- The ultimate thing of a rock poster
is if you're able to remember an event and see a poster
and just remember all the great things
that happened during that show, it's pretty rad.
(rock music)
- Hi, I'm JW Buchanon.
- I'm Nate Duval.
- My name's Dan Stiles.
- I'm Lil Tuffy.
- My name is Michael Fuchs.
- I'm John Vogl.
- My name is Flynn Prejean.
- We are DKNG studios.
- We're here at Flatstock
at South by Southwest Austin, Texas.
(rock music)
- One thing that we try to include
with a lot of our posters
is to really convey a sense of the location
where the show's taking place
'cause a lot of these people are buying posters
as a piece of memorabilia to remember
the show they attended.
So, we want that location to really resonate in the art.
So with this Mumford and Sons poster
that took place in Phoenix, Arizona,
we tried to incorporate the Snake River
in a really literal way,
beyond that, at the time that we did this poster
the latest Mumford album was called Delta.
So showing a River Delta was even further infusing meaning
from the band's music as well as the location.
So we kind of did a little bit of a two for one there.
- When I make my work,
sometimes I try to focus on the location
because the only bit of science I've found
sometimes in art is the sense of hometown pride.
Like this Newport Folk Festival
is alongside the ocean in scenic Newport, Rhode Island.
And while you're watching the shows,
you look out into the Harbor,
there's people enjoying it from boats
and it's a real nautical theme to the whole event.
So I thought, why not have a sea gull captain?
Jeff Tweedy was out on a sort of acoustic solo tour
doing a show in Brooklyn.
I thought, why not turn the Dumbo area, Brooklyn bridge,
why not give it some headstock in the guitar
and sort of create that feeling of Jeff's performance
in the location that it was happening.
(rock music)
- I think what really makes a good poster
is you really have to create a strong symbol
because much like a logo,
a poster has maybe two or three seconds to communicate.
So if somebody needs to stare at your work
for 20 minutes to figure out what it is you're saying
you kind of blew your opportunity.
For instance, Death Cab for Cutie, it's an acoustic show.
So the real concept with this one is doing "sh," you know
and so that grabs people from across the room
they see that they're like, oh, what's going on here?
And like, oh, it's it's a woman's finger
in the negative space.
And then the lips and there's, there's nothing else there.
There's nothing else to distract you.
It's just a strong, simple symbol,
you know, same with Elvis Costello.
Like those are all his glasses
throughout his entire career from across the room.
You look at it. You're like, "what is that?"
Ah, it's a bunch of glasses, what's it for?
Oh, it's Elvis Costello.
That makes sense.
This is for fans of Elvis Costello.
If your grandma sees it, she might not get it
but it's not for her.
- I created this poster for Morrisey a few years ago
and the whole minimalist aspect of these posters
was something that I originally did just out of necessity.
Cause I didn't have a whole lot of money to pay
for films and a lot of ink and things like that.
So, I kind of developed a style that used
a lot of open space, a lot of negative space.
And when I started doing this poster for Morrisey
I wanted to do something, you know
very iconic that doesn't show the artist.
So his hair has been, you know,
a very big focal point of his entire career.
And I think just like having just a simple comb
and this very simple aesthetic
really kind of screamed Morrisey
without actually having to put Morrissey on the poster.
(rock music)
- One element that we think makes for a great concert poster
is giving just as much attention to the typography,
or the lettering, as the art and illustration itself.
So this Green Sky Bluegrass tour poster is an example
of how we try to incorporate type in an organic way.
So from the beginning with this poster,
we thought about this kind of fuel canister idea
and getting the band name to really feel
like it's branded on there.
And also in regards to typography,
thinking about not just slapping the tour dates,
if it is a tour poster, at the bottom of the poster,
but also incorporating those into the illustration.
So in this case, that's kind of the fine print
on the side of the gas can.
So the idea was just to keep everything really contained
and make sure that the typography really matches
the style of the artwork.
- When I can, I like to try and put Easter eggs in there.
When I was working on the Green Sky Bluegrass poster
the band members are from all over,
but this Kalamazoo show is kind of their home base,
and the yellow checker taxi cab company
started out in Kalamazoo.
You see yellow cabs all over, whatever,
but I didn't necessarily know that's where they came from.
So I decided to focus on that.
That's why, where it came with the subject matter.
And that's why the type and stuff is to look
like what would be like on an old cab.
(rock music)
- One of the things that we try to do
as a gig poster artist, whether you're familiar
with the band you're working for or not.
What I do is I try to imagine if a band's
trying to tell a story through their music
what would the visuals look like?
I'm reading the lyrics,
and I'm trying to capture what the band's about.
I'm trying to enhance the story that they're telling
through their music.
These are ones I think exemplify telling the story.
For example, Jesse Dayton is actually,
he lives here in Austin, but he is from Beaumont.
So we tried to incorporate a sense of Southeast Texas.
So that's why we put the the oil derricks
in the background, the desert type scenery.
It really kind of epitomizes the style and feel
of his music.
- Sometimes when creating posters, you're always looking
for a place to start, for me that is determining the style
of the artwork, not so much the execution
but is this band a hard edge band
or are they a loose, organic, hand-drawn band
sometimes more digital kind of electronic base band
like the Disco Biscuits.
I think something like doing a poster for them,
I would like to start crisp, hard, and digital.
They have a very kind of glitchy techno based sound.
And to me, you want to try to match that sound
with the visual execution of your image
and something like this.
I would start with a more realistic photo base
and build around hard edged vector elements,
versus something like a more expressive psychedelic
kind of jam band feel for Trey Anastasio
that kind of wants to be hand drawn.
It wants to have imperfect lines.
It wants to kind of mimic the exploratory nature
of the music.
(funky music)
- So another thing that makes for a good gig poster
is just the screen printing process in general
and really utilizing everything that's available.
It's a lot different than just like printing out a poster,
you know, Kinko's style.
With something like this,
the St. Paul and broken bones poster,
you can see the shininess that's happening
like this gold text,
and actually the shininess throughout the whole print
is utilized this way based off the fact that it's gold paper
that's using actually only two inks just laid down on it
but we're getting a lot of detail
and a lot of like dynamic nature based off
of the paper choice.
And this can be applied to a lot
of different things in the screen printing world.
Another example of this is printing on black paper,
for instance, this Jack White poster.
These are all on,
we actually are seeing the surface of the paper here
so we're not printing black at all.
And we're only utilizing just three colors
to kind of get this to pop.
And it's just interesting to think about,
in the design process,
how it can really come to life in a physical form.
And when you see this online, you don't get the full story,
but when you see it in person,
it really feels much more lively
because you're seeing the surface of the paper
and these colors really, really pop
because they're actual inks that are laid
on top of each other.
And typically we would print
like light colors on dark colors,
but for something like this,
we're actually almost doing the opposite
where the last color to go down is white.
And that's why stuff like the white
in his name really pops off the page
because it's got like this base of ink underneath it.
- The other cool thing that we started doing
in the industry is printing on metallic foil papers
that makes the design pop a little bit more
and brings more of a psychedelic vibe to it
and adds kind of more of an art feel to it for me.
I like printing on foils because it's like what I would buy.
And I have seen more within the community
of a push towards having foil prints,
but at the same time having regular paper prints as well.
- All our work is silk screen
and that's pushing ink through a stencil,
like a series of stencils.
So if we have a four color print,
then we're pulling ink through one design
and then another, and then, another, another,
and we're just building up layers of ink.
What we feel like is a really successful poster design
and silk screen is something that really takes the steps
of that into account.
So, using bright colors,
'cause you can do that with silk screen
and you might not be able to do it with something else.
Considering the shininess of the inks as layers build up
or just using a colored paper, like getting a free color
by using a colored paper instead of white.
This print is called garden cat,
And this is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about.
This is just three colors, it's a yellow on the bottom
and that's got the cat cut out to the paper,
and then you got blue, that's transparent
and a green that's transparent,
and you get all these crazy shapes
on all these different shades of blue and green
by like just layering color together.
We mix all our inks by hand
and we just do it to our own satisfaction.
I never like to use anything straight out of the bucket
because I just feel like it's boring.
And we use a lot of overprint varnish,
or clear mediums, transparent bases to like really get that
smooth, shiny, clear kind of transparent thing.
- One thing we think we share with almost
all of the artists here, is that many of them
are musicians themselves.
Play in bands, have friends who are in bands.
So it's very communal in the sense
that artists and musicians have a ton
of overlap with each other.
- Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for watching.
If you want to learn anything more
about the art of gig poster design
or just design illustration in general,
you can see our work on Skillshare.
We do a lot of tutorials for all types
of design illustration.
(pop music)
- [Man] Thanks for watching.
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