Graphic design meets rock 'n' roll
By Dave Ruigh, Jayplay writer
Video killed the radio star two decades ago and nobody really seemed to mind. Here in the 00s, an invisible marauder known as the mp3 is slowly killing CDs; and more importantly, its accompanying album artwork. And people seem to mind. As a result, the concert poster, a hybrid of music promotion and art, has spiked in popularity. It's the music lover's Neosporin, a source of rock-related art that acts as a combative ointment for the changing times. Concert posters are now sold in a variety of settings and can even be found in exhibitions at major art museums like the Museum of Design in Atlanta, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution.
Barry Fitzgerald, associate professor of design, says the concert poster's recent surge in popularity is a natural response to the loss of album art because music and art have had strong ties since the birth of modern pop culture. Concert
posters had a similar rise in popularity when cassettes and CDs replaced vinyl, causing album art to shrink to a fraction of its former size.
The concert poster first appeared as a small, benign handbill in the early days of rock'n roll, during the late 1950s and early 60s; it primarily served as a marketing and promotional tool and little thought was given to its aesthetic worth. That all changed in the late 1960s when artists, inspired by the psychedelic sounds of West Coast bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, began producing colorful, ornate concert posters that stupefied the free-love generation almost as much as the music itself. These posters were produced with traditional materials such as paint and ink and were extremely labor intensive.
Many of the concert posters produced today are designed using computers
and are stylistically similar to the photo collage work of the artist Stephen Kroninger. Micah Smith, art director at Blue Collar press, a local design and production company, designs concert posters in this fashion by manipulating various fonts, images and collected clip art within PhotoShop Illustrator. The posters that result are often a surrealistic blend of random images, band names and tour dates.
Along with promoting a show or a string of concert dates, rock posters also benefit the artist who creates them when they are plastered throughout a town.
"It's my greatest tool to get my art noticed," says Drew James, an illustrator and promoter for Up To Eleven Productions, a local agency that books shows for venues throughout the Midwest. "It's like having your own low-rent art show."
Even though recent technologies have made their production easier and cheaper, concert posters aren't made for every show that comes through town. An artist will only design a poster when commissioned by one of three rock entities: the show's promoter, the venue where the show will be held, or the band itself. More often than not, says Smith, it will be the promoter who asks him to create a poster.
But being a promoter first and foremost, James has different motivations to design and produce posters: "I usually only do it for the bands I like," he says.
And as one would expect, designing rock posters is a pretty good way to make a living.
"I don't have to wear khakis and tuck my shirt in at work," says Smith. "I can put up rock posters in my office and listen to the music I want to. It rules."
20| Jayplay 10.20.05