Hello all,

Things have been busy for the Bureau with the launch of The Ink Initiative. This has been an exciting venture for us and a learning experience to say the least. I love screen printing and if I had my way, it is what I would be doing everyday all day. Having said that, I will have to admit that it can also be a very frustrating process. There are so many important steps that need to happen between the initial design phase and the final finished product. Each one of these steps provides a high chance of something going wrong that can either slow down the process or halt it altogether. This is just a fact that I have come to accept and try to deal with because I believe the beauty of the finished print will always trump the difficulties of producing it.

We have received numerous emails from people who enjoy the behind the scenes photos of our process. Many have asked for video tutorials and we have plans to do a some in the future, but right now we just don’t have the time and the necessary resources to put it together the way I would like.  So for the time being, I will continue to post some photos and information on the our  ever evolving process.

Shown below is a sneek peek of our latest print, “Go suck on a Shutupsicle” which was originally designed for the Bureau’s “Superman vs. Darth Vader” exhibit. For this print, we included some new techniques and equipment to help streamline the process and to produce more efficient runs. Well… in theory that was the plan. We hit more snags than I though we would but we also encountered some minor successes as well. So here is a day in the life of a test print. read more

Hey all,

I usually don’t post work until it’s finished, but some of you have contacted me about what’s coming up from Amerikan Made Prints for The Ink Initiative Project. So I thought I would post some images of the next two prints we will soon be rocking out.

The first poster is a reworking of the “Shutupsicle” print from the now classic “Superman vs Darth Vader” exhibit. The original print was done on the Print Gocco system and was only 4″x6″ in size. It is one of the most requested prints to be reprinted at a larger size. The film positives for this poster were shot last week and should arrive in the next few days. We are hoping to print this over the weekend and have it up on the site by early next week.  I will keep you posted to the progress.

The second print is entitled, “Kenny G. ain’t Jazz”. This was a concept that I have been kicking around for a long time now and I had even designed a variation of it awhile back using a photo collage. I decided to re-work it using all illustrations as a small tribute to one of my favorite illustrators, Burt Goldblatt. I still my tweak some of the illustration a little before I send the artwork out to have the positives made, so this one might be a couple of weeks away. Stay Tuned.

>K.

Here are the original brushes that started it all! During the many re-boots and re-designs of the Bureau’s site, I have often forgot to re-post these brushes. They are the first one that I ever created and to be honest, I tend to forget about them.

Apparently there are a number of people who still use them, because I always seems to get at least a few emails a week asking for the brush sets.  I am happy that people still use them and I always mean to create more, but over the last few years I have moved away from digital design and tend to only use Photoshop to layout an idea or finish a project. Maybe I will create some new brush sets in the near future but until then, here is a blast from the past.

Download

The Design Bureau of Amerika has officially launched it’s screen printing studio, Amerikan Made Prints™ and it’s first major project: The Ink Initiative. This project has been in development for about 6 months and is something that is very important to me. The concept is very simple, we will screen print posters to sell online and then donate the proceeds to a selected non-profit organization.

This is a project that I am very passionate about and for that reason, I am going to take a small break from other Bureau projects to concentrate all my focus on getting The Ink Initiative to where I feel it can go. I have some new Bureau resources, such as brushes and color swatches that I plan to upload here and I still will be updating and posting on this site but for the immediate future, those projects will be put on hold for a little while.

I hope you all will continue to visit here and support The Bureau and I hope that you will check out The Ink Initiative project. Please take a moment and pass the word on your social and professional networks about this project and help it gain some momentum.

Thanks!

>Keith