Not So Idle...

In November 2009, Creative Hunt met Shanghai creative, Nini Sum. At the time, she had just launched her own screen printing business, Idlebeats. Almost a year to the day, Nini invited CH to her lovely new studio to discuss what’s changed, what’s stayed the same and what’s next.

The studio itself is spacious, bright and a world away from the underground space Idlebeats used to occupy. “We picked this area because it’s close to everywhere so people and friends can easily come over and join our workshops or just hang out,” says Nini of the Changle Lu location.

Our tour starts in the kitchen, just off of which is a small room, mainly occupied by a custom-made stainless steel sink for washing the screens. There’s also a huge machine, which, to the untrained eye could be mistaken for an industrial photocopier. “It’s an exposure machine, it’s for making screens”, Nini explains. “It has a very strong light, so strong it’s bad for your eyes”. She switches it on and a whirring sound fills the space. “We had to cut the machine in half to get it in because the door’s too narrow!”





”We get the screens themselves from a supplier in Zhejiang Province – we don’t have the capacity to make them ourselves – to stretch the silk requires a lot of space and tons of clips. We get the blank screens from them and expose them ourselves. We do all the creative part! Our style is all about hand drawing – we hand draw everything and then we scan them into the computer to separate all the layers in Photoshop”, Nini explains.

Next on our tour is the studio space itself, currently being used for a private workshop led by Nini’s partner, Gregor who is helping fashion fabric designer Isabella print her artwork. “We have another workshop tonight and from now on we hope to do regular workshops, just one to two people each time and they come over and we teach them how to screen print anything – posters, greetings cards, their art work – we can teach them everything from exposing the screens right through to printing.”



Many colourful and striking prints decorate the room. They're mostly gig posters, and my eye is drawn to one for the Reeperbahn Music Festival in Hamburg, Germany. The Festival itself, explains Nini, is associated with a gig poster fair, and each band invite a screen printing studio to design a poster for them. Idlebeats worked with American band, Deer Tick on a surreal-looking poster depicting a dinosaur’s skull.

Idlebeats, it would seem, has been busy: “Yeah, we moved studio just after the fair. It was a good experience though and a cool format – to connect the visuals and the music. It’s not really happening in China, but it’s very popular in the States and in Europe. People can go see a band and then come and collect the posters and prints. It’s a pretty interesting idea”

Feeling inspired, I inquire whether her workshops are suitable for absolute beginners – happily, they are. “They’ll be every other Saturday and we’ll have one in the afternoon from 2pm until 5 or 6pm, and another at night from 8pm to 11pm or so. The price includes two screens, so people can do a single layer artwork or one with two layers. It’s a one on one private tutorial – we want to focus on quality and actually be able to help people learn. We did some big workshops before – basically no one learnt anything. It was at our old studios, and there were maybe 100 people there. It was a nice party but nobody learnt anything! If people are coming to workshops, they want to learn, so that’s what we’re doing”.





Idlebeats have come far in the past year, and there’s yet more in store: the studio is on the Advisory Board of the Jue Music and Arts Festival taking place next spring. Drop by their Changle Lu studio to admire the sometimes crazy, always cool prints on show, or better still, sign up for one of their workshops. As Nini says, “It really is a lot of fun, you know, to make something by hand”. It is, as well as being a refreshingly different Shanghai activity - and Idlebeats’ new studio is the perfect place to give it a go.

Saturday 18 December, Class 1: 2pm - 5pm; Class 2: 8pm - 11pm. 600RMB per person
962 Changle Lu (Near Wulumuqi Lu)
For more info and to sign up for classes, email: workshop@idlebeats.com