saltlakemusic
Gigpulp: Flier & Poster Handbook · Oct 20, 06:58 PM
The Phat Squirrel, aka The Holy Cow, was once located conveniently beside The Stonewash laundry facility downtown. The entrance was an atrium entrance. Once inside the first door you’d have to pay the thug six bucks, then pass through another semi-soundproof door to enter the actual bar. Trick was: there was no telling if anyone was inside the club behind those damned double doors, and once inside there was no getting that six bucks back… fuckers. Needless to say this club was always dirty and dead; not the most financially successful either. Exertion once did a show at the Phat Squirrel which I was invited to goto. Alas, I had no money. According to Chris, the guitarist and vocalist, that wasn’t a problem: for every ten tickets sold, they’d get a free ticket which could be sold or given away to fans. All I had to do to get a ticket was to help get at least ten people out to the show, easy right? I should mention that the average crowd at the Phat squirrel, even on gignights with 3 or more bands was around 10 people, not including band members. Pathetic. If I was able to get 10 people to the venue, we would all most certainly be able to tell.
Nuskin, a mass mercantile and pyramid builder, holds a yearly convention at the Salt Palace, which draws a substantial international crowd. A majority of participants hail from Japan, most of which have never even been to the United States. A small percentage of those participants travel with their families, including teenage kids hankering for a taste of American culture, Big Mac and all. See where this was going? The convention was being held the same week of the show, if only I could tap ten of those hundreds of bored teenagers traveling with their parents and get them to the gig, I’d have my free ticket, and Chris could enjoy playing for a mixed, crowded room. I set about the task of creating fliers, a type of inexpensive paper handout designed to create interest in a performer, event or venue. I’d helped Chris hand out fliers many times before and knew a little bit about publicity.
At the time I was working in the accounting dept for a downtown hotel, and had plently of paper and copy equipment at my disposal. The flier design Exertion had come up with was an 8’1/2 by 11’ full color drawing of a wizard raising a staff skyward amidst a field of wheat. At the top were the listed bands, at the bottom were the dates, times and location, that was it. I felt that Japanese visitors shouldn’t be expected to make the connection that this was a band flier and not some rally or something. With only 5 days before the show, I knew that one day was all I had to come up with a flier. In designing the flier, I decided to go with a universal theme to bridge the culture gap and hopefully communicate better to both visitors and Salt Lake locals, that this was a SHOW located AT such and such address. Not to imply that the audience knew it was a live performance, and state who was performing.
The rock poster came to life in the 1960’s. Local artist Leia Bell reinvented the rock poster marketing strategy for Salt Lake’s Kilby Court, where her popularity exploded over the last 4 years. Her work appears in The Art of Modern Rock, an anthology of rock music and rock art dorkamy.
I purchased a set of giant yellow chisel-tipped markers, and started drawing what I thought was unmistakably cool scribble designs in the center of white copy paper sheeets. This took almost a whole evening to scribble antiquitous designs on 300 sheets of paper. The actual text design took only a few hours to bang together on my computer. I used some schematic outlines of audio equipment from various manuals I’d collected as a document border and left the majority of whitespace at the center to let the flourescent marker shine through, making the flier itself appear to be done in black and yellow lazer print. The most genious aspect of the flier, or so I thought, was a lengthwise space in the upper right hand corner about the size of a candy bar which I’d left blank in order to make any special notes in Japanese. Of course I didn’t know any Japanese, so I trusted James at the front desk to translate for me. So after spending only a day on design, I printed them out and hit the streets early to hand them out to the public.
The night of the concert, after spending most of the previous day handing out hundreds of fliers to strangers, anyone who appeared to be old enough to get into a bar, I showed up at the Phat Squirrel, where nobody had left a ticket waiting for me at the door. I reluctantly scraped what change I could from my ashtray and carseat and paid my way in, only to see the usual dozen or so exertion crew enjoying the opening band. What happened?
Age Limit
Already I said that in working at the hotel during the Nuskin convention I noticed a great deal of Japanese teenagers leaving their parents to pursue their own activities. This was the audience I was attempting to tap, and yet did I even stop to think that this club would be off limits to teenagers? It was! only 21 and older could get in. All ages shows tend to have a higher turnout than adult shows, teenagers have lots of disposable income from mommy and daddy and all the jobless time in the world to spend it. Adult shows can start later in the evening and usually end around midnight or earlier in the best interests of drinking establishments. The musicians are almost always carded for ID along with all the fans, although several club managers will overlook the photo and personal information on the ID as long as the question isn’t begged. Naturally, if the band can’t play: the crowd won’t show, so it’s usually in the best interest of venues to give musicians the benefit of the doubt on the age dilemma.
Timing
With so much hustle and bustle going on downtown during the convention, there were plenty of optimistic folks who I could approach about the show. I woke up early in the morning around 8 or 9 and started handing out fliers, by 4pm I was totally beat, had covered every square foot of downtown sidewalk twice and given every flier to anyone willing to let me, and looked old enough to goto the show. So is one afternoon enough time to let the event sink in with the public? Not even close. Rob Zombie, in a 96 interview with Guitar World told aspiring young musicians that the trick to publicity is patience. Sure, you’ve gotta stand out on the street corner and hand out fliers before the show. But not just for 5 or 6 hours on one day. By handing out several hundred fliers a week instead of dropping them down on a city all at once, the same audience gets to see them over and over instead of one fleeting moment. People who ride the bus will see the same crumpled up flier with Such-and-Such venue on it everywhere they go until they finally start remembering the name and place, maybe even the price of admission, that’s when results start happening. If it’s a one-time venue, you might as well scrap handouts altogether and go strictly with posters. They’ll be cheaper and less work, but aren’t delivered personally. Fliers are better for recurring venues for that very reason: personal interraction. The act of handing out fliers on a hot saturday afternoon testifies to the reciever that at least one person believes in this show. Sales skills are critical for helping publicize the performer or performance.
Culture Clash
James from the front desk was nice enough to help dictate the Japanese writing on the document, but as he pointed out: Japanese is read from top-to-bottom, and I’d left the open space horizontal. This very stupid mistake may have not only cost Exertion potential ticket sales, but also made my constituents and I look like red-neck idiots. It certainly didn’t help anything that there is no word for “Squirrel” in Japanese. So he went ahead and wrote “Fat Chipmunk” as the location instead. As if both of these errors weren’t complete sabotage already, he somehow confused “heavy metal” with a word he’d heard young people saying in description of “hard-rock” music: “Lifehouse” Who I can attest does not even remotely fall under the category of “Heavy Metal” music. Furthermore, not many of the Japanese folks I’ve met even know of or like Lifehouse. They suck really. So even if word got around the travelers that Lifehouse was playing downtown, they really wouldn’t have given a fuck because they have no idea who Lifehouse is. Imagine: some Japanese kid comes up to you and gives you a flier for some kind of music called “Hootie and the Blowfish”, are you going to get uber stoked to see some “Hootie” band? Knowing your demography is absolutely critical in designing fliers. In this case it would’ve been wiser to leave out any unfamiliar language. Nevermind your own idiosyncrasies and portrayals of style, what will attract potential listeners? Try to get in the heads of flier average recipients and give them imagery and information that will immediately attract, not confuse them.
Lifehouse, this crappy pop-rock power-trio, breaks down cultural barriers with unoriginality. Many people are proud to say that they’ve never heard of Lifehouse, others just think they suck.
Geography
The Phat squirrel was located about a mile from the hotel where I worked. Around 3rd East and 500 south or somewhere thereabouts. A quick 5 minute drive by car, but not too many people would want to walk it and back in the middle of summer. Nonetheless I was confident that people in town on vacation would gladly take a cab-ride eastward for this enticing venue. Boy was that a mistake, you can’t get a cab at 8pm downtown during the Nuskin convention if you drove one for a living. If by chance any of the tourists did call a cab, they likely waited for it long enough to realize this show wasn’t worth it, and walked up the street to the Mall where predictability reigns supreme. If you don’t think Geography is an issue, simply go shopping for show tickets and start planning your trip. Just pick any random show off the internet and ask yourself: Can I goto this show and get wasted? How much is the cab fare home? Will I have to get there uber early to fight for parking? Is it in a part of town I’m familiar with? You quickly start realizing the troubles people go through simply by arriving at your show. The flier should emphasize any strengths of the show’s location such as free parking or easy landmarks to help the audience find the place. My flier only had the address, but not directions, distance from downtown or mention of any kind of transportation whatsoever. This can be a critical error when handing out fliers, almost as critical as handing them out in the wrong part of town to the wrong type of people.
Quantity
I was pretty sure that 300 fliers, which were (for the most part) handed out only to qualified show-goers, would at least turn up a dozen people to the event. Out of all those people I’d solicited, some of which even responded positively “Sure!” or “Cool!” or “Awesome! Thanks!” not a single one showed up. Timing is critical, but so is the sheer quantity of advertisements to be handed out. There are too many factors to consider to make any kind of general rule for quantities of fliers. It’s agreed by most local artists that if 50-100 fliers are all that can be produced and distributed, only the most promising recipients should be handed to. For this reason cost should be a top priority when designing these advertisements. I used the company copy machine, substituting colorprinting for hand drawn color. This probably saved me around 10-15$ in printing costs. I could’ve saved even more by reducing my flier size to 1/4, but this makes the already simple design easier to dismiss. Consider that an 8 1/2” flier can’t be simply tucked into a pocket or left on a car without first being glanced at, whereas a smaller flier can be tossed to the wind without regret of littering. Aat the same time, the smaller fliers that do get placed in a pocket get glanced at eventually when laundry day comes around, if only to be thrown away right afterwards. Quad-folded fliers gets thrown away on laundry day and at that time are the same size as the 1/4 flier, only now that they’re folded: just blank pieces of white paper.
Andrio Abero, founder of 33rpm, an innovative computer design studio in Seattle, has created posters for the likes if Le Tigre, AC Newman, Death Cab for Cutie, and the Seattle Art Museum. After realizing he’d sold out, Andrio left 33rpm and started doing headshop work and stickin it to the man.
Medium
What was my biggest mistake in trying to promote this little-known band for selfish reasons? This is the one you may not like, because so many of you are making the same mistake. I used an inneffective approach to achieve my goal. As mentioned earlier, the handout is better for promoting the location and venue, but the artists performing are almost always overlooked. What if the recipients of my flier had already heard of the performers somewhere else? Perhaps instead of easily dismissing the information they would’ve thought “hmmm…where have I heard that name before?” and continued reading for more information. Displacement of Posters which promote the musicians themselves help to accentuate the popularity of both the artists involved and the location in which the show takes place.
Don’t confuse the objective of the promotional flier. Although the black and white design makes for easy printability, and the hand drawn hard artwork beckons the eye to appreciate, there are several problems. First: that the excessive blackspace which makes up the girl’s hair tends to rub off on people’s hands if it’s done on a lazer xerox or lazerjet printer. A texture filter can solve these sorts of problems very easily. Second: notice that the name of the band appears in two places: the top and bottom this is good, but the word FREE is the most grabbing literature on the page, only second to the bandname, not good. Third: The location is more yada yada info than anything, which is a huge mistake when trying to solicit folks to a show. In this case the group has obviously established a pretty good name for themselves and seem happy enough to play a show without the help of opening bands, well good for them, but don’t do it. The more you attach yourself to an entity such as a venue or recording company or whatever you can attach yourself to, the better chance you’ll have of being taken seriously by the recipient. To summarize: This eyegrabbing design should have been made into a poster, but for whatever reason was made into a flier. The design is exceptional, but the objective is flawed. The advertisement seems more in favor of the document designer than the venue or performer.
If you’re from West Valley, Utah you’ve undoubtably seen this promotional poster hanging from all over the place. What you may not know is that these are real, hardworking Salt Lake musicians. Seriously, they’re for real. This album cover is retrofitted into a poster when necessary, evident by the annoying whitespace at the top, which can be filled with showdates and locations when necessary. Where to begin with the problems in this poster? What it brings to mind immediately is “LOOK! LOOK AT ME! READ ME!” which, if you’ve seen these posters dangling all over West Valley, obviously did the trick. The problem with yellow text is that even the McDonald’s golden arches only act as an attention grabber, then the text of the “cDonalds” is actually white. Once you have the attention, you need to stop saying “LOOK!” and start saying “aha! Here’s what you want to know.” This poster tells us about nothing, in fact the yellow Old English says “LOOK! KEEP LOOKING! CAN YOU SEE IT? IT’S GREAT! ONE MORE TIME, YOU’LL SEE IT!” It’s frustrating to read the mis-sized, mis-colored, ever shrinking bold, yellow, undecipherable text. This poster has serious elementary design flaws, but if those were fixed, the objective would be met. Although show or album information may be listed, it’s the actual artists that are on display. They’ve sortof accidently done something right. As long as they don’t try to use the same design for fliers, they’ll do alright.
Josey mentioned that the raw ghettoness of the poster makes it unnatractive, well I dunno if I agree with that. They identify with their audience by posing in person for the design. Appearing personally on your poster is the most dangerous gamble. You want your poster to arouse a certain degree of curiosity, therefore pictures of band members should never look casual. I don’t think it should be a rule not to put your image in the poster, but you certainly need to look mysterious in the image. Like the short guy in the hoodie (who I actually worked with at Pretzel Time for a while) he’s one bad dude. The guy on the cell phone: maybe he’s callin up some hos, maybe he’s dealin, who knows? And what on earth are they doing back there behind those mountains? I’m guessing there’s marijuana involved somehow.
Posters are serving a new purpose. Instead of posting them in paper form, they’re more often appearing on the web. Myspace users often disseminate upcoming show information by posting them on friends’ blogs. Likewise homepages for venue sites are an excellent source of electronic posters put to good use. Never underestimate the power of print, although the web is a valuable information tool, not everyone has access to it. In fact, webreaders will more than likely compliment a poster without ever reading the disclosed information, since they see hundreds of them each month. By combining printed and hypertextual posters and doing the handout thing, you’ve pretty much covered all your bases. All this depends on your design of course. Finding a good designer isn’t cheap, the best that low-budget locals can hope for is soliciting the help of ambitious local artists.
Approaching a designer can be tough, since they are such a rare-find, and since you probably don’t have much to offer them after spending thousands of dollars on that new drum kit or whatever. Recruit young, using word of mouth. Teenagers, especially the one’s who look up to your band or music, can be an excellent tool against mediocre imagery. Know someone who’s taken a few design classes? Ask ‘em! How about Marketing classes? Ask ‘em! Ask your friends and people who come to your shows what they like and dislike about the flier and poster designs, and listen to what they tell you: don’t dismiss it as spitefullness or jealousy. Utilize community resources and involve talented artists through teachers at schools and church sponsored programs. Most of the designers which are of any notable talent or reputation will ask for payment , and if you have the money you should definitely pay it (or work out a deal somehow). But always check for credentials and look at portfolios. Have they done ads before? Have they ever worked under a deadline? Chances are they haven’t, and you’ll have to ask yourself if you want to fork out a couple hundred up front for a poster that may get put out untimely or even send the wrong message. A personal reccomendation is the most useful method for a designer searching for work. Ask other musicians who they’ve used in the past for album, flier, web and poster designs. Who do they currently use for design work? Contact the artist and see how they react. Visual artists are not too different from musicians, they are always looking for ways to show the public their talent. They just need an outlet. The trick is to try and give it to them.
Joe Greathouse
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