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To coincide with our tee release, ‘Flow’, we caught up with longtime friend and designer of this drop, ROACHI. It had been a few years since our last interview (which you can read here), so we covered new ground — New York, Sydney, work ethic, process, and of course, flow.

**Our current tee release ROACHI ‘Bones’ is available now in tees & hoods. 72 hours only. Get yours here. Don’t miss out.

ROACHI is a graffiti writer, illustrator, and cultural paraphernalia collector. Born in Tokyo, raised in Sydney, living and painting in Brooklyn, New York since 2014. He’s been writing since 1996 and has painted in 23 countries.

Artillery worked with ROACHI on ‘Flow’, a bold lettering-based design that pays homage to our shared roots in graffiti and nods to iconic graffiti-inspired hip hop music logos.

Here’s our convo:

✨ You can grab our ROACHI ‘Flow’ tee drop here. It’s a timed release, so don’t sleep on it. Shop now before it’s gone for good.

Interview by Luke Shirlaw for Artillery Worldwide – Images courtesy of ROACHI.

Luke Shirlaw: You were born in Tokyo, raised in Sydney, and now you’ve been deep in Brooklyn, New York, for over a decade. Three cities with completely different cultures. Do you feel like you belong to any one of them, or are you permanently in between? A permanent visitor?

ROACHI: Cities have been where I love to be. I don’t remember Tokyo at all, as we left at a young age. I remember being back to visit many years later and it felt very alien to me.

Sydney will always be a special place – I have family, friends, and history there.

New York has been good to me. Although I feel like an Australian living in New York, I have created a life here, and it is where I call home now.

LS: What was it like when you first moved to New York after spending most of your life in Australia? Did it take a while to find your feet? How is it being an Australian in New York?

R: Whatever I thought was going to happen was not what ended up happening. I dove straight in, meeting people, interviewing for work, moving sublet to sublet until I gained a credit score and could get a lease that I wouldn’t get kicked off.

I got a job in graphics fairly quickly, thanks to a good friend. That job began to shape my career and my life here socially.

LS: New Yorkers always talk about missing ‘the old New York’. Now that you’ve been there a while, I’m curious how you feel the city has changed since you arrived. And how has your PERCEPTION of the city changed?

R: In my 11 years here, I have noticed how expensive the cost of living has become.

The sticker price in the store is crazy these days, and the bill at the end of a decent meal is psycho with tax and tip.

The areas I’ve lived in, or visited, have all changed quite significantly in that time. Shops and restaurants constantly open and close. Never-ending development. A constant push outwards as prices go up.

Graffiti-wise, Jetpacks were the big thing I noticed here when I arrived. Ten years later, rappels have really entered the scene and changed the look of the city.

The title for ‘most up’ in the city seems to always be contested. Seeing the subway scene booming over the years has been great to watch.

LS: You were back in Sydney recently, same question, what’s different from the Sydney that you came up in? How is painting in NY, compared to Sydney?

R: Sydney felt very clean in comparison to Brooklyn, as most would expect. I also noticed it has become really expensive to live there. Their prices look like Manhattan prices!

I love to see the well-known names I grew up with still doing their thing in Sydney. And it’s good to see fresh names I don’t know going hard.

One thing I noticed over the years is that Sydney people paint fast. In NY, I tend to be finished first, and it’s usually commented on, while in Sydney, I had to keep up the pace with the lads.

LS: My friend Claudio once said to me that having American bravado with an Australian work ethic is a powerful combination. What’s your perspective on this idea?

R: I thought my work ethic was solid when I got here. It was a shock to my system how many unpaid late nights and weekend hours I would have to work to stay on my visa at the job I had.

I’m not sure I was ever made to work that hard in Sydney. Now it’s just regular to be working at all hours of the day and weekends where needed. New York’s work ethic is on another level. As for the bravado, it follows the successful choices I have made. And retreats when there are lessons. Being humble is important here.

LS: You have two brothers – one is also a working artist, and the other is a musician. All of you (in my opinion) have achieved a high level of success (and skill) in your chosen craft. Were your parents creative? Was there something in the household that gave you the freedom to pursue a creative direction, or did you corrupt each other?

R: My parents are conceptually creative but not so much executionally. A perk of having three kids is that they can do all those things for you when you need them – logos, websites, music.

My mum was very encouraging of us all to pursue things we were passionate about. It hasn’t been an obvious path for any of us, and we are all admittedly still figuring out each step as it comes. They have always supported it all.

LS: Most of my life, it’s true that my process could best be described as ‘organised confusion’. I’ve become very aware that having systems can actually provide space for creativity to thrive, which is a LOT better than drowning in chaos. When we were speaking about this drop, you mentioned that you have a really good workflow for getting through your (corporate) design work. Can you speak on the idea of using systems to bolster your output, and if you’ve found any power in systemising creativity?

R: I work as a graphic designer, building brand assets and creating systems for them to execute. Each brand has their own unique issues and requirements, so it helps me to map and structure out the entire project, so I know the areas I need to focus on. My attention jumps around, but the system ropes it down to where it needs to be.

LS: Let’s talk about the new graphic that you just did for us. It came together pretty quickly, and I’m really happy with it. You titled it ‘Flow’, which fits the graphic’s curves, swirls, and colour palette. It also suits the process of creating the graphic. It happened pretty organically after our initial conversation, and you just locked in to some kind of flow state and came back with THE GOODS. Of course, I then attached a Bruce Lee quote to it, which I reference often as ‘flow like water’. (The actual quote: “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.” –Bruce Lee).

R: Ha! Yeah, you asked me, and I gave you three options ready for print in a few hours. We went with the more flowy piece as it felt the strongest of the three. Again, a designer thing is providing options to compare and help you confirm your choice.

I animated it with water splashes to make the visual more exciting online. I’m feeling that animated mockups are the move. I like thinking about how a graphic would move and what it sounds like.

LS: This leads to a couple of questions: firstly, what do you think of when you hear the word ‘flow’ and what’s your perspective on ‘flow state’, the zone, and where ideas come from (source/ the muse etc)?

R: Flowstate, I don’t always have it, but when I do, I am very productive. Balance is what I aim for. Trying not to burn out.

LS: Secondly, the name ROACHI didn’t exactly come from your love of The State of Origin, so did you ever smoke your way into any Eastern philosophy? Or watch Bruce Lee movies as a kid? Shit, we all watched Monkey Magic, right?

R: Roachi, like any tag name, has become abstract for me. It stops reading as the word it was designed for and starts feeling like the personality of the person doing it. My fave ref is Roach from Point Break.

LS: I found a classic t-shirt you designed the other day. It’s a Wu-Tang logo flip that you designed a long time ago for a restaurant client. It was one of my most-worn shirts back when you were still in Sydney. As a designer, how important is a good logo flip? Is there any juice left in that orange, or are flips pretty impossible these days?

R: Flips can still be done in certain instances where it makes sense or is unexpected; it just needs to be strong.

I like the combinations of logos and brands and recontextualising them. I have certain non-corporate clients who still love flips. In my corporate world, there is zero flipping.

LS: When preparing for this conversation, I jumped back into the old interview we did in 2021. You named a bunch of music artists that you were listening to back then. I noticed that one of them was Bad Bunny. Fast forward to yesterday, and he just delivered a definitive performance at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. It was quite the Talking Point in anticipation. I assume you tuned in? New York has a big Puerto Rican community; I imagine there’d be quite a buzz in the Big Apple about it.

R: Yes indeed, Bad Bunny was the soundtrack to many weekends painting in Bushwick with my people. Puerto Rico is a special part of the States that I have been fortunate to visit and paint several times. It is a tropical paradise with endless things to paint.

LS: You told us last time about following a crackhead named X through a bando who led you to premium painting spots. That’s such a New York moment. What’s the weirdest or most memorable encounter you’ve had in the city that had nothing to do with painting?

R: To pick one NY moment is a hard task when most things link back to painting somehow.

Recently, I learned my apartment was formerly owned by a famous writer’s younger brother.

A friend recently visited me and said, ‘I’ve been to many barbeques here before’. Small world.

LS: When you started writing in 1996, what did you think you’d be doing 30 years later? Is this it? Reckon you’ll still be doing it in another 30?

R: Yes, it is now 30 years I’ve have been painting. I had no idea it would take me this far, or that I’d be doing it this long.

I have connected with so many great people and it has brought a lot to my life in a positive way. I can’t see it continuing into my senior years, but who knows.

LS: What’s a lesson you wish you’d learned earlier in your career?

R: A lesson I learned was that it’s all made up, so don’t sweat it.

LS: You mentioned that you’ve always had an outlet outside of painting, be it zines, tee projects, etc, but you don’t have something right now. How important is it to ‘have something’ and how do you figure out what the next thing is?

R: I mostly only paint graffiti as ‘art’ when I’m not designing for clients. I have been learning water gilding, a skill I’ve always been fascinated by. It’s more a personal endeavour than something purposeful.

I’m building a decent collection and may try to show at an independent space rather than a gallery at some point when it feels right.

LS: You’ve painted in over 20 countries. What feeds your work? When you stop moving, does the work stop too?

R: Painting in New York feels pinnacle to me and maybe that has quietened the need to paint in every country I visit now as a result. Some trips are meant for relaxing.

Our ‘BONES’ tee by ROACHI is available now as a timed release, and then it’s gone for good. Don’t miss out.

Get yours here.