Archives

THE ARCHIVES
Prototype 21  /  Terratag  /  1992–2015

It started beside a railway siding, a shared obsession, and 500 square feet. In 1992, screen printer John Boak and an emergent designer named Paul Nicholson squeezed a six-colour carousel, silk-screen equipment, a table just large enough to hold a primitive PC into a cramped workshop, and set about transmitting the future through fabric.

Pre-mobile, pre-social media, barely post-dial-up, but the internet was stirring, and p21.co.uk felt like a portal into tomorrow. The name said it all: Prototype 21. A test run for the 21st century. 

Radical graphics influenced by the Electronic music scene, futurism, manga and an industrial aesthetic were soon in production across a range of T-shirts, sweats and hoodies. The graphics were uncompromising, radical, restless and deeply cross-contaminated.

Prototype 21 became Terratag, technology moved forward, and the designs kept evolving.

The Archives will feature a reimagined past, reissues of classic designs that were always seen as downloads from the future.

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1992
Prototype 21, founded in a railway siding. John Boak and Paul Nicholson begin printing the future onto cotton.

Mid-90s
The brand evolves into Terratag. Technology accelerates. The graphics keep pace — and then some. The internet becomes real. The designs get stranger.

00s
Over two decades, the aesthetic never stands still. Each era absorbed into the next, a continuous, evolving transmission.

2015
The company wound down. Paul became Number 3. John moved into garment manufacturing with Thurmaston MFG. The signal went quiet... for a while.

NOW
The Archives open. A reimagined past. Classic designs reissued and back in circulation, because some transmissions deserve a second broadcast.


CLASSIC DESIGNS THAT WERE ALWAYS SEEN AS DOWNLOADS FROM THE FUTURE — NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE PRESENT.