Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, The Rolling Stones played Altamont Raceway, Jimi Hendrix reconstructed our musical boundaries from Yasgur’s farm. 1969. A revolution of a year. Psychedelic poster art came of age stretching the possibilities of graphic design out to the fringes of the universe.
It was in this fertile, fervent world that fingerprints took its first excited tentative breath. Today, deep in the mist enshrouded green hills of the beautiful Nimbin Valley fingerprints is as productive and robust as ever.
Fingerprints design practices are proudly old school. Many of the designs are hand drawn, the primary tools being pen and paper rather than mouse and screen. Uniquely all the colour separations are hand cut. The passion is for creating a beautiful product using practices that are ethically and environmentally sound.
The printing is exclusively by hand using only eco friendly solvent free waterbased inks. The shirts themselves are an entirely Australian item, the cotton being grown little more than a few hundred kilometres to the west, then milled, cut and sewn in Sydney.
Add a dash of occassional absurdist humour to the old school ethic and the result is a fully realised range of design brimming warmth and colour.