Designing Gig Posters

October 15, 2014 2:06 PM

I'm interested in offering my illustration services up for bands' gig posters, and hopefully get to a place where I could get some repeat work in that milieu. It'd be great to make some money from it, but I don't expect it to be overly lucrative. Still, it'd be gratifying to me if I could do work for some of my favourite indie bands. The trouble is that I don't know who handles the production of posters, be it the band, their label or the clubs they play in. Does anyone have any insight into the process by which gig posters are created? I've done freelance illustration in the past, but there seem to be specific rules to this niche.

I'd also be interested in doing album artwork, but that seems like more of a one-off thing, rather than an area out of which one could get some consistent work.

posted by picea to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

If they're local bands, go to the gigs, take some samples, offer to do a poster for them.

If they're bigger find their main webpage, myspace is still a bit popular for bands I think - there should be a contact address on there.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:43 PM on October 15, 2014

Some bands have their posters made up for their entire tour, promoting all their shows at once. Other times, it's the venues (or the local booking agents) who get the posters made, so there will be distinctly different posters for the same tour depending on the venue.

So talk to bands, booking agents, and venues, showing off examples of your work. Good luck!
posted by filthy light thief at 2:54 PM on October 15, 2014 [1 favorite]

For single date posters similar to the Fillmore ones, it's generally handled by the venue. Having a relationship with the band(s) can grease the skids.
posted by rhizome at 3:36 PM on October 15, 2014

A thought regarding album art; my husband made a living doing this through the 90's - he's a skilled oil painter and this was a time when labels would pay real money for real art, a time when album art was enclosed in a real live CD or record. Now album art had been reduced to a thumbnail-sized medium (think iTunes, Pandora etc) and not as much money is allocated for commissioning real art. It's sort of a dead medium. Another avenue where he found success (painting and illustration), along with posters and flyers, was designing skateboard decks. Does that sort of thing float your boat? (you can see his album artwork at markdesalvo.com)
posted by le_salvo at 3:58 PM on October 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

Have you checked out gigposters.com - particularly the forums?
posted by destructive cactus at 4:54 PM on October 15, 2014

Best answer: It's the venue and/or whoever's in charge of marketing & promotion for the tour, which can be handled by a dedicated marketing company, or someone from the band's management team, or their record label - whoever it is, contacting the band's management is probably the best way to go.

The and/or above is because sometimes even if a band's team provides posters for the tour, the local venue will still have one of "their" artists create a poster.

Getting work from a venue would probably be the easiest to break into & get you the most repeat work. Lots of venues seem to like having a stable of 2 to 5 artists that regularly create poster/flyers for all their shows, and smaller venues especially will have lots of shows to promote where they're not getting any promo material from the bands.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:40 PM on October 15, 2014

Best answer: Everyone I know who has done this has also been a screenprinter. Gigposters.com is the site you want to look at, especially the forums. It's not enough to make a cool poster, the only posters that will sell for enough money to be profitable are hand printed ones.

IME you can contract with whoever - the band, the venue, the tour, the promoter - but it is not uncommon to basically do the entire thing on spec if you are just getting started, with the expectation that you will make it up from print sales by either manning a table at the show yourself or selling online to collectors.
posted by bradbane at 10:12 PM on October 15, 2014

Best answer: It varies. A few bands have a member or a girlfriend to do posters for every show. Most don't. Sometimes the booking agent will do it, if it is a big enough show to cover the cost. Sometimes it's the venue. It's sort of a 'not it' situation because no one wants to pay for it. The question you should be asking is, who is able and willing to pay for you to do it. The most consistent client would be a large venue. They usually have their own in-house person for promotions. Look around and when you find a venue that has pretty terrible or boring posters, assume that it is an in-house job and put together a proposal, showing them that you can do the job in a way that will increase ticket sales.
posted by myselfasme at 5:47 AM on October 16, 2014

i also think it depends on "how indie" you mean by indie rock. if you sent some samples of your work to a band (on their bandcamp page or whatever) and they like it, they'll use you! don't be afraid to reach out to the bands themselves, since they are likely to appreciate the effort and probably the artistic value.

if you're doing this more for the money than for the fun, i agree that contacting the bigger venues might be the way to go.
posted by andreapandrea at 3:52 PM on October 16, 2014