The Sunday Age turned its lens on our Thornbury factory. In its 28 June 2026 edition, the paper ran a feature on Rock Posters, along with a front-page teaser, taking readers inside four decades of printing the posters that line Melbourne’s streets and laneways.
For a business built on making music and culture visible, being recognised for the work we have quietly done since 1986 feels like a fitting moment to reflect on how far the craft has come.
What The Story Captured
Writer Cassandra Morgan spent time in the art room and on the factory floor, among the presses and an archive that now runs to tens of thousands of posters. The piece traces our arc from a single Fitzroy shopfront in 1986 to the working factory in Thornbury today, and introduces some of our people behind it: founder John D’Aquino, general manager Marcus Seal, and the printers who keep the craft alive.
It also captures something we care about deeply. Much of that archive was screen-printed by hand, one colour at a time, and the hand-printed originals still hang throughout the factory. Tour posters for the Sex Pistols, Midnight Oil and Nick Cave are a record of the gigs, tours and nights out woven into the life of the city.
Street Posters As A Culture
The late Michael Gudinski, a friend and long-time collaborator, put it best:
“The music without the art is like the rock without the roll.”
A poster gave a tour its face. It told you a band was coming to town before you heard a single note. That belief has guided Rock Posters from the beginning, and it still shapes how we approach every campaign, whether it is a headline act, a festival or a brand looking to make its mark on the street.
A Heritage That’s Still Working
Rock Posters began in 1986 and has grown into a national operation, with factories in Melbourne and Sydney that print and install campaigns across the country. The presses in Thornbury still run, the archive still grows, and street posters remain one of the most enduring ways to reach people where they live, walk and gather.
Explore why we believe street posters should be considered amongst media plans: https://www.rockposters.com.au/why-the-street-belongs-at-the-centre-of-your-2026-media-plan/
Locals Saw For Themselves at Open House Melbourne
For the first time, we opened the factory doors to the public as part of Open House Melbourne. On Sunday 26 July, visitors stepped inside for free guided tours across our facility. Marcus walked visitors through the history of the business, the evolution of poster design and the printing process itself. It was an unbelievable success!
Thanks very much to Cassandra Morgan and the team at Sunday Age for your thoughtful piece on how we’ve worked to capture Melbourne’s music culture for the past 40 years.
Author: Paul D. Frehley
Rock Writer (Paul D. Frehley) is the editorial voice of Rock Posters, Australia’s independent out-of-home media network with printing facilities in Sydney and Melbourne. Since 1986, we’ve helped brands, events, and cultural institutions — including the National Gallery of Victoria, the Sydney Film Festival, and the Australian Museum — show up where their audiences already are. We cover campaign strategy, creative execution, and the thinking behind effective street-level and large-format advertising. As an award-winning sustainability leader, we’re also committed to making outdoor advertising better for the communities and environments where we work.