UCLA alumnus draws mash-up cartoons, sells T-shirts through Instagram

Max Dower had to choose between taking the bar exam and focusing on his social media-based business. He chose the latter.

Growing up, the alumnus was always drawing just for fun. In July 2013, he started posting photos of his art on Instagram under the name Unfortunate Portrait.

It quickly blew up; now he has more than 26,000 followers and sells merchandise like T-shirts.

His portraits are mash-up cartoons of celebrities. One post shows “Gengis Khanye,” a combination of Ghengis Khan and Kanye West, while another shows a mashup of public figures named “Steve” – like Jobs, Buscemi and Urkel.

In October, he started selling shirts featuring his drawings through an online store, driving traffic to his site through his Instagram. When rapper Pusha T shared one of Unfortunate Portrait’s posts featuring himself, Ice-T and Mr T. having a tea party, Dower’s traffic exploded.

By May 2014, as Dower was finishing at UCLA School of Law and studying for the bar exam, it became clear that he’d have to choose between a career as a lawyer and pursuing Unfortunate Portrait full time.

“That moment was probably when I was pulling all-nighters to ship packages,” Dower said. “If I was a lawyer, I literally wouldn’t sleep if I wanted to do both.”

Alumnus Steve Serna said Dower thought he could grow his business if he put in a lot of time.

“A bunch of our friends said ‘No, maybe you should keep this on the back burner,'” Sterna said. “But Max decided, ‘No, I want to focus on this, which is doing well, and keeping me happy.'”

But while he sets up, Dower said he shies away from the publicity that might be inherent in social media. For a while, the page was anonymous – that’s no longer the case, as his business grows. On his Instagram page, there are very few photo selfies and no pictures of food. The page displays mainly the drawn portraits and people wearing his shirts.

“I’m trying to present the art and the T-shirts and the brand before myself, and let it speak for itself,” Dower said.

The art is deliberately simple, Dower said. He deliberately avoids learning art skills to preserve the amateur outsider-art quality of his pictures. His figures are cartoony.

“It doesn’t involve much technique, and there’s an element of embracing that,” Dower said. “It’s very raw, and has the innocence of a child’s way of seeing something. But hopefully it’s obvious that it’s not a child doing it.”

While Dower is still figuring out the long-term future of his newfound company, he’s not standing still. For now, he’s planning a temporary pop-up store in downtown Los Angeles to sell his T-shirts and items from other artists, which will open before the Christmas shopping season. He has also completed a commission for the cast of HBO’s show “Silicon Valley.”

 

Fellow alumnus and friend of Dower, Arya Firoozmand said he thinks Dower’s company has the makings of a sustainable business.

“If you do what you enjoy, and you generate a following, like he has, where people actually enjoy what he’s putting out, I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Firoozmand said. “He’s really tackled the hardest piece.”

While Dower isn’t currently practicing law, he said his time at UCLA School of Law was important nonetheless. Despite what he calls a disgusting student loan debt, Dower doesn’t regret his time learning about a field he may not pursue.

“As terrible as law school was in certain ways, I benefit from it, even in (Unfortunate Portrait), which has no relationship to a law degree,” Dower said.

Dower said it’s been valuable in training how he thinks about and approaches his work, like making analogies at the core of many of his posts. The joke is often the unexpected juxtaposition of unrelated concepts, like Einstein at a Genius Bar.

“I like to make people at least smile,” Dower said. “Sometimes I hope it’ll be a laugh-out-loud thing, but even if it isn’t at least visually, it’ll make someone feel happy.”