The beginning

So this is the beginning of our story...

My name is Mark Borland, I was born and raised in Spokane WA. After leaving Spokane in 2003 I moved down to Moscow Idaho to attend college at the University of Idaho. A few years of taking engineering and architecture classes led me to believe that I didn't want to pursue these gateways after college. During my time studying many other courses (design, painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, & art history) I found my niche in graphics design & fine arts. The people in this area of study were more like me than any other. The ideas that were floating around in the class rooms were creatively brilliant. I believe that you have to find something that you love to do, this pushes you to new levels of achievement that you never knew were possible.

I connected to a lot of different people over the years and meet some of my closest friends. I believe that college isn't just about the class room, it's about getting out and connecting to the people around you and yeah sometimes that may have sacrificed some of my school work but looking back I wouldn't have taken any other path.

Enough about my background, cause were here to share the story of Deconstruction (although i would enjoy sharing some background on our team especially stories of how we all meet throughout the years good nitty gritty stuff:)maybe in a later post).

During the summer of 2008 I lived and worked in Seattle WA with my brother. I did a little graphic design work and survived working at Sodo Deli where they fed & paid for my $5 a gallon gas @ the time (if you get a chance to go to Seattle this is the best sandwich shop around, they make almost everything by scratch and are very generous). Seattle was the beginning of our first designs. Seattle is a very inspirational and entrepreneurial city. Some of our shirt designs are inspired by some of the buildings and structures that I saw every day on my way to work (ie. our gasworks park shirt). My Brother was the true inspiration and motivator for me to begin designing t-shirt graphics, and over that next year i tucked all my designs away only sharing them with a very few select people.

On April 1st 2009 I was given the chance to design a t–shirt for my fraternity (ATO). It was a mom's weekend  T–shirt (which is possibly the best weekend @ U of I). While I was sitting in our house reception room designing the shirt on crunch time situation one of my good friends Scott Waggener was sitting next to me. He noticed that I was quickly putting our ideas on the computer screen. He told me his dreams of being an entrepreneur in the apparel industry, and asked me if i had done any other designs before that. I laughed to myself cause I probably had 20 to 30 designs that only a hand full of other people had seen, and I didn't believe that they were all that good. Scott shocked me when he thought they were awesome, after about 10 to 15min of me explaining how I had created the designs he asked me to partner up with him in a apparel company. I immediately said "hell yeah". That night Scott put together a small website off of mac.com and we started a face book page to try to see what the response around campus would be. We were astonished at how many people visited the site in the first few days and faned up on our face book page. We decided that we might need some help putting this together, so we asked a good friend Kyle Rable if he wanted to partner up with us to help with finalizing designs, becoming our creative director.

Over the next few weeks we had a really good buzz going around campus and everyone was asking us when we would be getting these shirts printed. We started employing good friends that were just as excited as we were to help with research and other forms of the business. Lacey Stratton, a fashion designer helped us pick out cuts and colors. Grant Callaghan, a PR major helped us get a article in the school news paper. Todd Alden, an Architecture master agreed to help us with a flash web page. Aaron Sycks, a business major helped us with the business/finacal end, and Justin Ruggles, a PR major helped create more of a buzz on campus and in our brainstorming. This is the beginning of Deconstruction.

Our blog will take you through all the steps, up and down, of our journey through the apparel industry. (photo shoots, finding printers, brainstorming designs, marketing & more). Join us in the adventure :)