If a photo is worth a thousand words, then a piece of art is worth a million. Each one tells a sprawling story of its creator and their vision, their style, and their interpretation of the world around them. They can be worth a lot of money, too, which makes art a pretty booming business.

Nobody balances the creative and commercial spectrum of the art world better than the Singapore-based Tell Your Children crew, whose vibrant work is reminiscent of classic comic books and can be found on murals, T-shirts, posters, and ad campaigns all over the world.

Tell Your Children consists of four friends from design school who turned their passion for art into a full-fledged creative studio where they can express themselves through their individual work, as well as help brands, musicians, sports teams, and any other kind of client find their voice through visual storytelling.

Deon-asaurus, one of the co-founders of Tell Your Children, grew up illustrating with traditional pen and ink but also had a deep affinity for street culture, art, and fashion, a trait he shared with his fellow co-founder Russ, also known as lonerslugs. Russ describes his artistic style as an eclectic mix of characters, costumes, and humor.

After finishing school, Deon and Russ began creating together as Tell Your Children when they had trouble finding jobs, eventually recruiting their friends Lydia and Kevin to join the team. Lydia, who also goes by Oak & Bindi, is a digital illustrator and mural painter. Lydia plays the part of Creative Director on a lot of Tell Your Children projects, and also parents a rabbit named Thumper and roughly 40 plants, so she stays pretty busy. Kevin likes to stay behind the scenes in TYC and considers himself a cross between Oscar the Grouch and Kermit the Frog. He gets through the day with the help of coffee. Lots of coffee.

Together, the Tell Your Children team form a wildly talented team of artists that, at the most basic level, help communicate messages. Whether they are making a piece of art for themselves or a massive marketing campaign for one of the biggest brands on Earth, they treat it with immense care and creativity.

For our collaboration with Tell Your Children, the message was about the strength of community and our collective ability to problem solve, regardless of our differences. Throughout this pandemic, as we’ve all been somewhat confined to our homes, it has forced us to confront issues we have under our literal rooves, as well as the issues we face as a community under our larger, metaphorical roof.

Coming together and celebrating the things we have in common, as well as the differences that make us unique, is the core of this collaboration, and working with such talented friends from halfway around the world was the best way for us to deliver that message. Under One Roof was a television sitcom that ran in 1995 in Singapore and featured people from across the cultural landscape coming together to tackle a wide range of issues. This beautiful theme felt just as relevant today as it did more than 25 years ago, so the TYC team incorporated the Under One Roof phrase into their designs for the capsule.