Author’s Note

This essay is included in the book By the Skin of Our Teeth: The Art and Design of Morning Breath, the first definitive monograph collecting the work of Doug Cunningham and Jason Noto.

I first met Doug and Jason back in 2007, when I interviewed them for a profile I was writing for Juxtapoz. We hit it off and stayed in touch. Fast forward nearly 10 years, to 2016, and the pair asked me to write about the origins of their artistic practice for a forthcoming monograph.

Morning Breath

If they weren’t such cynics, Doug Cunningham and Jason Noto might have to admit that their story has a tinge of fate. Born four months apart on different sides of the country, the two friends almost lived parallel lives during childhood and adolescence. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in working-class families just outside major cities, both had fathers who worked in paper- or print-related industries, both dreamed of finding a way to make art their livelihood, and both were instinctively drawn to lo-fi, cartoon-like imagery that channeled an acerbic wit. To them, art was what they saw on punk rock flyers and airbrushed lowriders and heavy metal album covers. Though they didn’t meet until 1995, Noto and Cunningham instantly felt a kinship: They saw the world in the same way, spoke the same language, and innately understood each other. Since their early days together in the art department at Think Skateboards in the mid-1990s to their partnership as Morning Breath since 2002, they have forged one of the most distinctive visual styles of the past 20 years.

It’s hard to say if Cunningham and Noto would ever have become interested in their craft if not for their fathers, who both provided the raw materials they’d need to explore art. Cunningham’s father worked in a paper factory in South San Francisco, and would bring home oversized drawing pads and sheets of sticker paper for his son to play with. His earliest memories of drawing involve sketching Donald Duck’s nephews’ heads on fluorescent sticker paper, cutting them out, and affixing them to the headboard of his drab, olive-green crib. Before he had even started school, he’d sit with a sketchpad in front of the television and draw his favorite cartoon characters—from Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound to Scooby-Doo and Underdog.

Growing up just south of San Francisco, in Daly City, Doug Cunningham soaked up the emerging cholo and lowrider culture in his neighborhood, and some of his earliest artistic pursuits reflected that environment. Around third or fourth grade, he started hanging out with kids in his neighborhood who were also immersed in cholo culture and dressed in oversized white T-shirts, creased Ben Davis pants, and low-top Chuck Taylors. “All the guys used to draw on their T-shirts and the flipped-up brims of their baseball caps with Sharpies,” Cunningham said. “They’d write the name of the neighborhood cliques and draw stylized characters based on whatever their nickname was.” Since Cunningham was already skilled at drawing, he ingratiated himself to many of the other kids by illustrating T-shirts for them.

A few years later, around the age of 12, Cunningham had his mind blown when one of the neighborhood kids showed him a drawing he had done of graffiti-style lettering that was a riff on Malcolm McClaren’s Duck Rock album art. It was the first example he’d ever seen of New York–style graffiti—a style that would stick with him as an influence. Until then he’d only encountered a cholo style of writing referred to as “placas” or “hit-up”: individual nicknames, bold block-style lettering, Old English-style writing. Inspired by New York City graffiti artists who were spray painting subway cars top-to-bottom, and creating elaborate murals on vacant buildings, Cunningham began to develop his own style. He soaked up any bits of graffiti that he could find in books, magazines, and album art, which often felt like a scavenger hunt in the pre-Internet world. As a teenager in the San Francisco graffiti scene of the mid-1980s, he soon gained fame as Dug-One, developing a reputation as one of the top graffiti writers in the city, along with his crew TMF (The Mellow Fellows). His iconic “Free South Africa” piece, a collaborative effort with local SF writer Slimm, was even immortalized in the opening pages of Spraycan Art—Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff’s seminal book on graffiti culture.

Jason Noto (front) and Doug Cunningham (back) at work on a mural.

By his late teens, Cunningham was taking art more seriously, attending formal drawing and painting classes at a local community college. He was also discovering artists outside of graffiti culture who inspired him, particularly a wave of lowbrow artists whose work was influenced by comic books, tattoo design, toys, and cartoons. One such influence was Robert Williams, a painter and cartoonist who abandoned the fine art world to work as an art director for custom hot-rod maker Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in the mid-1960s, and who later founded Juxtapoz magazine. “Williams’s drawings inspired me to focus on pushing ink,” Cunningham said. “I loved his retro 1950s inking style, with its heavy darks and extremely sharp brushed lines.” Another key influence during those years was graphic artist Charles Burns, whose avant-garde comics in the early 1980s also featured high-contrast, ink-heavy drawings that illustrated dark, occasionally perverse stories.

Motivated by the idea of becoming a professional illustrator, Cunningham went to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. While he was attending college, he concentrated on finding a practical application for his skills. He opened a shop called Fresh Air, where he airbrushed custom T-shirt designs and took on commissioned work. Later that business evolved into The Wreck Shop, which featured airbrush designs while also branching out to sell graffiti paraphernalia—from markers, specialized spray caps, and spray paint to videotapes and magazines.

Jason Noto’s childhood and adolescence mirrored Cunningham’s. Growing up in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, 13 miles outside of Manhattan, Noto’s father also worked with what later became the tools of his own trade. His father worked in the printing industry and Noto would often visit his workshop admiring the creative atmosphere and materials, including stacks of paper, ink, light boxes, and Exacto blades. “All those materials intrigued me, even as a little kid,” Noto remembered.

     Like most kids who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, Noto cruised around his neighborhood on a BMX bike or skateboard, watched Saturday morning cartoons, and tinkered in his bedroom. Holed up behind closed doors he would draw for hours, imagining his room as an art studio even though pencils and markers were the only tools he had. Starting with sketches of cartoon characters and working up to logos of bands like KISS, AC/DC, and Black Sabbath, Noto began connecting his interests in art and music. By the age of 12, he was painting album covers and band logos on jean jackets for a few friends. Word spread and eventually his room transformed from an imaginary art studio to a bedroom filled with acrylics, airbrushes, and paint-markers.

“But once I got into punk rock and hardcore music,” he said, “that was the portal that opened it all up.” Noto still remembers being 13, holding the Circle Jerks album Group Sex in his hand and marveling at the artwork. Symbols like the Black Flag bars, the Dead Kennedys “DK,” and the Misfits’ crimson ghost were like a secret handshake among those who knew. The images were part of a language that connected with more than just the music. “The Xerox copies, cutting things out, and juxtaposing found objects—it opened my eyes to all these new possibilities,” Noto said. Unlike the elaborate and highly produced artwork on mainstream album covers, punk rock graphics—on flyers and fanzines and album covers—felt visceral, something he could not only relate to but create on his own.

As a teenager, the walls of Noto’s bedroom were covered in flyers collected at local punk rock and hardcore shows as well as the sketches he drew while listening to records. It was at that time he discovered artists like Shawn Kerri, Raymond Pettibon, Pushead, and Winston Smith. The simple but groundbreaking illustration and collage work by these artists fueled Noto’s imagination. He was enthralled by the look and feel of the work—how the style was instantly recognizable and emblematic of a larger scene.

This was the pre-Internet age, of course, before a band’s entire discography could be downloaded in seconds and consumed; before skimming a Wikipedia entry could be passed off as expertise. When Noto was coming of age, tracking down cultural artifacts in order to connect the dots was part of the fun—searching for records and zines, poring over album sleeves and dissecting the visuals. “It got me excited to create,” he said. “I started seeing things not just for what they were but for what they could be—how to change the context and create new meaning.”

     Noto never planned on going to college after high school. Instead he worked construction for a few years. Eventually, however, a friend encouraged him to look into art schools in New York, where he found a graphic arts program at Pratt Institute that turned out to be a good fit. After finishing his degree, he moved to San Francisco in 1995, where he immersed himself in the music and skateboard scene he’d previously only read about in magazines. Not long after, Noto landed his first art job: designing deck graphics for Think Skateboards.

Owned by the late Fausto Vitello, founder of Thrasher magazine and Independent Trucks, Think was a small but tenacious company operated out of an old warehouse near Hunter’s Point. It turned out to be a perfect fit for Noto, and proved to be a crucial training ground. At Think, he designed his own decks, built graphics by hand, and honed his skills. He also had the opportunity to work alongside an impressive roster of artists—from Mike Giant and Chris Cycle to Jeremy Fish and Rob Abeyta. Most notably, however, it’s where he and Doug Cunningham first crossed paths.

“That was the seed,” Noto said. “When Doug arrived, we started experimenting with collaboration.” The pair approached skate deck graphics in tandem, with Noto handling design and Cunningham focused on illustration. It was a unique arrangement. Prior to Cunningham’s arrival, artists at Think had always worked on their own designs—from concept to finished product. With Noto and Cunningham, however, they were open to learning from one another, which helped strengthen their individual skills.

“Doug taught me about illustration, I taught him about graphic design,” Noto said. “We inspired each other.” The pair also found inspiration working with legendary writer, photographer, filmmaker, and artist C.R. Stecyk, III, who at the time headed art direction at Think.

“Stecyk would send us packages in the mail,” Cunningham remembered. “We’d receive these manila envelopes with rough layouts for what he had in mind.” From type treatments to ad designs, Stecyk’s guidance was formative, and marked the first time the pair had worked with an art director. And while Noto and Cunningham’s tenure together at the company lasted only a year, their collaborative work laid a foundation for the future.

After leaving Think in 1998, the pair pursued separate interests. Noto returned to New York and worked at the Drawing Board, Def Jam’s in-house graphic design firm led by legendary artist Cey Adams, while Cunningham remained in San Francisco.

“We never really lost touch,” he said. “By the time Jason was working at Def Jam, he’d hit me up with projects I could jump into—spot illustrations and simple logo designs. We continuously worked back and forth.” In San Francisco, Cunningham became centrally involved in the art direction for DJ Q-Bert’s animated film Wave Twisters (2001), which garnered a cult following on the festival circuit before landing a midnight screening at the Sundance Film Festival.

Though they were living on opposite sides of the country, Noto and Cunningham talked regularly by phone, often toying with the idea of starting their own company. No boss, no bullshit. It sounded like a dream. But each time the topic came up the timing never seemed quite right. After Noto left the Drawing Board to pursue art direction and design on his own, however, it signaled a turning point. His reputation as an in-demand talent had started to create opportunities. Working with high-profile clients like Jay-Z and Eminem, handling art direction and design on such seminal albums as The Blueprint, The Marshall Mathers LP, and The Eminem Show, led to a string of steady music projects—and a workload that quickly became more than one person could handle. That’s when Noto reached out to Cunningham.

“Once Jason had enough work to spread the wealth, I was confident we could grow this idea into something,” said Cunningham, who moved to New York in 2002 with his sights set on the new endeavor. He and Noto opened a studio on Washington Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn, and quickly got to work. The name Morning Breath came soon after. Inspired by a Sweet Diesel song of the same name, the pair adopted the moniker after a long night of bullshitting and listening to records at Noto’s apartment.

For the next several years, Morning Breath focused almost exclusively on art direction and design for album packaging. With each project, the pair further established the studio’s reputation for producing high-caliber work. Word of mouth also played a key role in those early years. This was before the traditional music industry imploded, when the money was still flowing and a design credit on an album sleeve carried weight. Working with both independent and major labels, Noto and Cunningham produced iconic designs for artists like Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, De La Soul, Jimmy Eat World, and Brand New. The pair’s innovative approach to album art even garnered a 2004 Grammy nomination for Best Limited Edition Package Design for their standout work on the AFI album Sing the Sorrow, which featured a cloth-bound book, foil-stamped cover, and embossed pockets. Such close attention to detail and awareness of craft had become hallmarks of Morning Breath’s dogged work ethic.

But while commercial work paid the bills, it didn’t always afford the creative freedom that Noto and Cunningham wanted. In many ways, they felt stifled—unable to pursue more esoteric ideas or graphics that spotlighted the pair’s absurd sense of humor. And running an independent art studio often translated to long hours with little or no downtime. Worried about burnout, the pair began to experiment with personal artwork as an outlet for their unfiltered ideas.

The resulting work, a selection of paintings, graphics silkscreened on plywood, and large-scale installation pieces, signaled a return to the illustration and design influences that colored much of Noto and Cunningham’s childhood and adolescence. It even echoed the irreverent tone of their first collaborations at Think Skateboards nearly a decade earlier. The paintings featured Cunningham’s signature illustrations—old men with dead-eyed gazes, babies brandishing switchblades, and businessmen with crooked smiles—layered against Noto’s hand-rendered typography and images sourced from vintage pin-up magazines and other dime-store ephemera. Nonsensical phrases like “Gorgeous Paradise Girls,” “Dingy Teeth Radiant,” and “Oven Fresh Hot Delicious” became part of a growing lexicon, punctuating the artworks like inside jokes. It was a watershed moment in Noto and Cunningham’s development as artists.

In April of 2005, Morning Breath debuted their paintings in a solo exhibition at Lower Haters, a small boutique and gallery in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Aptly titled Old is New, the exhibition featured a combination of painted enamels, acrylic, and oil-based silkscreen inks on wood. The show opened to critical praise, which encouraged Noto and Cunningham to continue pushing forward. They expanded that body of work with the 2007 release of The Early Bird, the pair’s debut monograph, which chronicled their evolution as gallery artists. A solo exhibition of the same name opened that February in Portland, and that’s when their artistic vision came into clearer focus. The long hours spent dividing time between commercial and personal work had allowed them to create a space uniquely their own in the art world. Response to their exhibitions attracted attention from curators, but has also attracted interest from commercial clients who wanted to apply Morning Breath’s gallery aesthetic to commercial projects. The needle had shifted, transitioning Noto and Cunningham from hired guns to in-demand artists.

“Gallery shows were an important step for us,” Cunningham said. “It allowed us to explore areas we couldn’t with straightforward design or illustration. It also put us in front of a whole new audience. Without the gallery work, we wouldn’t have developed the look that people know us for.”

In the intervening years, Morning Breath took on a diverse slate of projects. They participated in Creative Time’s Dreamland Artist Club, which was curated by Steve Powers and Peter Eleey as a way to reimagine the historic hand-painted signage and advertisements that defined Coney Island for more than a century. Noto and Cunningham also began applying their signature style to T-shirt designs, working closely with collaborators like Sixpack France. More artist-centered opportunities came to them as well, with brands like Absolut Vodka and Zoo York commissioning the pair and giving them freedom to work. Murals have also become central to their art practice, and corporate clients like Viacom and WeWork have enlisted the pair’s talents to reimagine their offices and headquarters.

As Noto and Cunningham have developed their signature aesthetic over the years, no tool has been more important than the silkscreen press in their Brooklyn studio. It’s a process perfectly suited to the pair’s art practice. Not only is the limited color palette in lockstep with their embrace of 1950s-to-1980s Americana, it also dictates their design choices in creative ways. Their affinity for the art form dates back to their days in the art department at Think, when everything was silkscreened—from skate decks to T-shirts.

“Silkscreening is the backbone of Morning Breath in many ways,” Noto said. “We have always loved that on an ambitious day we could come up with a design in the morning, make films, burn screens, and start printing by late afternoon.” That mindset has served the pair well, and their limited-run posters and prints have been showcased at such exhibitions as the American Poster Institute’s Flatstock series and Out of Print: Pushing the Boundaries in the Art of Print at Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

Cunningham has often described the pair’s artistic point of view as “an adult’s world seen through a child’s eyes.” And that may be the most concise way to explain their style, which draws as much on old comic book advertisements, vintage typography, and toy novelty catalogs as it does punk rock flyer design and the antiauthoritarian ethos of skateboard culture. There is a sense of wonder in their work; a playfulness that reminds you life is too short to take it all so seriously. It allows the pair’s commercial projects and personal artworks to inhabit a cultural space both fleeting and eternal. Maybe that’s because their cut-and-paste, DIY aesthetic is as much about nostalgia and pop culture tribute as it is bar stool humor and social observation. None of which ever loses its charm or relevance. The pair’s authenticity and perseverance have informed their art practice for more then 15 years.

“We’ve had great times and lean times,” Cunningham said, referring to the ups and downs that come with running an art studio. It’s a reality the pair has always taken in stride, trying never to sweat it. No matter what level of success Morning Breath has attained, however, as art trends come and go the necessity of paying work remains a constant. It’s how the saying “By the skin of our teeth” became the pair’s mantra.

“Every year we have that moment when things slow down and we’re waiting for the phone to ring,” Cunningham said, laughing. “It’s almost always at Christmastime too.” Eventually a commercial project comes in or the pair receives a new commission, allowing them to put presents under the tree and keep the lights on in the studio. “We’ll hang up the phone and that’s when one of us says it,” Noto joked. “By the skin of our teeth.” Cunningham repeats it back to him, as if closing a circuit to keep the electricity flowing.

All images via Morning Breath