Gig Posters

One thing in the world of poster design that bugs me got brought up in the last class. Often bands will make posters using imagery from other works that they do not own the rights to. These guys are usually small time and nobody really gets to upset about it, but occasionally big name bands will do it too. As I've probably made clear I don't much like this kind of thing. If you are going to make something derivative from something else it had better be pretty different from the original.

Band members are not always designers though. So often don't really consider that they are ripping off someone's work when they grab imagery, or else they just don't care. Now this might seem like a trivial thing to a band. After all if they can play cover songs at a concert they why not have a 'cover poster' of sorts? Well it goes back to recognizability. If you cover a popular song or if you say "this next one is a cover of X" then you make it clear that you are borrowing something. Unless you put a disclaimer or something at the bottom of the poster then people looking at it probably won't know where it came from. If bands actually did that; had a footnote that said "imagery from so-and-so" then maybe that would be alright. Heck it would probably be great publicity for the artist.

Usually thought it's stuff that nobody cares about that gets used on band posters. A band might need a poster ASAP and have no cash or time to spare making something legit. What's more it's kind of a popular thing to do for a gig poster, so people pretty much expect it anyway. And stuff's in the public domain right? These are called excuses. If a band really wants a poster to promote their event then just hire an illustrator. It doesn't even have to be a serious thing, they can just ask a friend who draws or uses Photoshop if he would do it for twenty bucks. Small time bands should know how hard it can be for up and coming artists to get a job, so why not just support an up and coming artist?  There are plenty out there who are as desperate to eat as the band is to get a poster up the night before a concert.

And in my opinion some of the best gig posters are illustrated ones. Collages of retro stuff or reused images may look cool, but an illustrated poster brings something unique to the band's image. Later if they make it big they can reuse and resell these posters without worrying about some dude crying copyright infringement. Provided that they buy the rights from the artist of course.

Lastly here's a book full of cool illustrated gig posters. Click on the preview to see some awesome illustrations.

Gig Posters Volume 1.