Nottingham Gig Poster Designers Talk About The Art

Boy, this was really hard to choose. This was part of a series that I produced for Sean West and Camouflage in and around 2006. All the gigs featured local artists from the Dealmaker roster with a big headline act from beyond Nottingham. I’ve picked this one because stylistically it’s the best representation of what I like to draw and I don’t get away with it very often. I do my best to give promoters and musicians something that they are happy with, and that suits their style, But every now and then I get away with drawing a character like this.

Rikki Marr

This is the most recent flyer I drew for a gig at the Old Angel. Quite often my opinion of a piece of work changes, mostly due to staring at the same page for hours on end.  I tend to over-analyse and more often than not I can only see the faults.  I used this design as an excuse to step outside of my comfort zone and try something that I wasn't sure where it would end up.  I like to keep things tangible if at all possible, so whenever I use digital colour I attempt to keep things simple so the image doesn't look overly manipulated on a computer. This was drawn using ink, nibs and brushes on Bristol Board with some rudimentary Photoshop editing.

Steve Larder

This isn’t my favourite poster I’ve designed - in fact I could change about twenty things on it now. But it’s for my favourite gig I helped put on in Nottingham: Hot Snakes at the Cabaret in 2005; they were absolutely mind-melting. And the gig itself is surely the point of gig posters, isn’t it? We (Damn You!) lost a ton of money on the show, as it clashed with something at Rescue Rooms, so we had to let people in cheap. Six years on and people who went to the Rescue Rooms are tweeting about how excited they are that Hot Snakes have reformed and are playing again. I don’t know if that’s amazing or depressing.

Chris Summerlin

I’ve chosen this flyer because it’s the one I always spend the longest staring at; the last ever Rubberdub at Blueprint, and the last ever official night at Blueprint before it closed down - until we got back in and did a free party, that is. Ray Keith absolutely smashed it and he enjoyed the night thoroughly, ending with Renegade’s Terrorist, which was literally the last tune officially played in that club. Blueprint meant so much to us; we even lived there for a few days. The flyer captures a perfect sunset scene, representing the sun going down on Blueprint and the monkey playing the last vinyl. I love the purples and pinks in the flyer, and the style I’ve drawn the 'RubberDub'.

Mac

Flyer design always interested me from a young age, when I collected Dreamscape and Mythology flyers from the rave-era. Pre-internet, they were the only way to promote your event. I produced Detonate flyers from when they started to their ninth birthday, before Tom Price took over. With the early Detonate flyers we used to use all photos, but made sets that kept to a theme - like urban landscapes, graf etc - and used heavy fonts for the line-up, which was a contrast to the other styles that were coming out of Nottingham at the time. After my 1000th flyer I decided to produce less and focus more on my own work. I still produce the odd flyer, though; I currently do the Dogma Presents flyers.

Small Kid

As a huge fan of jazz and the iconic Blue Note record label sleeve designs, I was excited when Ste Allan of Dealmaker Label asked my company, Makermet Creative, to produce a series of posters in the Blue Note style, mirroring a previously successful campaign for the Wu Tang Clan. Two years later, we're still sticking with the theme,  and have produced approximately fifteen in the series for some of my favourite acts including Quantic, The Portico Quartet, Belleruche, The Hidden Orchestra and Scorzayzee. This early design for Anti Pop Consortium remains a firm favourite.

Alex Traska

This is for a funk, soul and hip-hop night that has been held at many venues across the city over the years. I enjoy working on the Hustle posters; they’re created from scans of vinyl covers from my own collection, so I feel I have a personal interest in the work. This is a flyer from a series when the Hustle was at the Golden Fleece. The flyers have developed over time - they now feature scans of bodies with animal heads on. I think there are some really talented artists/designers in the city’s scene; I still regularly pick up flyers for the artwork.  

Paul Atchison

I designed this for the Marble Valley (Steve West from Pavement’s band) show that we – Fists - put on  It was one of the first shows that we promoted on our own, and I remember being excited, but a little anxious about what I was going to come up with. All the bands had visual names, so I had a lot of inspiration to choose from although the idea of a ‘Marble Valley’ seemed a bit more ambiguous.  An initial idea I came up with involved a giant swan, which fortunately I ditched because Wonderswan ended up cancelling.  I decided to try a different approach for me and opted to use only hand drawing materials.  I don’t think it’s necessarily the most striking poster I’ve done, but I really enjoyed doing it .   

Angi Fletcher