Gig Poster

[SturdyDesign]

Hi Guys,

Im looking for some critiques on a gig poster i've created recently. It's a small heavy metal show consisting of mostly post/hardcore bands.
Im looking for crits on things like postioning, colouring and overall design. whether you think it'd work as a poster or could use an extra something.
Also, feel free to add the bands on facebook if you enjoy this kind of music.



Cheers,
SturdyDesign.

[TinyBird]

Putting Caps To Every Single Word Makes Them Harder To Read And Having Large Blocky Paragraphs That Have The Same Font Size And Colour (though I'll assume it's just a draft with mock font?) And Doesn't Separate Important Info.

Basically this looks like an office powerpoint presentation or some World of Warcraft game evening poster (what with the mournful fantasy background and all), not a metal gig poster (though it might be that I don't have much experience on post/hardcore heavy metal). I can't immediately discern any important info, like when this even happens is maybe bit more important than when the doors open and close, especially if there's a website etc where the people can go and see more info specific info that they might've missed. But in your poster both are the same size and colour and hidden in a huge block.
I didn't even realize first that those were band names (but I assume you replace those with the band logos, right?) and overall this doesn't really sell this gig to me either or get me excited of it.

This is a really rough and pretty crude in placement, but it's something that you might want to go towards to, when it comes to presenting important info (red is what you want the viewer to at least remember because with the name and date they can plan and search more info, orange something that they also should look but not necessarily remember because this info will be on the website and green's the least important, though whether the "no alcohol" thing should be more important is up to you).
Also here's lots of different types of poster to take inspiration and tips from:
http://anothera.net/v2/articles/30-e...ntclub-posters

[SturdyDesign]

Cheers man, unfortunately I hadnt had very much to work with, as the only band that has a logo is my own, even the two sponsor logos down the bottom i had to re-create myself.

I'll quickly make a couple of changes with positioning and colouring, although I think it may look kind of odd if only one band has a logo. as for the title font, i was going to use an old medievil font, maybe a viking looking one. It'd be good to get your opinion on what style fonts you'd use to accompany the poster.

Here's our bands logo.


Cheers,

Edit:
A website wont be created for the event as it isnt a huge show, just a small country town show in the local recreational complex, maybe a facebook group if anything, I guess thats why I hadnt put a huge amount of effort into it, but I do really appreciate your advice on the sizing and positioning of the information, that completely slipped my mind.

[TinyBird]

Cheers man, unfortunately I hadnt had very much to work with, as the only band that has a logo is my own, even the two sponsor logos down the bottom i had to re-create myself.

I'll quickly make a couple of changes with positioning and colouring, although I think it may look kind of odd if only one band has a logo. as for the title font, i was going to use an old medievil font, maybe a viking looking one. It'd be good to get your opinion on what style fonts you'd use to accompany the poster.

Ha, that's a nice pickle. Yeah if only one of the bands has a logo then I'd just use a basic font for all of them, and as I'm not a metalhead or a real graphic designer I can't say whether these would fit the music style (so take these with grain of salt), but personally I'd probably go with some basic, readable "horror" font like Kreeture, Grunt Reaper or Feast of Flesh type of thing for the big and fancy things or at least some heavy, non serif font like Survivant.
The swords in the image already give more more of a melodic metal feel, and viking-ish font probably would increase that, but as I don't know the bands I can't say whether that actually fits.

[SturdyDesign]

All very good fonts! i was planning on using the feast of flesh font as i had used it before and it fits with most styles, but unfortunately, both dafont & fontsquirrel were blocked by my work server :/ i sent an email out yesterday requesting access to the sites so hopefully soon i'll be able to get hold of them. sorry if my replies are out of time with yours, I live in Aus haha. today ill be working on the positioning and hopefully colouring, ill be back later today with the results.

Again, cheers for all the help.

[SturdyDesign]

So i've tried a different approach. I made what I could of the Standard font with the little time I had, and created some skulls and spear symbols. put a bit of colour in it and changed some of the sizing. I dont think its at its best at the moment, but its starting to look a bit more like a gig poster. Any more crits would be greatly appreciated. I was going to add gradient colouring to the skulls to make them look a bit more realistic but i dont really have the time to focus on that right now.

Cheers.

Edit:
if you hadn't realized, the lineup has changed since last night.

[Giacomo]

It's obviously impossible to cram an entire course in graphic design into a single comment, but I'd recommend you think about creating some contrasts of scale (important stuff should be a LOT bigger than unimportant stuff), grouping similar information in clusters and including some empty space so the design can "breathe," and possibly adding in some regions of contrasting value (dark vs. light.) One possible approach to the typography is described in the JPEG below. Also and most importantly, as Tinybird noted the font you chose makes the thing look like a PowerPoint presentation. I'd recommend you do some exploring.

[SturdyDesign]

Thanks Giacomo! Will definitely look at changing up the fonts once I get access to some sites. I'm not really keen on any of the standard ms fonts as they all seem very ms office like to me. I used to use the stencil font in primary school computer classes and I think that just stuck with me that it was ms office, especially that blue wavey style, I remember that being everywhere. I might have to look into creating my own if all else fails. Thanks for all the help though, I will have another play around with some different fonts now, are there any standard MS fonts that you would recommend for a Metal concert with this name? Last night i had another little play around with just my edit of the font and the base BG colour and ive come up with two different variations.
I've merely added more detail to the title and switched out the background.

[ronin356]

It needs more Satan and cowbell....lol.

Skulls? Cliched but they really fit the genre. It looks nice.

[Giacomo]

..I will have another play around with some different fonts now, are there any standard MS fonts that you would recommend for a Metal concert with this name?

Can't help you there...I've been on Macs my entire career. I will say that the fonts you have at present are really not doing your design any favors. Whatever direction you decide to go in, I'd strongly recommend finding some typefaces with more character than what you're using now.

[SturdyDesign]

It needs more Satan and cowbell....lol.
Skulls? Cliched but they really fit the genre. It looks nice.

I thought the same when I first did it, I didnt really want to use skulls because they're on everything metal, But I figured it was essential to get people that dont listen to much metal's attention, plus I thought it would tie into the shows name at the same time. Also, Mr Satan will be absent from this poster, none of the bands really have anything to do with the fellow, or any religion for that matter haha.

I wanted to bring more focus to the spears, but it'd be hard to bring them out without sacrificing the border.

About the font, I think i'm gonna go with the 'feast of flesh' font as it is most related to the genre of bands featured, or at least try it. I just need to wait for the IT crew to allow me access to the sites. It'd be nice if all the bands had a logo, but unfortunately i'm not so lucky.

[SturdyDesign]

Ok, so I've improved the textures with a grimy overlay, darkened that red to a red with a bit less 'bite' and put some floral texture on the red section. Still havent had any luck with some fonts, i might try download a couple at home tonight and bring them on a flash drive to work. Again Cheers for all the help, ill have some updates for you all tomorrow.