Aesthetic Apparatus
Enquire about Aesthetic Apparatus
USA / Helen Cowley helen@dutchuncle.co.uk
EUROPE / Joel Minter joel@dutchuncle.co.uk
ASIA / Mikiharu Yabe miki@dutchuncle.co.uk
Led by Michael Byzewski, Aesthetic Apparatus is a graphic design, illustration and screenprinting studio with deep roots in independent music and the American gig-poster tradition.
Over more than two decades, its music work has included The White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Dead Weather, Cake, Spoon, The Kills, The Decemberists, Dinosaur Jr, Guided By Voices, Bob Mould, The Hold Steady, Heart and Frank Black, alongside later posters for artists including Billie Eilish, Arctic Monkeys, Blink-182 and The Who.
Michael has also taken that relationship with American music history beyond individual gigs. For the release of the Muscle Shoals documentary, Aesthetic Apparatus was commissioned to reinterpret 12 record sleeves for landmark tracks recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, including music by Etta James, The Staple Singers, Paul Simon and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The studio has worked more widely across publishing, advertising, packaging and culture for clients including The Criterion Collection, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nike, Ray-Ban and Warner Bros. Records.
But concert posters remain central to Aesthetic Apparatus. Michael describes them as part of the studio’s “DNA”, with 99% of the concert posters he designs still screenprinted in-house at the Minneapolis studio.
That physical, self-produced approach has been there from the beginning: each colour is individually pulled through a screen, layer by layer, creating an object that is genuinely printed by hand rather than simply reproduced digitally.
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