Experiences of a Young Printer in Lagos
- The Seun Fasogbon
- Mar 19
- 9 min read
Shomolu.
By the unwritten laws of the world of printing in Lagos, Nigeria, it is customary to pay homage to the revered and undisputed home of printing- Shomolu, hence, I gave the name a whole line to itself, untainted by other lesser and insignificant words. I also may or may not have woken up in the middle of the night, cooked Jollof Rice with a sprinkle of some forbidden scent leaf and diced Dodo (just as the recipe said), and then carried a pot, alongside a crate of Lagger Beer to the topmost part of the hill in Shomolu, as a sacrifice to the gods of printing. Rumour has it that failure to do so would result in your freshly printed jobs falling into gutters of filthy water.
These are the chronicles of a young printer on the murky, brutal and never-boring streets of Lagos.
How it All Started
I have lived in Lagos, Nigeria all my life. I can say with absolutely no remorse that if the gods wanted to punish you, they plant the idea and a yearning to become a printer in Lagos, thus giving you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (literally, because there’s the possibility you don’t make it) to spice up that already tasty hell that is Lagos. I bet the village women who have held Shomolu hostage all these years, rejoice every time a fresh young and eager youth joins the train, out of sheer naiveté. I bet they rejoiced 9 years ago, as I smiled while curiously watching the cutter, as he brushed the edges of my first business cards with his fascinating and somewhat complicated large cutting machine, finishing up the work on my first ever print job. I bet they rejoiced.
I recall that I was still at university when it all started. I was a young graphic designer who was looking to do more, and you know, also make more money. I always wondered if the very inconsistent and very little I made from just designing was ever going to be enough or go anywhere in making me financially self-sustainable, like the other entrepreneurs I was used to seeing and interacting with, in school. The ones with the cars, fancy suits, and nice shoes. I was upskilling a lot then (I still am actually), because I thought that if I could offer more, then I could make more… I was wrong. The world of printing lured me in with such fascination and promise of great things. I admit that it was a lot of fun figuring out how very many things were made; the allure of the complexities in simple outputs reeled me in. Despite schooling three states away, I started to live and breathe in Shomolu. Books, business cards, banners, bags, stickers, flyers, everything! I learnt how everything worked, often by myself. I learnt from very many trials, errors, and gossip from other bystanders sitting or waiting idly by, whilst our print jobs were being printed or finished. I learnt that printing itself just forms a very tiny piece of the puzzle in print production, and the finishing processes, which often included lamination, glueing, binding, wrapping, creasing, and a world more, were the crux of every production, as they could make or mar you. In effect, the ‘finishers’ were sort of the backbone of Shomolu, as every process required them, and ironically, the most important lesson I learnt, was to never trust them. You never trust anybody in Shomolu, because, subconsciously, every artisan in that jungle is an avid proponent of ‘Murphy’s Law’ — if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. At its core, this understanding is the most crucial part of the mechanics of surviving in this world.
The Mechanics of Surviving
I learnt the subtle art of telling white lies. You never tell an artisan who is working on your job the actual date you need it, you backtrack a few days, so there’s an allowance for if he messes up (which surprisingly happens very often). In fact, there are artisans that you never leave or trust to get the work done, ever. You stand there and watch them do the work, or else, you would find that immediately you leave, they shove your work to the side, and start someone else’s job: possibly someone that had learnt to stay back and ensure they got the job done before their eyes. I learnt this the hard way. It happened an embarrassing number of times before I learned. I would leave reams of large A1 papers with cutters to cut into smaller sizes that were printable, a job that would ordinarily quite literally take 5 minutes, and I would come back hours later to find my papers exactly where I left them. And they always had the same response: ‘aaahhh, mo ti fe e se tan’ (aaahhh, I am almost done), even though you could clearly see they had not even started. A survival of the fittest.
If delaying deliverables were the only issue, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but it frankly gets much worse, because like the Nigerian government, finding new ways to frustrate you is a special talent that the artisans in Shomolu have. As I am typing this piece, with lazy sleepy eyes hoping that it won’t be a long one, the memory of one of the biggest errors of my career comes to mind, and the sleep instantly clears, with tears replacing it, finding way to my cheeks. The incident was so absurd and perturbing that what I recall the most was how I kept exclaiming ‘ah ahn’ to myself repeatedly, as I clapped my hands in disbelief. I must have done that a thousand times that day. That week, even. So, what happened? Thank you very much for that question.
We had got a large order of face caps, among a truckload of other merchandise for a partnership between the popular refrigerant brand — ‘Daikin’ and another of our clients. I say the ‘Daikin’ name with scare quotes around it because it is very integral to the plot. Very integral. Anyway, the job was simple: embroider the ‘Daikin’ logo on the side of the face caps, that was all. We commonly refer to this process as monogramming. We ran through the first batch of face caps with my supervision. I then decided to make a rookie mistake and trusted the machine operator that was in charge, to finish off the rest of the caps, so I could go oversee the other products we were producing for this project. I left at 1 pm and came back by 5 pm to see he had gone a long way, and only had about 150 caps left, out of the pile. I was happy. All was well… or so I thought. My excitement was cut short when I took a closer look at the caps he had been printing, and I immediately beckoned on him to stop the machines from proceeding and explain why I was seeing ‘Dankin’ instead of ‘Daikin’ on 100s of face caps. He smiled first, then looked up at me whilst brushing loose thread off the cap a bit, and saying, literally: ‘Ehn, I was the one that corrected the name, I changed the ‘I’ to ’N’ because I have never heard of ‘Daikin’ before, but I have heard of ‘Dankin’, and it sounds more correct.’
Symbiosis or Parasitism?
Today, I have completed over 20,000 print jobs in my lifetime. Half of this number may or may not have given me character development I did not ask for; however, all of this number has made me into the man I am today. So, I am grateful. I, however, am also sad.
I have always said that the thrill I get from the world of printing has never been enough to satisfy the trauma I have been put through over time, but like the average Nigerian, I have learnt to adapt and manage pain in ways that baffle even me. I have given up on print production several times over the years. Most notably was in 2020, when COVID dealt its share of blows, and I, alongside my partner then, my Mom, sold everything we had in our printshop and gave up. Since then, I have probably given up 20 times more. Why then do I always come back, if my relationship with this part of the business is so toxic that it tears me down so often, leading me to give up just as often? I don’t think I have the answer to this.
Maybe it is the self-sustainability query I talked about earlier. Maybe regardless of the toxicity of print production and its Shomolu horsemen of doom, the little revenue that comes after all the labour helps keep the lights on a little longer… maybe it helps keep the dream alive. Or maybe I have learnt to adapt so many times, and in so many ways that I have become numb to the pain. It could also be passion: that sneaky bastard that drugs you with ecstasy, and blinds you to the agony. You toil, and toil in hard labour, wondering if this is the same kind of misery every successful person goes through to make something of themselves, as the goal dims further and further because all that matters is the now. All that matters is getting the job done, and then moving on to the next.
The average onlooker looks outward at how far Tactica, my agency, has come, the aesthetics, the curated image, the how-it-looks of it all, and thinks to themselves: oh, he seems to be doing pretty well. Lol.
Sins of the Father
I read somewhere a long time ago about the Choice Theory in psychology, by William Glasser. Two major postulations of the theory stuck with me many years ago: the only actions we can control are our own, and the only thing we can give another person is information. I have always pondered whether these postulations were made to rid one of accountability for the actions of others, particularly when we have some sway over them. If this is the case, then I feel no guilt whatsoever. If this is not the case, then I have committed a grave mistake, albeit unintentionally, as I have brought another into the mess that is Shomolu.
Over the years, I have had to take on additional hands by employing people, to ease the workload, and in a manner of speaking, scale. Also, given the number of years I have spent in print production, I have amassed a wealth of knowledge in the workings of a lot of the mechanics in all kinds of printing, particularly in the world of Shomolu, and I have always been very free and quick to share this experience and knowledge with every and anyone over time. A combination of these two facts resulted in me creating several versions of myself in different individuals over the years, very many of whom veered off into different paths after a while, and never took on print production as a career. There however was one. An outlier that braved the storm, and planted his feet in the soils of Shomolu. The moment I realized this had happened, I muttered to myself silently: ‘I bet they rejoiced… the village women.’
I recall that I went home that day a little sad, because it had dawned on me what I had done, and I knew that life was not going to be easy for him going forward. I do not believe in the Nigerian culture of history repeating itself: the deplorable tradition of the older generation meting tough and often brutal standards on the younger generation, because that was what was done to them. And so, I mourned the person that he used to be, and said a little prayer for the new life he was undertaking, whilst promising myself that I was going to provide him the resources and embrace that I never had access to all through my developmental years. Afterwards, we conversed about the new path he was undertaking, and I could see the allure he had for the job, the same one Shomolu had planted in me all those years ago, and it allowed me to reminisce about how simple the beginning was… how beautiful the beginning was. In that moment, maybe I wasn’t as sad anymore.
I am glad that he found his purpose in printing. I am glad that he is giving it all it takes. And I am grateful for the part I had to play in it all. I do not intend to stop sharing my knowledge, nor do I intend to cut out the employees that I currently have on a similar path, but I would be amiss if I didn’t say I was scared for when Shomolu shows its ugly side. Have I taught them how to survive? Do I even really know how to survive?
I am an Ellipsis…
It has been close to a decade since this printing journey started. It has been a lot more if we count the years I started designing before I ventured into printing. I reminisce about the bold decisions I have made up until now: opening up a shop and filling with printers whilst schooling 4 hours away in Ile-Ife, Osun State; moonlighting on my computer every night looking for leads and working on jobs, trying to create a semblance of balance and prevent my business from failing whilst keeping great grades; jumping through bad roads almost every other week so much so that I spent most of my academic years in Lagos, and not in Osun; showing up every time despite being beaten down repeatedly… my God.
I was just a child that grew up too early, and too quickly. I actually am grateful for that, because I learnt early to be tough and resilient, particularly in a country that puts you through the grinder every opportunity it gets. I learnt to be a bull that never hesitates to charge at life, no matter the number of times the red flag reveals a collision with a brick wall. I have learnt to adapt and grow.
Who am I now?
At this moment, I realise that I have upskilled so much over the years that it has become hard to find a word that properly describes me. I no longer am just that graphic designer and printer, naa… I am more. I am a Creative Director, Videographer, Product Designer & Manager, Motion Graphics Designer…
I am so much more.
I am an ellipsis; a symbol that tells you there is more to see…
E go be.
Comments