ejnord.com | Fatoe Producers Series

Fatoe (Mike Orduña) is a pioneering artist who, among other accomplishments, has established himself as the preeminent designer of hip hop graphics. The following pieces are a somewhat obscure series of CD covers Mike did around 2004, I think. Prior to this period, Mike primarily focused on graffiti and illustration. But as he shifted into the realm of commercial graphic design, he showed how the chaos of his influences could be channeled into tight compositions: controlled chaos at its finest.

In making the following pieces, Mike took widely available, low-resolution images and converted them to monotone images. And while that, in and of itself, is nothing to write home about, it was how he combined them with various bits of graf, brush strokes, noise, splatter and splashes of color that established his early style. Mike’s ability to juggle positive and negative space enables him to create surrealistic, streetwise compositions out of otherwise commonplace bits and pieces.

Kanye West

DJ Premier

Pete Rock

Alchemist