DESCRIPTION XX Merge Festival Poster CLIENT Merge Records DATE April – June 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Maggie Fost, Merge Records Art Director PRINT CREDITS Offset: HarperPrints Letterpress: Horse and Buggy Press TYPE CREDITS Futura (Distorted) Helvetica press-type

QUANTITY PRODUCED 1,000 PRODUCTION COST $1,568 PRODUCTION TIME 2 Weeks DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 12 in × 18 in PRINT METHOD Offset, Letterpress PAPER STOCK Starwhite Natural, 80 lb Cover NUMBER OF COLORS Offset: 1 Spot Letterpress: 2 Spot

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Merge Records — who released Arcade Fire’s debut record Funeral — held a four-night, thirty-three-band festival, XX Merge, in their hometown of North Carolina this past July. To commemorate the occasion, their art department — who keep a wonderful process blog — created this special edition offset and letterpress poster. The poster features a hand-made paper set replica of the Cat’s Cradle, the venue where the festival was held, and is sprinkled with fun lettering of all the bands’ names. The festival logo (XX Merge) is letterpressed in red, adding a visual and tactile punch to the already cool poster. Merge Records’ art director Maggie Fost shares more on the paper set she built:

It’s a model of the Cat’s Cradle, a legendary rock club in Carrboro, North Carolina where much Merge history has taken place and where the whole festival took place. I went to the club in the middle of the day and took photos of the stage so that my model would be representative. It worked! It was very gratifying that when fans saw the poster, they immediately knew it was the Cradle. I added the trees to give it a sense of fantasy and to suggest North Carolina in the summer. The model is literally made of posterboard and scotch tape.

The trees ended up being realized life-size for the stage by Dave Doernberg, who made them out of foamboard in New York and shipped them down, spraypainting them glossy red outside the club hours before the first band took the stage.

Dave Wofford of Horse & Buggy Press in action.


The poster-inspired set at Cat’s Cradle.


Festival merchandise.