As Wilco’s site says, it’s “A classic 8.5 oz diner style heavyweight ceramic mug with a two-color design printed on each side. For maximum enjoyment, use fresh Intelligentsia Coffee or Tea. While spinning some Wilco tunes. Something to wake up to.”

Photo of mugs with beans by Eckard Photographic.

Crosshair in Chicago screen printed them off of our color separations (spot white and metallic gold inks on French Paper’s Construction Paver Red line), then they were driven (yes, driven) to Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Flocking, the company that then added the amazing element of flocking (think raised red velvet texture!), and with that, they were then trimmed and sent (RUSH) to Chicago. What the heck is “flocking”?

We’d like to thank Wilco and TMM for an amazing opportunity to be a small part of a grand city tour concept. Chicago did indeed get “The Whole Love” from Wilco.

Make sure to check out the gallery below for detail shots of each poster design and some photos of the merch area at the venues. You can also head over to Wilco’s Facebook page and see each and every setlist and poster here. Big thanks to Bill Mooney for inspiring the series. Design: D.R. Sapperstein and The Silent P.

As one review states: “Gigposters.com, created by Clay Hayes in 2001, is a living document on the modern rock poster movement and the ‘go to’ resource for music poster art featuring over 130,000 examples by 10,000 artists and designers from around the world. Released this month is the long awaited second volume presenting a new collection of work that’s just as good as the first. Sticking to the original format, you have another 101 posters to grace your walls (among the 700 posters in total) with interviews and short biographies on each of the artists. ” – Friday Book Review (Wings Illustration and Design)

Clay Hayes did an incredible job putting all this together, make sure to get your copy NOW! Available from Gigposters.com and Amazon.com.

Random House‘s page for GP Vol 2.

We recently finished up a poster design for Wilco’s October 4th show in St. Louis, MO.

One of those little birdies to the right of the arch told us that these sold out at the show. Below are some of the process shots, details and even the initial idea as we sketched it out. Sometimes everything falls into place, THIS was one of those times. You can grab one of the limited edition prints in THE SHOP…we have a total of 25 artist prints, numbered and signed out of 200.

HUGE thank you to our bestest pals over at The Half and Half for the expertise on this 6 color beast! TWO metallic inks: One silver, another blue metallic to help create the shadow.

Read more about the famous landmark here and its amazing designer: Gateway Arch.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: It seems fitting to mention: This art was created and produced using a Mac. Listen to a pretty amazing commencement speech by Steve Jobs here.

Over and out…
-The Silent P

We recently got to attend this great event as guests in North Adams, Massachusetts curated by Wilco, one of our favorite clients. Thought it’d be nice to post some of the highlights from this arts + comedy + music weekend! We’re already planning on next years, but shhh, don’t spread the word too much, we want this incredible festival to stay just how it is.

Pfahlert Creative Labs designed the 16 page program that attendees were handed upon arrival. It was really nice to see all the different folks checking it out around the festival grounds. Too many highlights to mention, hopefully the photography will speak volumes. Some nice reviews can be found here: theywillrockyou.com and here: thelmagazine.com

Enjoy the gallery of images below…

-Pfahlert Labs

© All Photography: Pfahlert Creative Labs, 2011.

The idea for this Wilco tee shirt design came after a recent game of the classic board game played with friends. I lost, but this shirt won client approval. We went through several versions, some of which spelled different things like: “CALL WILCO WHO ROCK”, “ON NIFTY FEW”…you get the idea. Our thanks go out to one particular friend who played Scrabble® for what we assume must’ve been hours to see what variations with the letters ‘W-I-L-C-O’ he could create.

So after simplifying the message, shown is the actual printed tee that is now available at the Wilco store here. Make sure to check out the gallery of detail shots and full tee shirt design (don’t lose that empty square!).

“Where on earth am I gonna play that ‘Z’?!”

It was a fleeting idea. Jeff Tweedy’s management needed a limited edition screen printed poster for his Tarrytown, NY sold out solo show. The city of Tarrytown is on the Hudson River, site of the infamous “Hudson Miracle” jet landing. The sketch was done and sent to the client – we waited to see the reaction…  ”You should develop this”. Off we go!

So with a lot more research on the area of Tarrytown, what kind of acoustic guitars Jeff plays, and how best to make the concept of Jeff’s guitar landing in the Hudson with all the passengers getting off safely look fun, we were off to a great start.

Here’s how the process went: Initial sketch.

Next was more reference material, etc.

Then the penciling, sketching and inking started to take shape…

After deciding on the general style and feel (we wanted to keep it “Wintery” since the show date was December) we worked on color separations and then sent the final art files to the printer…

After several test prints and proofing, here’s the final print:

Here’s a gallery showing some detail shots of the final poster print, hope you enjoyed seeing some of the process!

We recently worked with Wilco’s management on creating several promotional items for the band’s very successful Solid Sound Festival, recently held in at the MoCA.

Even though our poster for the event did get published as well as our transit bus signage, we thought it’d be interesting to show some of the process related to the event’s unpublished logo designs. As the gallery below shows, we went through several variations during the design phase. Ultimately, it was fun to work on and see where all the designs eventually got used…and we hope equally as interesting to see here (for the first time) most of the unpublished sketches and roughs we worked on.

Enjoy.

Man, we’ve been working our butts off, apologies it’s been a while between posts.

We were very happy to once again work with Wilco and their management for five new posters in support of their East coast tour. Each design ties into something about the venue and or the host city, as an example the poster concept for Clearwater, FL uses in part the image of a ringmaster, a not-so-subtle nod to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey College found nearby. Other references are off the wall, but that’s half the fun. Since they say pictures are worth a thousand words, we’ll let them do the talking…we hope you enjoy.

All these are available in the SHOP!

These are all detail shots of the following prints:
• Savannah “Ulna”
• Durham “Suspended Flight”
• North Bethesda “Vertigo”
• Boston “Buttuhfly”
• Clearwater “Monocle Ringmaster”

This was a fun one to work on. Stickers are endless and it’s super cool to get to help a band we love with this latest one. We have a stupid amount of stickers, something you cannot have enough of. It may eventually become a tee or some other fun item, we’ll wait to see!

Get a few here: W I L C O sticker.