About Damien Lange
Damien artwork incororates a mixture of mediums to add textures under vibrant colours - Damien's artwork comes to life once highlighted under directional lighting interacting with the shadows cast by the various textures. Some mediums include PVC, torn shaped fabric, acrylic, oils, watercolour paints, stitched material and real rust.
Damien Lange was born on the Gold Coast Australia in 1963.
With the surfing culture in his blood, his designs were discovered by a major industry screen printer who recognised his artistic talent. Damien was then trained in all mediums screen printed, processes from art, design, preparation and production – majoring in surfboard decals, stickers t-shirts etc mostly aimed at the surf industry.
After a few years with experience in the industry, he decided to set up his own business offering art, design and screen printing to the surfing industry. Through word of mouth, his business “CITY GRAPH.X” grew into one of the largest screen printing businesses on the Gold Coast.
This is where Damien met his wife Tania, who was also a graphic artist with her own studio. It wasn't long until they merged and together they offered the industry a unique service of designing clothing, catalogues, brochures, leaflets and artwork for printing.
These were fresh, young and exciting days in the graphics & printing industry – with dealings with some of the largest surf labels at the time like Billabong, Mt Woodgee, Hot stuff, Town & Country, Moh Australia.
As the graphic industry kept evolving with new technology, so did Damien’s hunger for learning new techniques and mediums.
The purchase of their first computer back in 1990 ($15,000 worth – which you can buy now for about $700) was the start of hundreds of hours learning computer generated/enhanced graphics (this was a very new medium and there were scarce learning support). This opened up a whole new exciting range of opportunities to the industry. The sky became the limit to what they were able to produce in design for both screen printing and offset print.
20 years on and the continued advancement of technology, Damien has been able to evolve with it. Teaching himself in the first days paid off where he was not confined or taught to do things in a set way – able to make technology evolve around his graphic styles instead of limiting and conforming to a set digital style.
Back in 1996 the internet had starting to come to life. Thankfully Damien recognised that this was going to revolutionise businesses globally, unfortunately the only people doing web design back then were geeks (no offence guys), so once again hundreds of hours later learning web design that allowed him to retain a graphic approach instead of conforming to the norm of the day.
As a husband and wife team, both Damien & Tania took pride in the services they were able to offer their clients. Word of mouth was the best way to promote themselves, they knew if they could offer fast, reliable and top quality service, their clients would be happy to pay and stay. They ran on C.O.D with up front deposits and with their long term clients it was strictly 7 days.
Clients where happy to pay as they recognised the value of services they where receiving. This method also contributed to keeping their prices low as there was no debt collecting involved.
Through the 15 years that ‘CityGraph.x' operated, they went from working out of a garage to purchasing a 200sqm factory in Burleigh Heads, adding automatic screen printing machinery and staff that worked flat out for 6 months of the year – as the surf industry was seasonal, and that was what they specialised in. The other 6 months were spent designing, sampling and mainly doing artwork for small business.
A change of direction with their business in 2003 led them to the relocate to Moffat Beach for a better lifestyle with their family. Today, Damien is now doing work all over the world from his home studio on the Sunshine Coast.
Thanks to the internet email and faithful clients that have moved overseas has meant that clients have been able to utilize Damien’s web services no matter where they are located with most work done through email these days.
His folio has changed from dealing with local clients on the Gold Coast to designing catalogues and magazines for printing in China to web design in the USA, France, New Zealand and Europe.
In summary, when you contract Damien to do your work, you are receiving over 20 years of experience in one of the most creative and exciting industries. Not only working for himself but also under contract by other agencies, he has hands-on experience and understanding of deadlines, cost cuttings in this fast paced industry.
With contacts in the trade, he will source the prices with no compromise in quality.
Damien has an easy to get along with character and he will say things as they are in simple language without the ‘agency terms’ and will instruct you every step of the way.
My Perspective
