Nick Cernak

The Black Keys with Por­tu­gal, & The Man poster by Jeff Soto
Jan­u­ary 24 & 25, 2012
Le Zenith — Lille & Paris, France
18″ x 24″ on Cream Speck­le­tone paper
printed at Inhouse Print­ing, Chino, CA
Jaune édi­tion of 200
Pour­pre édi­tion of 25
Vert édi­tion of 10

Jeff Soto recently designed a gig poster for The Black Keys. He made a cool video to show a lit­tle of the process that goes into design­ing some­thing to be screen printed. Great Job Jeff!

Jeff com­ments:

 The inspi­ra­tion was sculp­tural works I got to see in France, in par­tic­u­lar those cel­e­brat­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion. I designed the poster loosely as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Marie Antoinet­teís head. I wanted it to be beau­ti­ful and sculp­tural, and maybe just a bit tragic. I donít know where the Black Key’s music fits in, but to me, it works well. There is some­thing tragic in their music, there’s pas­sion and angst and sex­i­ness, and I tried to put all that in.

The let­ter­ing was inspired by the fonts used in the Paris Metro. I couldn’t believe them the first time I saw them. It reminded me of 60’s era hippy let­ters, but older look­ing. I think my friends in Paris take it for granted that they’re sur­rounded by this beau­ti­ful old design work. I live on the west coast, so we never see any signs that old!

These posters sold out fast on his store web­site PotatoStamp.com - 3 min­utes tops.  I wasn’t fast enough today and am still look­ing for a pur­ple edi­tion, my favorite ver­sion out of the three.