Promo posters Help!

[KingPrawn]

Morning all. 
I need to develop some promo posters for a number of gigs. I was wondering, what software or Apps do you use? Nothing to complex and cheap as chips. 
 

Ta

[Woodwind]

Do you know what you want to do and how you want them to look in your head?

 

This is important as diving into software will be enough of a distraction.

 

Not wanting to teachnto suck eggs, but spending a bit of time with pen and paper experimenting with layout sketches etc will help when trying to translate your ideas into the software.

 

Adobe products will do everything, but you will pay handsomely and I loathe subscription models rather than one off payments so have looked at alternatives for a while.

 

Gimp is effectively a free photoshop.

I have an older version and as I'm used to photoshop it's fantastically annoying. However it will do what you need and I believe more recent versions are less irritating.

You can do all your poster design with this one piece of software and there are loads of YouTube tutorials etc

 

If you want to get into vector graphics, which can be handy, but by no means essential for posters, the freeware equivalent of Adobe Illustrator is Inkscape.

I haven't used this, but have friends who rate it.

 

Finally Adobe Indesign will do all your layouts, again you can make a poster without this, but this opens up other possibilities.

Freeware equivalent is Scribus, but this is a bit compromised in relation to publishing programs you pay for.

 

Good luck and have fun!

[Silvia Bluejay]

When I started creating band posters I had a copy of Photoshop Elements 9, which I subsequently upgraded to Elements 15. I still use the latter, although I'm planning to move to Photoshop proper when I buy a new PC next year.

 

Up to version 18 (I think?) Photoshop elements could be bought old-style, on a CD you loaded on to the computer to install. None of the current extortionate subscription model. I don't know if you can still buy a copy of an old version of the software on Ebay or similar.

[BigRedX]

If you've got a decent idea Word or even Paint will be fine.

 

If you don't, even owning the whole Adobe Creative Suite won't help you.

[Silvia Bluejay]

1 minute ago, BigRedX said:

If you've got a decent idea Word or even Paint will be fine.

 

If you don't, even owning the whole Adobe Creative Suite won't help you.

True, but making good ideas come to life is vastly helped by decent software. My very first posters were created in MS Word. In a matter of weeks I moved to Elements, and suddenly the quality of the posters shot up!

[Silvia Bluejay]

Another thing to keep in mind is that, for a band poster to be effective, you shouldn't get too arty. A poster is mainly there to say that band X is playing at venue Y on date Z. The logo is massively important (and should be the topic for a different thread altogether). If the date and place information is carried by exceedingly fancy fonts or drowned by heavy background, it will be less effective. Keep things simple and make sure the logo/band name is at the centre of it all.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Silvia Bluejay

[BigRedX]

34 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

True, but making good ideas come to life is vastly helped by decent software. My very first posters were created in MS Word. In a matter of weeks I moved to Elements, and suddenly the quality of the posters shot up!

 

I do this for a living and while owning all the industry standard software (and a decent computer to run it on) can speed up the process it doesn't actually help with coming up with decent ideas in the first place. In the same way owning a bass guitar without being able to play it doesn't make you a bassist. My most successful poster from a creative PoV, and one that has been considered worthy of a place in the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection, was created using a couple of sheets of cheap WH Smith rub-down letters and a drawing pen. 

[Trueno]

I’ve been designing posters for events for half a century. Firstly, make sure the fonts/information are readable and prominent. Secondly, evoke interest and (particularly) curiosity. Feel free to utilise whatever level of artistry is at your command… subject to the above… and remaining in keeping with your “brand”.

 

I now use Procreate for digital art (15 quid-ish), but I think Sketchbook is free. But… for Procreate you will need an iPad and Apple pencil. I think sketchbook will work across different platforms. As noted above, there are loads of free photoshop-type apps which will probably do the job.

 

Edit… or some rub down letters and a drawing pen…

Edited August 14, 2021 by Trueno

[Maude]

43 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Another thing to keep in mind is that, for a band poster to be effective, you shouldn't get too arty. A poster is mainly there to say that band X is playing at venue Y on date Z. The logo is massively important (and should be the topic for a different thread altogether). If the date and place information is carried by exceedingly fancy fonts or drowned by heavy background, it will be less effective. Keep things simple and make sure the logo/band name is at the centre of it all.

We more often than not have a background image of the the band in black and white and then have the text and band logo in suitable colours over the image. 

The text has to be prominent and the main focus, but the b&w background image rather than just white helps it appear more professional. 

 

Simple but effective. 

[Silvia Bluejay]

Same for our posters for Damo And The Dynamites. Background wash of the logo, prominent band name (which is a kind of logo in itself) and ordinary Calibri font (possibly with added minimal formatting/colouring) for the rest of the information on the poster.

 

Never forget to add the address/postcode of the venue!

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

...My most successful poster from a creative PoV, and one that has been considered worthy of a place in the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection, was created using a couple of sheets of cheap WH Smith rub-down letters and a drawing pen. 

 

... and, I suspect, at least a modicum of talent, maybe honed. 

 

[BigRedX]

And some practical advice.

 

There is no point in producing posters if no-one is going to notice them. It will be a waste of your time creating them and the band's money getting them printed.

 

These days when nearly everyone has access to a computer, some sort of design software and a colour printer, it is much harder to make your poster stand out. The example I posted earlier in this thread was done in the 80s when the majority of our "competition" was black and white A4 photocopies with the occasional A3 photocopy on coloured paper. Therefore when our posters were A2 size 3-4 (usually bright) colour screen prints they had no problem being noticed even if the the design wasn't always as good as it should have been. Which could be difficult when I had to come up with something new on average once a month for almost 5 years and wasn't always as inspired as I was when I produced my best designs.

 

There can be a great temptation to produce a "one size fits all" design where all that changes are the details of the date and venue. This will be fine if the posters are only going up in the venue you are playing, or all your gigs are in completely different towns/cities. However if you regularly play different venues in the same locality and hope to put up posters outside of the venue, each time you use the same basic poster it will become less effective as an advertisement. If you are going to use a single design make it one where it is easy to change the colours of the background and/or type so that it is less obvious that you are recycling your ideas.

 

So for TL:DR

1. Make it eye-catching compared with the competition

2. Make it easy to see all the relevant information

3. Make each the poster for each gig at the same venue or in the same local area as unique as possible.

 

This is why I said in my first post in this thread that ideas were more important than the software used.

[tegs07]

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

My most successful poster from a creative PoV, and one that has been considered worthy of a place in the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection, was created using a couple of sheets of cheap WH Smith rub-down letters and a drawing pen

Great work. Just about the perfect poster, as visually it’s very engaging and it’s easy to see what is happening and when. Often posters advertising events have to compete with a lot of background “noise” so need to draw attention and deliver the message very quickly and succinctly.

[Nail Soup]

I’ve done all mine in MS Word.

Used snips of photos and shapes with text mainly.  The “bring to front” and transparency features were useful.

[Alan Wilkes]

8 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

I do this for a living and while owning all the industry standard software (and a decent computer to run it on) can speed up the process it doesn't actually help with coming up with decent ideas in the first place. In the same way owning a bass guitar without being able to play it doesn't make you a bassist. My most successful poster from a creative PoV, and one that has been considered worthy of a place in the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection, was created using a couple of sheets of cheap WH Smith rub-down letters and a drawing pen. 

Very true nothing is better than your imagination.

[KingPrawn]

What great ideas and advice BC comes to the rescue again 

[gafbass02]

I use the ‘over’ app on an iPad, works very well is so so easy. 

[zbd1960]

For those that prefer one-off payments for software to subscription models, Affinity have both a PS equivalent and a DTP product: Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. These are generally £49, but they do have them on half-price offer sometimes.  

[BigRedX]

On 14/08/2021 at 14:01, tegs07 said:

Great work. Just about the perfect poster, as visually it’s very engaging and it’s easy to see what is happening and when. Often posters advertising events have to compete with a lot of background “noise” so need to draw attention and deliver the message very quickly and succinctly.

 

Thanks!

 

Although a lot of the simplicity was down to cost and ease of production. Big areas of flat colour were quick and easy to screen print and when every rub-down letter costs a couple of pence to use, it certainly focuses the mind on honing the message down to its basics!