Johnny Two Tone Club

Early Days

Holy cow, the JTTC folks have been so busy of late we haven’t even had time to check our horoscopes this month!

Brendan had another baby (don’t ask me to remember the name but it was a boy), I’ve been busy at my day job at Studio Papa designing the hell out of the Perth Fringe World Festival and have just finished the Studio Bomba rebrand for their exciting new share-studio/shop/café which I’ve now relocated to and found a new HQ for the club at the same time. If that wasn’t enough, Studio Lost & Found have been busy jet setting about for wine judging competitions and packing up their studio for an exciting new location which is how we came to stumble across our first exposure rig tucked away in the corner of their shed.

Back when we first formed JTTC we were trying to figure out how to expose silk screens on a budget and I Macgyvered this rig together that did a pretty decent job. At this point I should insert a full disclaimer that I don’t suggest you go and do this at home, nor do I suggest that this rig is really that safe in any way. It was something I built that did the job at the time but now we’ve moved on to a bigger, professionally built and more importantly a safety tested unit that we love that wont burn down our friends homes or children – something you come to care about as you get older.

HOWEVER, this thing is pretty boss right? I bought the only positionable outdoor light housings I could find, sawed the housings down so I could mount the most powerful UV lights I could get my hands on and screwed them to a piece of pine with a power board taped to it. I had a careful arrangement of strings that I would suspend the rig with from the ceiling of my garage at the time (“the caddy shack”) with adjustor strings to tweak length of the suspension on the left and right side before taping it off.

Whilst this will never compare to a pro unit with a bed of long UV lights to give a nice even exposure, this DIY unit was the thing that let us get our toes wet without burning the bank or luckily our fingers, and I don’t think I can bring myself to dismantle it just yet. I think I’ll tuck it into another shed corner for now and look forward to discovering it again in another few years.

International Doughnut Day

Oh my lord, has it been this long?

It’s not you, it’s us, really… we’ve been busy – crazy busy in fact with our day jobs, making festivals & fairs, studio renovations & relocation’s, migrations from West coast to East coast and then back to West coast and generally a bunch of other things we’ve been doing that we can’t tell you about yet or wouldn’t really make any difference for why we’ve dropped out of your lives. We’re really sorry – reaaaaaaally sorry, and that’s why we want to make it up to you with our new project – the third installment in our annual Public Holiday Project series.

Just when you thought you’d seen all the public holidays that 2012 had left, we threw one last one in there for you – International Doughnut Day. That’s right, an international day to celebrate that halo of happiness in all of our lives that transcends nations, gender boundaries, age & economic boundaries and any political difference you care to muster.

The doughnut is to the sweets world what the sandwich is to the savory world and deserves to be better celebrated like it’s more respectable brother. Dress it up or dress it down, the doughnut is a building block of enjoyment.

Whilst there are already a number of semi-established anniversaries of the doughnut like National Doughnut Day (U.S.), National Cream-Filled Doughnut Day (U.S.), International Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day and Buy A Doughnut Day, never before has there been a public holiday conveniently celebrated in December to summarize these various species into a single genus until now.

It turns out that the doughnut is as tasty as it is mysterious. Created by Dutch Settlers, an American boy on a lime-trading ship, a gift from a higher power? One thing’s for sure – the doughnut has thrown a life ring around the hearts of many nations with various recipes originating in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America and a myriad of other exotic cultures.

So do yourself a favor and go grab a sixer right now and celebrate this December 30th in a few minutes of neon devouring silence. Not time for your coffee break yet? Hell, you shouldn’t even be working on a public holiday. Take that break right now, tell your boss Johnny said so.

Angela Mitchell of Studio Bomba

Brendan Hibbert of Brendan Hibbert Design

Leah Dent of Studio Bomba

Marcus Taylor of Studio Papa

Michelle Leslie of Michelle Leslie

International Walkman Day

In the second installment of our Public Holiday Project series, we here at ToneCorp decided to create a series of posters paying tribute to one of humankind’s most amazing inventions to date; the Walkman. 32 years ago today the first Walkman was released to the world and things would never been the same. Though the functionality inherent in the TPS-L2 had been around for some time in professional models for journalists, never had they been collected in a unit affordable for the common music fan. Debuting at ¥33,000 (US$200), to coincide with Sony’s 33rd anniversary the unit was a slow seller at first but quickly gained popularity with an innovative advertising campaign from Sony.

Supposedly Sony Chairman Akio Morita asked his team to create a portable device so that he may listen to his favorite opera’s on his frequent trans-pacific flights. 30 years of court battles and a whole bunch of cash would reveal that Sony may have borrowed the idea pretty heavily from Andreas Pavel’s Steroebelt, first developed in 1972, seven years before the Walkman would debut.

At the end of the day the Walkman was an amazing invention that for the first time in history would allow anyone to completley replace their audio input. No longer did you have to listen to the birds chirping outdoors, your mum telling you to make your bed or oncoming traffic honking as you jaywalk a red light. For the first time you could be in a private space whilst in a public space, a phenomena that would later be termed the “Walkman effect”, something that continues frequently today with iPod listening. Perhaps most importantly, this was the first time you could create your own soundtrack to what you were doing. No longer would you have to watch the Rocky montage with envy, now you could live it.

Today is a day to remember. Today is International Walkman Day.

Ben Hagley and Papa Marcus Design

Studio Lost & Found

Papa Marcus Design

Studio Bomba and Michelle Leslie

Brendan Hibbert Design

Prints available in our Etsy shop soon.

CXXVI

It’s not you, it’s me. I’m really sorry, I’ve been meaning to write but… I’ve been really busy. Really I have… I’m not just saying that. I’ve been thinking about you a lot but have been too involved in my day job, which has also been becoming my night job a lot of late – one of the perils of working for yourself.

Before I forget I should probably mention to those of you that don’t follow our Facebook page that we finally opened our much-anticipated (by us) Etsy shop which has been ticking over nicely in the last couple of months. Almost everything we’ve done is available for sale at this point and we’d like to extend an enthusiastic high-5 to everyone who’s already bought some loot. You can find the link to the shop under ‘Store’ in links menu of our site.

So I haven’t had a chance to print anything lately but I have had the time to spend countless hours if not days trawling the internet for information on African flora & fauna, compelling sandwich photography, bike repair tutorials, and of course a bit of hand lettering. It was during this pilgrimage of procrastination that I managed to track down the work of Jon Contino, an artist whose work I’d been seeing pop up on various blogs over the last couple of years. Whether it’s his work with former design studio One Twenty Six, or his new work with his clothing company CXXVI Clothing Co. (126), this guy has the Midas touch in my opinion.

I’d been eagerly awaiting the relaunch of the CXXVI website as I’d been discovering illustrations from some of the shirts and when it launched 2 days ago I couldn’t have been more impressed. To top it all off it turns out that not only do they do super rad illustrations, but the prints are all hand pulled screen prints. Screen printing anything is enough to make me happy but telling me you hand pull your screens is like telling me: ‘I box without gloves’; ‘I bake cake without flour’; ‘I play banjo… with my mind’. Needless to say, I was pretty excited. Whilst screen printing will give your design a lot of punch, hand pulling your screens is fraught with equal shots of danger and reward as any number of unexpected things can happen on each pull. As CXXVI say on their site; ‘Each shirt is individually printed by hand making no two pieces alike’. The fact of the matter is that it’s a whole lot of fun to print stuff by hand and just see what you end up with.

I can’t wait to earn a few spare clams so I blow them on an order to these guys. You can check out more of the CXXVI Clothing Co. here.

One Twenty Six

CXXVI Clothing Co.

Valentines Cards

With V-Day just around the corner we thought it might be prudent to make some fancy cards for loved up folks to give to the object/objects of their affection. With our patriotism levels feeling comfortably mild, we decided to make the most of Australia Day and try our hands on the endangered Gocco machine.

With no prior experience in this medium myself, our newest Melbourne recruit Painter Girl was good enough to take me under her wing and show me what’s what in this business. With a number of stop starts on my behalf between badly applying my Foam Stoppers and breaching paint, or badly carbon printed artwork I managed to botch things up for most of the day on my ‘I heart Ranga’ design. However, a shared birthday with the Boss has always enriched me with a ‘no retreat, no surrender’ policy so off I trotted to Officeworks, then to KFC, and then finally to a Liberty petrol station that was kind enough to run my designs through the photocopier for maximum carbon density.

Back in business again and approaching sunset rapidly, I powered on and managed to have the best of success in printing my ‘You are Rad’ design, especially victorious as I stayed up until 1am drawing it the night before while my friends watched Top Gun. With everything going smoothly I was beginning to finally feel the fabled ‘Gocco success fever’ everyone was talking about, yep the day was a win after all.

Painter Girl of course was going from strength to strength all day starting with a killer batch of scones and following on to producing her always stellar prints on their signature vintage novel page backgrounds. She’s also released a series of crazy ‘Love Attack’ cards and prints already available from her Etsy shop.

JTTC Items will be available for purchase on our Etsy Store shortly.

International Sputnik Day – Part Two

With the celebration of my Gran’s 90th birthday last month (holy cow right?), I had the perfect excuse to duck back to Perth for the weekend and squeeze in a little get together with the Club.

We’d always intended to print posters from our International Sputnik Day project and since the designs were still on the screens it was an easy decision what to print that weekend. With a tub full of shiny new metallic ink and a couple of new recruits to break in (hi Dan and Bec!), we gave those screens hell for a day and managed to squeeze 2 of our 3 designs out.

All items will be up for sale once we go legit!

Interview with Duncan

For the second in our interview series with JTTC club members we thought Mr Duncan Roylance might be a good choice. Duncan is without a doubt the man behind the machine, and by machine I mean a Chandler and Price letterpress machine; “Herbert” to his friends. With Duncan’s help, Herbert is entirely responsible for all of the beautiful letterpress work we’ve been seeing coming out from the folks at Mitchell and Dent. A master of all trades, Duncan has a secret life as a blues musician, a talent for tinkering with old motorbikes, and seems to be determined to invent the next generation of silk screens. Without further ado, Mr Duncan Roylance…

Where are you from?
A time long, long ago, before the tyranny of Federation, when letterpress ruled the known universe.

What’s your day job?
I talk on the phone.

Why screen printing?
Why not screen printing???

Whose screen printing do you most covet?
Banksy – it’s kind of screen printing…

Your top two PMS colours?
Black and mid-grey (it’s the new black).

Your top two songs to screen by?
Can’t print, dancing!!

Your top two blogs?
Mitchell and Dent

Your top two typefaces?
Corona Sterling Portable, IBM Selectric

Your top two procrastination activities?
Hmm, let me see…

Your top two things that start with T?
Tea; and Triumph T140V

In a death match between the Queens left and right hand: Sir James Paul McCartney and Sir Michael Philip “Mick” Jagger, who would win and why?
Mick the Lip Jagger; he’s got too much of da blues for pretty boy Pauly. Though these days it’s hard to tell ‘em apart…

Finally, show us your work

Screening stuff other than paint

I’ve been noticing a lot of clever chickens lately who’ve been screening all sorts of stuff other than paint. It never would have occurred to me to put anything other than the finest (maybe not always the finest) paints through my precious screens but after seeing some of the inventive things that other folks have been doing, I’m starting to think again and brew all sorts of crazy ideas. Here’s a couple of projects from FPO and Eye Magazine that I’ve been digging in particular.

We Freak on My Jeep by Excuses Design Collective
In a nutshell, these guys basically exposed their image onto their screens, then screened glue through the silk, quickly washed it out their screens and then poured hundreds and thousands over the print to stick to the glue. They even screened the “Beep Beep” part separately in a gloss varnish.

Pretty amazing stuff.

Read the full article here.

Oil and Water do not mix by Anthony Burrill with Happiness Brussels
Mr Anthony Burrill marched himself down to the polluted beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana with bucket and spade and (easily) collected enough oil to use as a paint to screen these amazing posters.

Burrill comments: ‘There is a perception among many people that the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is just going to somehow disappear … For people in the Gulf, including Louisiana, the effects of this disaster will be around for a long time.’

Read the full article here.

Johnny goes National, and Hardcore

It really seems like eons have passed since our Sputnik inspired debut into the world last October 4th with the first of our Public Holiday Project series. Finally I’ve taken the time to sit down and catch up on some JTTC blogging while I procrastinate some impending deadlines. This post also finds the club having really gone national now with me now residing on the East Coast and looking for a new set of recruits and HQ.

The first new Johnny to our Two Tone cause has been my old buddy Mr Dion Waterman of Shout Out Loud Print. Being much more schooled in the ways of punk rock history than the rest of us, Dion was good enough to inform me that we got our JTTC logo around the long way. I hadn’t realized that one of our logos (we like to use a few), was referencing the infamous New York Hard Core logo, only incorrectly. After a bit of research it turns out he was right on the money. So in the interest of introducing our Eastern chapter and being Hard Core sensitive, I’ve given the logo a little make over.

Lost in Space

Whilst working on our current project which is top secret so don’t ask me to tell you anything, I found myself developing a nostalgia for all things space retro and Sci-Fi. In particular I couldn’t stop thinking about Lost in Space (the original), Star Trek, and this really great comic I’ve been reading called Tales of the Fear Agent. I was so excited I couldn’t help myself, so in the spirit of inspired fan art I took pen to paper and drew up a little JTTC Sci-Fi scene.

Top secret space themed project to be revealed immanently padawan, I promise.