We're going on tour.

We are very excited to announce that we will be on the road for two whole weeks this March.

Our first stop will be in Baltimore where we were hired by the University of Maryland for a 2-day feature during Design Week. The first day we are going to be guest lecturing a group of design students and the second day will be running a day-long print workshop. We will be posting more info about this soon.

From Baltimore we're back on the road and driving to Bowling Green, KY to hang and print with our good friends Connie and Jim of Print Mafia. We are producing a Hero/Print Mafia collab art print that will debut the following week at Flatstock 24 at SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Then back in the car with our pal Ron from Madpixel in Louisville, who is joining the tour in his wheels, for the long drive to Austin for Flatstock and SXSW. Flatstock runs Thursday 3/18, Friday 3/19 and Saturday 3/20 in the Austin Convention Center.

We are also very excited to announce that Hero was asked to be a featured speaker on a panel at SXSW's Music Festival this year. Mark will be one of just a few featured speakers on a panel called, "It's So Big! Packaging Design from CDs to Vinyl to Merchandise." We will be posting more about this panel soon, but, if you are headed to SXSW this year, plan on attending, the panels are free to attend with your badge and this one promises to be an exciting, thought provoking and informative discussion.

Lastly, we will be releasing a new poster at Flatstock for a movie that is debuting at SXSW's Film Festival. We are super excited about the film and this project and we can't wait to share more about it with you.

So there you have it, we will be escaping the last few weeks of the miserable weather in Buffalo, missing our pets like crazy and packing up the Element for the first BIG road trip of the year. We are stoked!

Post Flatstock Wrap Up

So it may be a little overdue, but here it is none the less...

(the only photo we took of our own booth, nice right?)

Flatstock 20 at the SXSW Music Festival was yet another successful and rowdy time for Hero! We came home giddy, wiped out yet somehow refreshed, inspired, full of BBQ, tacos, and margaritas and for me, sicker than hell!

SXSW is the kick off to our travel (carnie) season and we look forward to it as soon as we get home from Flatstock at Bumbershoot in September. We saw a lot of old friends, met some great new people, ran into clients and even friends from Buffalo that we haven't seen since winter set in. Flatstock was 4 days instead of the usual 3 this year, and we found that part to be wonderful, a lot of the hardcore SXSWers that are too busy with day parties and all the goings on of SXSW and even some of the Austinites that refuse to leave the house during SXSW, got to come check out Flatstock on Sunday.

We got to shack up with the Strawberryluna crew again, which is always a side-splitting riot, and of course the party van with us, the 'Lunas and Doublenaut. This year we had tons of great laughs at Melrose Place (our rad pool in the center of our hotel courtyard) with all our talented friends from around the country, and even a few from Canada (check out all their links in our links section). That is where "inflatio" was born and it will never be forgotten, thank you Terry.

We ate too much BBQ (thank you again Salt Lick for accommodating over 40 insane poster artists), ate probably the best migas and breakfast tacos at Juan in A Million, which came complete with the firmest handshake in all of Texas and I even bought myself some kick ass cowboy boots from Boot City!!

Thank you to all of our friends that make Flatstock the best part of what we do, everyone that came by, chatted with us, bought some of our stuffs and made us feel welcome in Austin for the 4th year in a row!

We can't wait till next year! Yee-haw!

Check out all of our pictures here

SXSW is calling...

Hero's Flatstock 20 poster - available for purchase exclusively at Flatstock
(and on our website when we return if any copies remain)

We're leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for Austin to participate in SXSW and Flatstock (see our previous post about what these are). We're pretty stoked 'cuz the party starts REAL early this time since the second leg of our flights tomorrow comes complete with built in BFFs. The Strawberryluna crew is on our second flight and we're gonna cause a ruckus in row 18!! HOLLA! And to add to the fun, the "Hero party van" is making a reappearance this SXSW and we'll be rolling six deep with the Strawberryluna and Doublenaut crews through the streets of Austin. (ok so it's a min-van, but whatevs)

The boutique will still be open while we are away, normal business hours - but there will probably be VERY little blogging happening till I get back! Stay tuned though, when we get back we'll post photos of our adventures, show you all the new prints and tees that we've been working on that are debuting in Austin this week and probably have lots of good stories to share :)


**Oh and hey, if you are coming by Flatstock this weekend, make sure to mention that you read our blog and we'll give you a little gift. Here is the floor plan of Flatstock 20 in the Austin Convention Center to help you navigate your way to us and all of our super talented neighbors.**

Miss you, friends.

Photos from Flatstock

Check out photos from our trip to Austin for SXSW, as usual we didnt take enough photos and there is a lot of junk, but at least you can see our booth (our first double booth to be exact)

Check out our Flickr album here.

Flatstock 16 - SXSW - Austin, TX

FLATSTOCK 16 is being held in Austin, Texas in conjunction with the world's premier Music Festival South By Southwest. Poster artists from around the world will hit The Austin Convention Center for the bi-annual convention sponsored by the American Poster Institute, dedicated to the promotion of music poster art and design worldwide. You've heard the sordid tales of deluxe poster prints sold to you the fans by the artists themselves, now come see for yourself. FLATSTOCK 16 is FREE for everyone so come one come all. Show up early and be ready to be overwhelmed with amazing posters (you might want to bring some dough too since you won't want to leave empty handed.) FLATSTOCK 16 is an all-ages event.

Hero has a double booth this year, so be sure to come by and say "Hi!", we're gonna have loads of new stuff. Including exclusive t-shirt designs, etc.