Discipline, tolerance and production. These are well known as the national watchwords of Trinidad and Tobago, but one man has a different take.
Perhaps best known for his own Watchwords merchandise, which features words synonymous with local culture, Keegan Simon is a T-shirt designer and self-described "creative" who primarily grew up in Belmont, Port of Spain.
His mother was a flight attendant, allowing him to take frequent trips to Toronto and London, among other places, and spend lengths of time there.
Simon believes these frequent trips and the influence of his cousin Jameel Sagar helped mould him.
“As young as six, I had a cousin that I idolised and I wanted to be like him. He was very creative, so I was like, ‘This is something I have to do.’
“As long as I remember, I wanted to do something like him. When I was eight or nine, I realised what creativity is, and it was like, ‘You want to create something, you want to do something.’”
His education provided the framework to build on that creativity. His school, St James Government Secondary, offered over 20 different subjects.
“You could have done woodwork, metalwork, HSB (human and social biology), 'home ec' (home economics). You could have done any of those things, and it was valuable, so I really really loved what St James had to offer.”
He went on to Edna Manley College in Kingston, Jamaica, where he graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in painting before working toward his masters in creative design and entrepreneurship at UWI, St Augustine.
[caption id="attachment_1070854" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Keegan Simon, founder of the 1ndividual Aesthetic, poses while wearing his most popular merchandise design, Watchwords. - Photo by Sydney Joseph[/caption]
“Edna (Manley College) was one of the best experiences, because you had all these creatives finding different outlets to do things.
“I remember someone who, at midnight, would scream at the top of their lungs, I’m assuming as part of their acting. It was very cool to see different ways of creativity just be a part of one place.”
While at the college, he met Marlon James, a Jamaican photographer now based in Trinidad, who was then the lab tech and teaching assistant in the photography department. The pair became fast friends.
In a phone call with Newsday, James said, “I remember he would make T-shirt designs in the printing department or up in his room."
The pair worked together on projects like Simon’s venture Dirty Crayons – two exhibitions which featured art by Simon and Jamaican students Kemar Swaby, Leasho Johnson, Taj Francis and Jehan Jackson.
James added, “It was just an interesting body of work...different drawing styles and techniques combined in a exhibition.
“We’re good friends. When Keegan had ideas he’d run them by me. He used to call me the master of the in-between, because every time I would do a photoshoot, in the minute when the person wasn’t aware of the camera, I would capture it, and that would become the shot.”
“He is very much for the carefree a
