2011 · design
ARTCRANK Minneapolis 2011
Minneapolis, MN
A poster for ARTCRANK Minneapolis 2011 — the bike-poster show where artists each design a piece celebrating the bicycle, screen-printed in a limited run and sold off the walls. Posters, bikes, beer. The design is a fever-dream of the city by bike: a steampunk bicycle with a brass boiler and lantern parked on the riverbank, the Minneapolis skyline and Stone Arch Bridge behind it, a paddlewheeler on the Mississippi, an airship drifting past an Edison bulb sun — all wrapped in an ornate border of thistle, coneflower, and twisting vine.
This is the deepest the studio’s illustration voice goes: dense engraving-style crosshatch, full color, every inch of the frame worked. It’s also the oldest piece in this collection — drawn during the Minneapolis years, in the design-poster culture that scene is known for — and it set the engraving-and-almanac approach that still runs through the festival posters today.