Flatstock 33

About a month ago I was privileged enough to travel to Austin, Texas to exhibit at Flatstock 33, which runs alongside the world famous music festival, SXSW.

Flatstock is a gig poster event run by the API, as a means of showcasing the work of the gig poster artist in a series of exhibitions.

As a little promotional item for FS33, I designed an A5-sized postcard with a parrot on.

These were printed by Manchester-based Marc the Printers on their spot colour risograph. The process of which is not too dis-similar from screen-printing, where each colour is printed separately but using an actual printer.

Also, before heading out for the event, I was requested by the UK Trade & Investment to produce a poster design for a UK-based show taking place as part of SXSW and presented by Huw Stevens.

Of course since Huw is Welsh I had to include a dragon and since SXSW is in Texas a BBQ was the next logical step. I bumped into Huw whilst out there and he approved and that was all I wanted...

I also got to visit the venue where Huw's showcase was going down and saw that my design had been adapted for a giant wall poster, which was nice.

So, onto the main event and here is a picture of me at the UKPA booth, standing before my wears.

And here is a picture of the threads that the UKPA had for sale too, featuring the old family favourite 'Cat Beard'.

And here is a long animated GIF of nearly all the artists who exhibited at Flatstock 33.

The whole experience was a real eye-opener for me, as a gig poster artist and a freelance illustrator. I was able to meet a lot of like-minded designers and hopefully managed to leave a little twoducksdisco shaped stamp on the world poster scene.

Huge thanks to the UKPA and the UK Trade & Investment teams who helped provide me with funding for the event. Cheers to all the Brits for the support, whilst being out there. The Americans, Europeans (and one Canuck) who were very welcoming and kind. And finally a massive thanks to everybody who bought a poster / print / t-shirt from me - I know a few of you read this.

Point of Go

As I prepare for Flatstock 33 at SXSW next week, I have produced a screen-printed poster for Oxford-based 'calypso pop' band Jonquil. Point of Go by Jonquil

And what says 'calypso pop' better than a woman in a grass skirt, standing waist-deep in the sea, playing the ukelele? As always, I documented the print process with photographs. So here is a run through of how these posters were printed. The acetates of the print, laid over one another. You can see where I had to cut and arrange certain aspects of the print, to ensure tight registration during the printing process.

The first screen locked into the bed, awaiting it's orange fate.

First colour down...

The stack of posters with the first colour down.

The second screen locked in the bed with the pink, imminent.

The pink colour has been printed. How does it look...

Drying out.

Thought I'd add some extra layers to my test prints whilst I was there. Looking cool.

Here is the final print, cropped, signed and numbered in an edition of 40.

The posters are now available in my online shop;. Aloha!