MONTREAL -- Montreal designer Dan Atlan's face has been making a lot of people stress out -- and then smile.
"Excuse me? Can you put your mask on please?!" says someone off-camera in a TikTok video showing Atlan walking indoors, with his mask very much on.
The Kusteez designer created a mask showing the bottom of his face with a surgical hospital mask pulled below his chin. The prank masks have become a TikTok hit (see video above) generating millions of views and giving the designer a huge new online audience.
"I had the idea to make a mask that looks like I'm not wearing a mask, just to mess with people," said Atlan. "I didn't think it would blow up like it did."
Atlan said went from having 50 followers to about 130,000 in a week.
"That one video has almost 12 million views! It's nuts!" said Atlan.
Reactions to the mask have been a joy for Atlan to witness, he said, as he has found a way to make people laugh.
"It's really serious times right now and I'm a sh#t disturber. I love to bother people," he said with a laugh.
"They're so on edge today, telling you, 'Wear your mask! Please put your mask on!' So it's kind of, 'I got you!'"
Atlan admitted he doesn't get much time to design his own products during so-called normal times.
Kusteez produces promotional apparel for restaurants, stores and other clients, and most of the business is dedicated to producing those products.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, and many businesses halting operations, Atlan had more time to design some of his own work. But he was also quick to the draw in making custom masks for corporate clients who want their logos on a mask.
"We were at the forefront of the whole mask trend when the pandemic hit," said Atlan. "Offering people masks with their company logo on it, masks with sayings, patterns, and then it started becoming a whole trend."
Atlan, like most designers, has used TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms to draw attention to his work. He has seen first-hand how hard it is to get noticed in a crowded social media landscape full of creative types trying to get noticed.
"I've been posting videos about masks and sanitary gels since the pandemic started, and Tiktok was just a way to get the message across to everyone," he said.
"It's very hard. It takes a lot of work. You can put your heart into something, thinking it's going to go viral, and then it just flops."
But he said it's been fun to see the rise of his cheeky (pun intended) mask videos -- because he made them for fun, to get a rise out of people.
"I didn't think it was going to blow up so much," said Atlan. "It's amazing... What else do you want for a business?
