Posters and other projects that fits nicely on the wall.
Manos in Stockholm started to sell our handprinted baby cloths many years ago. We love their mix of design and craft, actually they were our first reseller ever which makes them extra special. This spring we had the opportunity to hold an exhibition at manos and meet a lot of old and new friends.
Most of the time we use black paint in the printshop but it is something special with colour as well.
It’s really exciting when we stand there with the primary colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black and try to concretize the idea of a colour we have in mind.
Here is the new colours, GREEN, BROWN and VIOLET
Världmästarcykeln Green, 64 x 46 cm, printed on Munken Pure.
Världmästarcykeln Brown, 64 x 46 cm, printed on Munken Pure.
Världmästarcykeln Violet, 64 x 46 cm, printed on Munken Pure.
We like bikes and typograpy – in this print we has combined them both, Go!
It started as a play with bike parts and tools, but then we saw him – Stålfarfar! It made us very happy because we have read a lot about Stålfarfar and his story has been a great inspiration to us. Of course we had to make a screen print!
Wikipedia says:
In 1951, at 66 years of age, Håkansson rode his bicycle emulating the so-called Sverigeloppet from Haparanda to Ystad. Because of his advanced age the organizers had refused him to participate – the maximum age was 40 years – but he still started from Haparanda, formally not among the contestants but starting one minute after the last of them had set off and wearing a shirt on which he had written a big zero as his ‘runner number’. The Tour was run in stages, and while the contestants slept, Håkansson would pedal up to three days without sleeping. During the contest, he was presented as “Stålfarfar”, a name that had followed him since the late 1940s. He had a big beard that made him look extra old, and the organizers were afraid people would laugh at the race participants. Many newspapers were covering his story, and he became famous as the nation followed his journey through the country.
During a few hours off in Söderhamn the police asked him to take a medical exam, which showed that Hakansson was in good health. After 6 days, 14 hours and 20 minutes, he arrived in Ystad – 24 hours before the contestants.
We couldn’t said it better ourselves, so we borrowed the words of Edwin Starr (or Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong who wrote the song “War”). We started to screen print it as black text on white paper (of course). We felt that it was someone else who said it, someone with a stronger voice than we have. So we did a calmer version – for us who don’t feel comfortable with shouting. We think the message gets through also in the more modest version. It was the first time we printed with white ink on grey paper and we think it turned out very well. The colours give us a nice old-office vibe. Maybe we will do more with that combination!
The posters also work one by one. The first poster leaves an empty space after the question which you can interpret as “absolutely nothing”. And if you want – poster number 2 can hang by itself an be an answer to a completely different (imagined) question.
And since we came to think of peace demonstrations, we made these two. Maybe we’ll go out on the streets with an old tape recorder with Edvin Starr singing out the message, if our patience runs out.
Peace!
Ten years ago, when we started screen printing together, Esa played around with roots. It became prints on some t-shirts with roots in different compositions. One of them was a play with the similarity between roots and hair, a calm man with a long beard of roots and eyes made of the letters a and p.
When we started to think of all the old prints we have left behind, we felt that we really wanted to give “Arvo” a second life. This time we worked further on the shape of the beard to get it look more like the real Arvo beard sitting on the chin of Arvo Pärt (one of our favorite composers in terms of modern classical music). This is not supposed to look like a portrait (as you see) but we think it turned out pretty well and gives, at least us, a feeling of Arvo Pärt and his music.
Here it is, the poster Arvo! And of course you find him in the jollygood shop as well.
When we had printed Världsmästarcykeln and Världsmästarcykeln XL we knew immediately that we wanted to continue to work with the bike theme. We started looking for other models and we have received several suggestions, but we still felt that we were not really finished with Världsmästarcykeln. For us it is somehow the bike. Then came the idea to start print it in color. And we thought, why not try? You are usually able to choose the colour of a bike when you’re in a bike store, so why not fix some new colours on our bike for spring 2014.
We have carefully mixed a colour which we think is near the orange hue we associate with Crescent’s World Championship bike. And we added a bright green and a really dark purple. Colours that are intended to work both together and separately.
When we stood at the printing table, we became so fond of the combination of mint green / purple that we printed a version with both colours, one above the other. So here are the spring colours according jollygoodfellow.
For us a bicycle is the optimal way to get around in a city! You get to know the city in a whole new way, and the city becomes easier to grasp.
The print Världsmästarcykeln!
The idea with this poster is to give the impression of having a real bike on the wall, therefore we wanted to print as close to natural size as possible. Our solution was to split the motif on two 70x100cm sheets.
We wanted to start from a classic racing bike, which for us feels a little like an icon for cycling. By a lucky chance there was a bike exhibition in our hometown of Malmö. We went there on the last day and snapped some pictures for inspiration. Immediately we felt that Harry Snell’s old worn Crescent would be perfect. One of the reasons was that Harry won the amatuer race in Valkenburg 1948 and after that Crescent was branded as the World Champion Bike for years, and the other that it simply had the right feeling.
But the pictures had a noisy background, so we had to spend many hours at the computer to create a nice bike silhouette. It was also the first time we screen printed a large format poster and we made many trials before we got it the way we wanted it. But now both of us absolutely agree that it was worth all the hard work!
The bike can demonstrate an active and healthy lifestyle (or the dream of it) . It can stand for freedom and taking responsibility for our world’s future through a minimal environmental impact.
The photographer and the bike.
There is something very aesthetical with bicycles, graceful and subtle at the same time, and graphical!
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Update:
Many of you seem to have enjoyed our effort and the edition of Världsmästarcykeln XL is sold out.
We have now a new bike print called Ride, read more about it here or have a look in the jollygood shop!