OK so what do you guys do for band posters? Our resident Yoko Ono, oops I meant the drummer's girlfriend has made some posters for our show next week.
The poster itself is very nice and I appreciate the work but her and the drummer are in love with pictures and the poster has pictures of us on it which I don't particularly like. I was hoping for more of the band name and a logo not more pictures of us.
They have this constant need to take and post pictures of everything we do.
Am I being to critical or what? Personally I'm not big into pictures never have been so this is nothing personal against these pictures just pictures in general.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
A picture can reinforce your genre and attitude. Are you chains-and-tattoos metal? Power 3-piece? Party band? 4 friends from middle-school? Is there a bra hanging from your tuners? A picture of you guys playing and a picture of the audience dancing can encourage people to want to come out and have fun with you. Plus it helps friends who see the poster: "I know that guy!"
Ahhh the joys of being in a band! So glad I work alone these days. If you want your feelings heard, voice them. If you want a quiet life, best not to say anything. Whatever your choice, I hope it turns out well.
A picture is worth a thousand words , not all which are necessarily flattering . I have been making posters for my bands for the last 10 years or so and initially used just a logo and a motto , along with the date and time of course . After a while you get tired of the same old thing so you change it up for the time of year , holidays or any other tidbit of information that seems appropriate . After years of being together and playing the same venues people generally know what you look like and what music you play so you may put a picture that everybody agrees on on the poster or you can be lazy and revert to just the logo , date , time , etc.
If you have a very photogenic band or front person , it can't hurt to put their picture on the poster but ultimately it is the music that will draw people to future engagements . The best advice that I can possibly give to you is that unless the picture offends you in some way , let them continue to make posters because someone has to do it and if it isn't them it may have to be you . Just my $.02 , adjusted for inflation and non-returnable .
If I claim to be a wise man , it surely means that I don't know .
Dice, yea makes sense. The posters are out as is and non of the pictures aren't offensive but I don't think we have anyone especially photogenic.
I'll just go with the flow for now.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
We used to do that, but we did a "rebranding" of a sort.
In the past, we had one picture each of a band member in some performance, and then put art around that along with gig info.
We have now changed up our logo and our approach to marketing. We wanted to take our cues from some of the older conceptual concert posters and work from there. The posters for our next gig are made up like an ad for an old 1950's detective novel. It really pops out at you.
The idea behind your gig posters is to get folks in the door. You've got maybe a few seconds to make an impression. Our band is just made up of dog-faced guys, so our mugs wouldn't sell it. So we're trying to approach this like selling any other product.
Microsoft Publisher is a great tool for making these up. Plus there's lots of crazy JPG files on the web you can use.
On the other thing, don't feel like you have to use every picture they take. I had my wife do pictures at the last gig. She did like over 200 pictures and I posted around 20 on our Facebook site. Nothing personal, I just wanted to use what would be most effective. I needed pics of folks dancing, not eating chicken.
Our former bassist and his wife made up a logo of sorts. But it used this real busy font for the band name and used Disney characters to represent the band members. My wife thought it was "adorable" which was my first red flag. After firing him, we changed it up, got rid of Disney and added Bettie Page and some flaming dice. I would describe our approach as much closer to Tarantino now. Its more fun to be dangerous than cute.
At the end of the day, you have to think about what's good for the band and let Yoko express herself back at the gallery if what she's doing isn't effective.
