Music

Music posters: the gig as a printed object

A concert poster had one evening to work. It was pasted up a few days before the show, read by people walking past, and thrown away afterwards. The ones that survived did so because the design was better than the job required — and because someone folded it and took it home.

That double life is what makes them hang well now: they still carry the noise of the room they were made for.

What is in this collection

• Rock and the counter-culture — Woodstock, The Velvet Underground and Nico and its yellow banana sleeve, Jimi Hendrix, Gimme Shelter and Anarchy in the UK.
• Soul and reggae — James Brown's show bill and Bob Marley in concert.
• Jazz and festivals — Jazz Jamboree, Montreux, Aspen Winter Jazz and Next Wave.
• Later bills — Grateful Dead, Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Flower Love.

Two traditions on one wall

The rock tradition is dense: hand-drawn lettering, acid colour, everything crammed into the sheet, made to be decoded. The jazz and festival tradition is the opposite — one typographic idea, generous white space, a photograph or a flat silhouette. Put one of each in the same room and they argue; put two from the same tradition and they read as a set.

How to hang a music wall

Music posters are the one category where a grid of several is better than one large piece, because the format itself is the theme. Three or four of the same size, tight gutters, identical thin black frames, hung so the group reads as one block — that is the arrangement that works over a sofa or down a corridor.

For the loud end of the same instinct, look at colorful; film bills from the same print era are in movie, and gallery announcements in exhibition.

Sizes, paper and delivery

Pigment print on 210 gsm Hahnemühle paper, sizes from 30×40 to 70×100 cm plus A3 and A2. Frame not included. Orders leave the studio within 24 business hours and arrive in 3–5 working days inside the EU, in a tracked tube.