“Two Years of Lo-Fi” Poster

Two years of Lo-Fi! A 2018 celebration of a comedy collective that was just hitting their stride.

And speaking of hitting their stride, I think this is where it finally clicked for me—I’d tried a lot of things for Lo-Fi’s branding and kind of circled the logistical drain before I settled on the paperpunk DIY effect.

I’d been experimenting with cutting up posters and scanning them back into the computer since my days working on Modern Brit. With Brit it was a pastiche of the stereotypical punk zine aesthetic of the 80’s and mod style from the 60’s, but it was always limited to a very conservative British color palette.

With Lo-Fi I could let the colors explode.

Since the show itself is scrappy as hell, any and all imperfections are perfections in this context. In some cases my own prior mistakes inadvertently became a part of the branding for the show— the red splotches here are let over from when I rushed to scan in roughs of the original logo before the ink had dried. It left red battlescars all over my scanner glass that you can see in pretty much every Lo-Fi piece afterwards.

But it works. “Happy little accidents,” as Bob Ross says. Leaning into mistakes is a key facet of improv, and that’s how everybody on Lo-Fi met. It’s in our DNA. It’s only fitting we should bear it proudly here.