Wedding invitations for my friends Andy & Julie. Laser cut wood veneer, screenprinting.

This is going to be fuuuuun. And yes, print does ♥ digital.

Printer’s Ball 2010

Side A

Side B

It’s always sad when a friend moves away, right? Recently my friend Ina had to move back to Germany after spending the last year in Chicago. But before she left, she made a mixtape. Not just any mixtape mind you, she typed the track listing on a typewriter, screenprinted 20 copies and then folded them into envelopes to house the burned CD. I just thought it was a really exceptional and sweet take on a goodbye present. And she’s posted the songs so now you can download them too.

1. The Bigger the Figure • Louis Prima
2. Horchata // Vampire Weekend
3. The Man Who Sold His Beard • a Hack and a Hacksaw
4. Your Rocky Spine • Great Lake Swimmers
5. Sounder • This Could Mean Blood
6. James’ 2nd Haircut • Cairbou
7. Little Secret • Passion Pit
8. Zebra • Beach House
9. Winning a Battle, Losing the War • Kings of Convenience
10. Unattainable • Little Joy
11. The Ills • Mayer Hawthorne
12. Let’s Get Out of this Country • Camera Obscura
13. Petey’s Song • Jarvis Cocker
14. You + I • Wilco + Feist
15. Kokomo • Ben Kweller & Adam Green
16. Too Much • Bonaparte
17. ONE • Yeaseayer
18. Ich Moechte Leben • Wolfgang Mueller
19. Furr • Blitzen Trapper
20. Home • Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Read and see more about Ina’s projects and collaborations here, here and here. She’s also just opened her online store too.

It’s Pitchfork weekend here in Chicago and with it comes Flatstock 26, the usual gig-poster freakout fair. This year though, two of the biggest names in posters, Aesthetic Apparatus and Delicious Design League did something unique. Aside from participating in Flatstock as usual, they put together a superb poster collab, curated and hosted by The Post Family. AA and DDL traded design files back and forth for months and shared printing duties that’s resulted some epic one-of-a-kind work. Cantankerous Hellfire is up through the next three weeks. Between this event, Flatstock, and the Printer’s Ball that’s happening in two weeks, poster and printmaking enthusiasts should have no trouble finding some truly rad work in this city.

I love it when my friends impress the hell out of me with their awesome work. In this particular case, it’s a project is en pointe from top-to-bottom. Ten empty storefronts in Wicker Park/Bucktown now have artist inhabitants for the next four months thanks to Make Believe, Firebelly Design, and Pivotal Promotions. Not only have artists been allowed to move into a space to use as their own canvas for MONTHS, in a very high traffic area, but it’s a juried contest with a cash prize of $5,500. (Determined by free and public voting which anyone can do here). As we know, art/design just get no money these days, so the fact that there is some compensation incentive in such an accessible venue is just amazing. Shop, eat, drink and look at art. Perfect.

And the work IN the windows? Just wow. My girls, Indo Projects, snapped up my vote for sure.

These ladies pulled off this incredible feat under incredible parameters. They had just three days to find the cups, of which there’s several hundreds, and five days to build and install. At it’s most basic, their installation takes mundane, dirty, and senseless waste and makes it beautiful. But on a deeper level, it’s calling our accelerated pace sharply into focus and trying to promote a return to a simpler pace and slower, more responsible commerce.

Learn more about their window and vote here.

I’ve spent the last four days building an installation for The Post Family’s We Are Family opening tonight and I totally didn’t anticipate how much it would be owning me. Whoops. It’s finally up and I’m pleased with how it came out, but I’m in the weeds big time. But I’m dying to tell you about all this exciting stuff, so here’s a quickie update. It’s at least a little something until I can get some sleep, sort things out, and form proper sentences again.

By Reba Rakstad, RarRar Press

I got to do a guest post for Etsy’s blog this week! The post is all about my fave artists & printmakers on Etsy, and the inspiring color palettes they use. Big thank you to my other bloggy-friends at COLOURlovers for setting it up.

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We Are Family: Emerging Talent in Chicago:
In conjunction with Chicago Design Week 2010, the Post Family welcomes nine voices from the far reaches of Chicago’s graphic design community to the Family Room Gallery for a look at surprising, evocative and oftentimes challenging work that consistently redefines the boundaries of the field.

Participants: Also Design, Shawn Hazen, Letterform, Plural, Scott Reinhard, Sonnenzimmer, Isaac Tobin, and David Weik.
Sponsored by the AIGA Chicago, Intelligentsia Coffee, and Goose Island Brewery, and Colorphonic.

7:00 pm-11:30 pm
1821 W Hubbard St, #202
Chicago, IL 60622
Free