It's our 20 year anniversary!
This year, we are celebrating our 20th anniversary!
Hard to believe we've been going at it for two decades, but the calendar don't lie.
While the name Burlesque was being thrown around during the late '90s Life Sucks Die era, and can even be seen written on some of the house-designed ads inside the magazine's final issues, we really got things fired up with a full-time design and print operation, logo, and website in the Fall of 2003.
We dove head on into designing concert posters, printing them in Wes' homemade screen printing studio in the basement of his South Minneapolis apartment building, creating album covers and logos, sharpening our squeegees, and connecting with the communities of poster artists, printers, and collectors across the map.
We opened First Amendment Arts, an art gallery in the front of our Northeast Minneapolis print shop, and hosted shows from dozens of local and national artists, moved upstairs to open CO Exhibitions and brought in even bigger artists and events, printed thousands of posters, shirts, and stickers, made some incredible friends, traveled around the globe to share our work at schools, galleries, and events like Flatstock, then came back home to keep making more.
We've worked on design and print projects for a huge range of clients, from Nike, Target, X-Games, UFC, Chromeo, World Street Kitchen, Stones Throw Records, Baroness, Stephen ESPO Powers, 3M, Converge and Deathwish Records, Tara McPherson, to Walker Art Center, and so many more.
We threw a party for Dr. Dre's birthday, unknowingly lighting the fuse to launch a worldwide annual holiday with Dre Day parties happening in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Nashville, Seattle, Tampa, and even Paris.
We've steered the ship through a number of truly wild twists and turns and goddammit we're still here bringing you all the high quality graphic design, screen printing, events, and good times you can dream of.
Plenty of celebrations to come throughout the remainder of 2023 (more on that below), but for now, here are a few photos of just a few of the fun projects and events we've been part of over the years.
Oh you thought we were just gonna do a little blog post and that's it? Come celebrate this mega milestone in style at a multimedia bash in Modist Brewing's brand spankin' new event space!
Our dear friend Shannon Blowtorch will be spinning some tunes for you to get down to!
Those Magic Underground boyz will be prestidigitating and destroying your beautiful brains!
We'll have some new and classic posters, shirts, and other goods on display and available for purchase!
We're bringing back the spirit of Cinco De Mayhem with some custom piñatas filled with ridiculously good prizes!
Take a chance with our carnival games!
Challenge a friend to a classic video game projected exxxtra large onto the walls!
Giveaways!
Glorious, award-winning beer from Modist!
Snacks!
Friendship!
RSVP and invite friends on Facebook!