Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Lotus Tour Poster YES!!!!!


The Lotus posters are done and after three screen printing sessions at our South Austin print shop they shipped out today. This great design was done by Johnny Dimas, an up and coming designer who exemplifies cool and clean design work.He loves how he can turn a digital design into a tangible piece of artwork through screen printing.

The first color we put down filled the paper almost edge to edge with peacock blue. We printed this first layer in just under 5 hours, and whether our heads were playing tricks on us or not the paper seemed to grow in size in weight with every new screen print.

The second layer we printed was reminiscent of French wallpaper. Upon inquiry not even Johnny was sure where he found this vintage pattern, but who the hell cares, it looked pretty badass. You can't copyright vintage wallpaper patterns can you?

The last layer was the brown and it went off with out a hitch. This added much needed completeness to the poster, bringing the whole design together. Lotus will be coming to Austin on Friday April 23rd at Emo's and if you want jam this is the place to be on that day. With that said back to work and more prints to come in the next day. Hopefully all of these posters don't sell out in Colorado.

-U.P. crew


Saturday, March 13, 2010

Live printing at Swanky SXSW Ustream Party



Last night the U.P. crew was screen printing live in downtown Austin for an official SXSW interactive party. Ustream, an online community of self proclaimed Speilbergs, hosted a gala of an event at Pheonix Bar on 4th and colorado. I hope this bar can hold steady in that location; it was straight up swanky. Modern wrap sofas, digital multi-colored flouyrescent ligh accents and wonderfully tacky fake crystal chandeliers. I have to admit, we felt quite spoiled being a part of this event.

As with any live printing endeavor, when the shirts are free the crowd turns into a veritable feeding frenzy. We pre-printed 300+ shirts and live printed close to 200. Every last one was taken. Early in the night people were able to pick their design and color, but as the crowd grew and loomed around us we just started shirt slingin' left and right literally throwing shirts across the room to people.


Closing out the night, Gym class heroes played an energetic set fervently trying to get a mostly-male crowd of interactive geeks to shake it. We might have been the only people dancing.

Shirt slingin' and dancing: that's an ok combination by me.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Tegan and Sara Posters sold out!!!


Thanks to everyone who supported screenprinting in Austin last Friday by buying a limited edition Tegan and Sara poster for their show at Bass Concert Hall. We managed to make 60 of these colorful little beauties. If you were one of the few to snag one at the show count yourself lucky, they sold out early. I mean, who doesn't love bike racks and balloons?



The quirky and colorful combination was custom designed by owner Sam Ladach-Bark and shop artist Brian Almaraz. Look for more custom combination from this pair in the future. Currently they are working on designs for Camera Obscura and Of Montreal. Both slated to pass through Austin later this spring. Updates to come soon.