu-Indio, Canon, HP, Manila FAME, Manila NOW, The Podium Adidas, and Starbucks. They charge anywhere from P10,000 to P100,000 for making the desired doodles on surfaces that their clients provide them. As proof of their growing popularity, WeeWillDoodle now does its own shows at least once a week.
Due to their growing popularity, the group has also started selling personalized items through their website (www.weewilldoodle.com) that includes toys, t-shirts, and shoes that the team has ‘doodled’ on.
A FORM OF RELIEVING TENSION
Most of the group’s core members are graphic artists for television station GMA 7 : Paolo Ferrer, Nelz Yumul, Kyx Castañeda, Jhoan Medrano, Obey Sarmiento, Brenda Goco, Julius Sebastian, Mark Ganzon, Angela Angeles, Cammy Francisco, and Jomike Tejido.
Almost all of them have day jobs and consider WeeWillDoodle! simply as a form of relieving tension. But as the group becomes more popular and as the demand for its services grows, it now recognizes the need to professionalize their gigs and to run them like a regular business.
Ferrer explains: “We all have day jobs and we primarily do this for fun; to us, it’s more recreational than anything else. But recently, we’ve been getting more and more offers to do corporate gigs and events. It has reached a point that we need to start acting like a legitimate business entity. We are actually in the process of restructuring our team so that we can be more business-like without sacrificing our core principles. Ultimately, though, it’s still about promoting the importance of creativity and showing people how much fun it is to be creative and spontaneous.”
He says that whenever WeeWillDoodle! is doing ‘gigs’, it makes an effort to get the people involved in the piece so they can truly feel that they have mutually created it with the group. “It’s a collaboration between us, the client, and the audience,” he explains. “The social networking sites on the web are also helping us a lot in this collaborative aspect of our work. In particular, our Multiply account is bursting with activity. It’s really great that we have the means to communicate with friends and potential clients on the Internet.”
