Print Peeps Volume 1

Print Peeps branding by Julia Garzarella

Words by Athalia Foo

Images from Print Peep websites

 There is an absolute wealth of websites, blogs and Instagram accounts out there! We don’t know about you but sometimes that wealth can be more overwhelming than welcoming! 

To help combat the fear of wading through epic levels of information we decided to start Print Peeps – a new series to share the best of the best from industry professionals and guest bloggers!

We’re kicking off the series with a shortlist of The Print Bar’s favourite print related organisations + individuals across the globe! 

We draw regular inspiration from these incredible print people in our design and printing practice. While some we know you will already be more than familiar with, we hope we can introduce you to some incredible new friends from across the globe:

UK based People of Print began as a library of artistic and commercial illustrators, designers and printers. POP’s goal is to inspire and educate creatives and printers the world over focusing on traditional and new print methods – and boy do they inspire us everyday! In addition to providing print advice, connecting print artists and businesses internationally and sharing inspiring printed goods, POP also host graduate print awards, connect printers with #printspotters and have published their own beaut People Of Print book of innovative, independent design and illustration. But definitely one of our favourite projects by People of Print is their Print Isn’t Dead publication!

Print Isn’t Dead is a crowd funded, collaborative and (hopefully!) annual publication created and curated by People of Print. These limited run books are often hand printed and uniquely designed – Element #002 (sadly sold out) was printed by the incredible Studio Heretic screen printers (another favourite of ours) and the recently released Element #003 allows the buyer to customise the printed message on the front.  Even their online issuu of each publication blows our minds! Do yourself a favour – buy, read, consume!

While most artists may find it difficult to create original works with a limited colour palette, this is the stand out premise for UK based design duo Crispin Finn, aka Anna Fidalgo and Roger Kelly. Their aesthetic is super fun, super clean and iconically Crispin Finn, sporting hand pulled screen printed tea towels, posters, cushions and cards, some which are Mad Men worthy and some that no doubt were inspired by the great U S of A. They’re also in the way of lithography, and have expanded their unique aesthetic to all manner of house goods for a thoroughly red, white and blue home experience!

For all you designers out there who have had experience with printing you, like us, will have grown a serious appreciation for unique methods of print like offset, letterpress and risograph printing. Enter Gang Atelier – a Sydney based creative agency who specialise in design and the sourcing and sharing of uniquely printed publications. A quick scroll through their online store and you’ll begin to see how special their collection of books and zines for sale are, with most publications produced using offset printing, mono-offset printing, letterpress, lithography, or a combination of print processes from around the globe. We guarantee these aren’t your average books, and we’re so happy to have these dudes in our Aussie backyard!

Pop art and graffiti aren’t anything new to our generation, but Brooklyn-based duo Faile (an anagram for A Life) have managed to bring surprising new life to street art and screen printing. Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil began Faile in 1999 and have produced a diverse series of works, ranging from hand painted mosaic tiles, to wooden totem poles and an gaming shop full of Faile hyper colour arcade machines. But what really makes this duo significant to us is their playful use of screen printing in their works. Unlike most commercial screen printers, Patrick and Patrick experiment with silk screen print layering, hand work and print pressure, embracing print errors and colour outcomes as they appear in their process. We can’t fit all our adulation in this blurb, so we highly recommend taking 10 minutes to watch Vice’s interview with the legendary Faile.

This publication is one we stumbled upon by accident and we haven’t recovered from it’s brilliance since! A Singaporean bi-annual publication, Rubbish Famzine is created by Holycrap art collective family of four, Claire (the 39 year old mom), Renn (the 10 year old son), Aira (the 7 year old daughter) and Pann (the 40 year old dad) and each limited edition publication explores a different aspect of family life and/or relationships. Each edition is an adventure of it’s own and a printing feat. It’s no wonder why this publication has won so many awards and gained the worlds attention.

(Source / Source / Source)

Spin: 360º is a super thorough hard cover almost diary detailing 20 year old UK Spin Studio’s processes and works. The book itself doesn’t house a mind blowing array of print techniques, but the projects and details curated within the publication are enough to inspire your creativity in all forms. Spin Studio’s specialty focus on typography, perfect bound print and their immaculately executed print projects are what drew us to the studio. Notable projects we just can’t get enough of are the Unit Edition x Spin collaborative posters, cards and books, Spin’s submission to Monotype x Secret 7’s lyrical poster exhibition and their perfectly printed and designed catalogue for Edward Fields Carpet Makers.

Another feather in Australia’s creative cap is the daring duo Sonny Day and Biddy Maroney ~ akaWe Buy Your Kids. Since their debut in 2012, the pair have worked for some of the worlds biggest names (including Pitchfork, Adidas, The New York Times and Urban Outfitters) to create iconic and original printed, painted and digital artwork for all mediums. Well known now for a variety of works, we first became fascinated by W$YK by stumbling across the series of incredible screen printed out-licensed movie posters they printed for Mondo. Their works have a mythical madness to them, and once you dig deeper we know you’ll be hooked too!

If you love what you’ve seen so far of W$YK, you’ll love their after hours documentation by the way ofMinistry of Grim – an (almost) brief-free, collaborative and purely creative space for Sonny and Biddy to devise and exhibit original works for the sake of their own desires.

A continual source of screen printing inspiration is Tind (aka Tind Extraordinaire) from Greece. Their motto states there is “nothing we cannot print, no colour we cannot match no dimensions…we can’t handle” and their impressive folio of works supports their claims without dispute! A team who truly print with magic, how they print what they print usually boggles our minds. From live screen printing activations on human beings, to the most incredible halftone layerings for commercial clients, Tind are a perfect balance between creative genius and commercial know-how. 

It was super hard to put this list together, and there are plenty more we weren’t able to include. If we’ve whet your appetite for perfect print we recommend you visit the following establishments: 

Kunstler	Stacks	Motto IMA
Biografiktion	Books Actually	Magculture
Department Store (POP)	Gang Atelier	Beautiful Pages

Got something to add? Want to share your own printing gem with us? DO IT!