Home The Story Community Our Blog Connect
Previous Interview
Featured Collaborator - Chad Kouri
Chad Kouri is a living, breathing, mobile human being in the great city of Chicago. When not working on commissioned illustration and design work, hand lettering poorly spelled phrases,art directing Proximity Magazine, rockin out on found object and collage work, or blog jammin, space touring, curating and high-fivin with The Post Family crew, he hibernates like the great grizzly.
Live Now: How did you hear about Live Now?
I believe my good friend Will Bryant turned me on to it. This has more-or-less been my mantra
for the past few years more specifically the past two since my best friend passed away in a
tragic bicycle accident. When I read the story of Eric and his cancer diagnosis I was immediately influenced to drop him an email and see how I could be involved. It's really unfortunate that we had to go through something like lives being threatened or taken to really realize that we need
to live every day to the fullest and if I could be involved in getting others to realize this without
the drama I was all hands on deck!
Live Now: Briefly describe the message and process behind our collaboration piece?
"Relax with What You Have" and "Overflowing Optimism"
It's really funny that Eric picked the quotes he did for me. Both are similar to my response tomost problems I run into which is, for lack of better words, "It could be worse". Before I got the quotes I knew that I couldn't just hand letter some phrases. I can do that all day every day
and I assumed so could most participants. I really wanted to push myself to bring it to the next level. I've always wanted to set up little weird still lives of stuff and collaborate with a
photographer to shoot them, in this case Ben Speckmann. When Eric and I started talking I
knew this would be a good chance to propose that process for no other reason than it gave me
an excuse to follow through with the idea. The Relax image was pretty simple. What do you need to relax? A pillow. Let's screenprint the message on a pillow case and shoot it. The Optimism
scene was a little more disconnected. I've always enjoyed going out to eat by myself. It is where
I think about everything that is going on without distractions from anything familiar. Therefore
I usually come up with new ideas (or dwell on old ones) and figured what better prompt to start thinking about bigger and better things than a strategically placed message on a place matte.
Live Now: What inspires your happiness?
I really love seeing people doing something they love regardless of a return of investment. Unfortunately these opportunities for most are few and far between so how can I really EVER
be upset when I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing all them time! Okay, most of the time.
I've been extremely fortunate to have a community of very supportive friends and family
around at all times. If I ever do get a little down (and we all do) someone is always around to
say "Hey, it could be worse!"
— Visit Chad's Portfolio
— Chad's collaboration, "Overflowing Optimism" can be seen on our homepage,
his other piece, "Relax with what You Have" will be released in April 2011 when our book
with HOW Magazine publishes.