Posters

After I graduated in 04 I designed a number of fake posters for made-up bands and made-up venues. I made a simple website and advertised my postermaking services in an ad on Craigslist under the name Dirty Pictures Posters &C. A couple bands took me up, word of mouth spread among DC bands and promoters, and I've carved out a little side career as a rock poster maker.

I learned how to silkscreen at art school outside of the graphic design curriculum. I enjoy the process, and I think it's valuable to the piece in terms of ownership of one's work. Doing it myself limits me in terms of capacity and precision, but dang if it's not fun. I print in my living room, wash out the screens in the bathtub, and use my bed as a drying rack. The print setup is only as complicated as you make it. If you have a tabletop, you can screenprint.

This is a small cross-section of my poster work. Much more can be seen on my Dirty Pictures site and my pages at gigposters.com.

The poster below is the first I made using letterpress. I printed them at Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring. Pyramid has two Vandercook proofing presses in good condition but a limited type collection, larger sizes in particular. So I bought a set of French Clarendon Condensed wood type on Ebay (includes punctuation!) to use on this poster. The letters are about 6 inches tall. They are available at Pyramid for anyone to use. Pyramid is a great DC-area resource for printmaking, papermaking, and the book arts. See their website for more info.

The adjacent photo shows my screen during the exposure for this poster. I spread my silverware over a screen to produce a stencil for the background.