We came across Joshua Smith, better known as Hydro74 on behance.net a few years ago and have been following the evolution of his work ever since. He is truly a master of his craft and is well respected throughout the art and graphic design community.

Hydro74 took the time between his busy schedule with clients such as Nike, Electric Visual, Burton, Levis, and Flat Fifty to do this exclusive interview with us, enjoy.

How did you come up with the name Hydro74?

It was random to be honest. I used a different site when I was first starting out and found the name to be to hard to write and remember when telling people about it. When I was switching names, I just liked the name Hydro for some reason. The 74 part is just a really great number for personal reasons.

What city do you call home?

Orlando. It’s a great city, and great surrounding communities around it. Also there are some amazingly talented artist that are here as well. You have Horsebites, Derek Deal, Dres13, Troy White and many others. If ever in town, hit up the gallery Neon Forest, they know what is what.

We know that you periodically release mixtapes online…what’s the story behind your mixtapes and when did you first decide to share them with the world?

The mixtapes are just a way for me to break away from work and do something that I enjoy. I’ve always enjoyed mixing and I’m far from a professional at it. Recently my good friend Adrian from Revolt Marketing started DJ’ing and got to open up for Aoki, Treasure Fingers, Le Castle Vania and many others, so that encouraged me to do more with it. I doubt I’ll ever really do anything with it, it’s just a hobby. I just like to do them.

How long have you been an artist?

Well, exactly what do you mean by artist? I drew for the school newspaper in high school and won several awards for art done up in Art Class in Jr. High. Actually won more awards than Zombieyeti (who I went to Jr High with) one year. Professionally, since 1998-99. Hydro74 came to life in 2001 I believe so ever since been doing it.

We think that your art is very unique and creative, what fuels your creativity?

This is going to sound odd, but the clients. A majority of time they have some great ideas and really push me to explore different ideas. Over the past few years I’ve discovered I have a limited amount of time I’m able to search and research styles. If I see something I really like I’ll study it a little to see what works and what doesn’t.

I believe the core part of my creative ideas stem from a mixture of Ornate values via Obey and Aaron Horkey to mixing in solid line work like Maxx242, Mike Giant, Rick Griffin & Jim Phillips but yet pushing my own ideas and agendas into it. The last thing I want to be in a emulator of styles. Every time I open up Illustrator I want to do something different and push myself to explore different ideas. The moment you stop challenging yourself is the same moment when you need to stop designing.

How do you overcome creative blocks?

Step away from the computer. Not everyday is going to be a amazingly creative day. If you are not feeling it, you are wasting time and the end piece is not going to reflect. Good example on my end. Recently I had a Nike project come in where I had no clue what the Creative Director was seeking. All I knew is that he wanted the Nike and Nike Swoosh logo bold and to reflect the AF1.

I had to step away, but I was always thinking about. Finally, a few days later while driving to get coffee, it dawned on me on what to do. I did it, sent it over and he was stoked on it. So yeah, just step away. To hell with deadlines. There are times when things are not going to make sense and all you can do is just communicate it with the Creative Director and see if there is some communication that you can go back and forth with to fuel some ideas.

You have done a lot of design work for big brands over the years. What was your favorite project and brand you worked with?

Not sure to be honest. I’m always happy when the project ends to be honest. It’s kind of like reading a book. Once it’s done, it’s done, you move on to the next thing. I tend to reflect on previous work and tell myself damn, I screwed that up, look at those mistakes…Nike Stuff is always fun to work on, anything from Endeavor is a challenge but fun. My favorite projects are probably the small ones with friends at various companies like Anarchy and Flat Fitty.

A lot of the brands you’ve done design work for are part of the action sports industry. Do you skateboard, surf, or snowboard?

Nope. I’m afraid I’ll try something and kill myself or break something. I have plenty of product samples in from BMX, Snowboards and Skateboards that I can go out and just do it, but find myself more into sitting at the computer and doing a illustration or some type. A little screwed up eh! I love the sports and met a few pros, but never really got involved.

How long have you been designing custom fonts? What has been your most popular one to date?

For quite a while. I got fontographer ages ago and tested out some generic styles. Got hooked. I believe I took about 4-5 years of not doing them then recently I got hooked on developing them again. I got tired of trying to find fonts for projects that I needed style wise so said screw it and made some. As far as the most popular? Not sure, don’t really keep track of that. I would say the free ones to be honest. I know the scripts are doing well. Check them all out at my online store.

What’s the story behind Brass Tack Apparel and Legacy of Defeat?

Brass Tack Apparel is a side apparel company I’m developing up. It’s nothing much right now but been getting some good response from it. I just wanted to create my own line and see if I couldn’t build something up to be substantial. At least that is the primary goal. Currently the core basics on it are still being defined, but over all, it’s going strong.

Legacy of Defeat use to be the idea for this book section I was going to do. I ended up getting caught up in my main work that I decided the best direction is to build it up at a font foundry since I have over 50 fonts. Hopefully I’ll have it up and running before too long. The idea of Legacy of Defeat for me at the beginning was just to create a sub section of my work. I believe everyone has a long list of things that have defeated them in the past to where they outnumber the successes in life. So in a way we all suffer from this life long legacy of defeat. But honestly to, I thought it sounded rad, so had to buy the name.

These two things are just side projects to take my mind off of core creative projects. You never know how something will be received till you try it out. Sometimes risk is just step in the right direction.

Are you working on any personal projects right now? What are they?

Not really. The biggest thing I’ve worked on recently was prepping things for gallery shows. Doing a lot of Wheat Pastes pieces to show off. The other things I’m working on is a colab with Flat Fitty doing a few artist series driven pieces to show off their abilities. Pretty excited about that project.

You seem to have a lot of different projects going on at once, how do you find enough time to work on them all?

I work quick and ask the correct questions to clients I guess. I would rather be stressed with too much than stressed with too little. And to be honest, I enjoy having a mixture of things going on. From action sports pieces to corporate logos for EA Sports to geometric detailed illustration for Nike. The diversity allows me to involve everything all together to offer up to a client. It’s weird but sometimes the mixture between things blend into one another and you then develop something interesting and unique.

What do you listen to while you’re creating?

Lately…A lot of DJ Mixes or my own mixes, or put something on that is relaxing. Been listening to a lot of Hammock, UNKLE, The Knife, and Fever Ray lately.

Do you feel that collaborating with other artists is important?

Always. A difference in perspective is important and offers up ideas.

What artists inspire you?

Hard to say. It’s pretty subjective. It’s a mixture of tattoo artist to old 60′s hot rod artist to current trend artist.

What goals (artistically) do you have for the next few years?

Want to start exploring some 3d into vector and getting more into minor motion pieces. But really, much of the same. I love me some vector and love me some type, don’t see that fading out too quickly yet.

Do you have any advice for future artists that want to make a career out of their art?

1: Set daily, monthly, and year end goals. 2: Set a long term goal, may it be where you want to end up at in your career or who you want to work for. 3: Work hard. Any designer who’s been doing it for years knows it took a lot of time to get to where they are. 4: Drop the ego. 5: This career takes a lot of time. 6: DO NOT RIP OFF OR LIVE TRACE. It’s bad business.

Is there anything else about you that you would like the world to know?

Not really. Follow me on twitter, I drop free files from time to me and various things that might be useful. That is about it.

Hydro74 wanted to share some of his current mixtapes and fonts with you guys. Make sure to download them if you haven’t already. For more information and artwork from Hydro74, please visit hyro74.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him on twitter.