Please join us on Friday, June 4 for the New York release of Rock Paper Show at The Strand at 7pm.

Geoff Peveto, curator of Rock Paper Show, president of the American Poster Institute and partner in The Decoder Ring, an Austin based design collective, will be available to discuss the history of Flatstock and the steady growth of the gig poster community. Featured Rock Paper Show artists Hero, Mat Daly, Strawberryluna, Vahalla, and Tara McPherson will all be available to sign copies, as well as Holly Gressley of Rumors, the book’s designer, and Mike Treff from Soundscreen Design, the book’s publisher and producer.

Rock Paper Show: Flatstock Volume One
The Strand: 828 Broadway at 12th Street
June 4th, 7pm

Information about the event is available on the Rock Paper Show site.

More about the book:
Rock Paper Show documents the first decade of the twenty-first century as the high-water mark in the storied intersection of graphic design and music. Against the backdrop of the digital- music revolution, the rock poster reemerged during this period as the calling card of impossibly talented new artists and design studios brought up on Black Flag, Joy Division, the Flaming Lips, and the Melvins. Simultaneously, the posters that these studios produced were celebrated by a rapidly growing nation of indie-rock fans who all woke up one day craving beautiful new music-related objects in their lives. The excitement—matched equally in the design and music worlds—was captured by and celebrated via the birth and rapid rise of Flatstock, the American Poster Institute’s ongoing rock-poster exhibition.

Since its inception in 2002, Flatstock has evolved into the definitive showcase of the most talented poster artists working today. Rock Paper Show: Flatstock Volume One is an editorial and visual history of the first 20 Flatstocks, with contributions from the artists and studios that regularly attend the events and the bands who are often the subjects of the posters, as well as critics and collectors involved in this community. Rock Paper Show collects for the first time the original posters created for each Flatstock by the attending studios. Veteran poster-makers take the reader on behind-the-scenes looks at the studios, the artists, the regional scenes, and the personalities of this vibrant and varied community.

Thanks to Aviva Michaelov at the New York Times Op-Ed page for inviting us to create an Op-Chart this Memorial Day. For this piece, about how the use of DNA technology has allowed the military to identify the remains of each of the unknown soldiers from Vietnam on, we created a paper flower wreath to memorialize the death of the soldiers that died in each war. The size of each flower is (roughly) proportional to the total number of soldiers lost in each war.

Thanks goes to master crafters Cara Brower and Sarah Lutkenhaus, who helped mastermind the flower making for three days straight. A few progress shots follow the jump.

Read more »

We celebrated the pre-launch of Rock Paper Show, a book we designed in collaboration with Soundscreen Design and the American Poster Institute, at the Flatstock festival at South by Southwest this past weekend.

Rock Paper Show is a history of the Flatstock festival, featuring interviews and essays by artists, collectors and bands, and a compilation of the posters created for the first 20 Flatstocks. The deluxe edition features 20 original limited edition prints created for the book by prominent poster-makers from the festival. It was truly a pleasure to meet all of the wonderful folks from Flatstock and the API, and see this long-running project finally come into fruition.

Below, some photos from Soundscreen’s booth at Flatstock and a few sneak peeks of the new book. The book will be officially released in June, so stay tuned for more events this spring.

Read more »

If you’ll be in Austin for the epic South by Southwest festival, come visit us! Find @rendamorton at SXSW Interactive from now through Tuesday 3/16. Find HG at Flatstock & SXSW with brand new preview copies of Rock Paper Show from Thursday 3/18 to Sunday 3/21.

After 18 months of work, we’re truly proud to launch the website for Commercial Type, a new type foundry conceived by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz. We don’t like playing favorites with our kids, but this one is close to our hearts. Check it out and buy fonts! Thank you Brana, Christian, Abi, and Berton for all your hard work and Kai for your support.

To celebrate, we splurged on a really nice bottle of champagne. A new website launch tradition?

Who are we kidding, websites are never ever done. Photo by Chad.

Our old friend Roman from Space 1026 (who expertly printed the Ohne Titel invitations we did last summer) was kind enough to silkscreen a small edition of these 4-color prints of the illustration we did for the New York Times Magazine back in September. They’re 13″ x 15″ and $55. If you’re interested in buying one, get in touch.

We designed a Boxing Day themed puzzle for the Op-Ed page. Check it out today (they’re tougher than they look!).

James Gaddy wrote a nice little piece about the website we’ve been working on for Commercial Type In the October issue of Print. Sneak preview of the site below!

We were so excited to contribute to this past Sunday’s New York Times magazine, an article by Clive Thompson that provides “a look inside the emerging science of social contagion.” Other designers / illustrators / artists who did an amazing job: Carin Goldberg, Julia Hasting, CatalogTree, Nomoco, Julia Hasting, and Shout. The cover typography was created by Chester Jenkins.

“Is Happiness Catching?” 9.13.09 Check out our interpretation here.

We worked together with Rob Giampietro on a new identity for Lift. Previously known as National Student Partnerships, Lift is a national non-profit that connects college students with communities in need to combat poverty on an individual level.