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25 Seriously Artistic Band Posters

25 Artistic Band Posters

I’m a big fan of music, and of course also of art/design. Therefore well designed gig or band posters have always seemed a great source of inspiration for me. The following 25 band posters are all highly artistic, and demonstrate a great sense of design.

A well designed band poster should evoke the mood, the drive behind the band, and really represent the band’s sound. I hope that you find the following examples as inspiring as I did!

Iron & Wine

This Iron & Wine poster combines the totally different images of flowers and a lion to create a beautiful piece of vector artwork. The attention to detail is superb, such as the lion’s nose, mouth and eyebrows, which comprise the shape of a wine glass.

Flight of the Conchords

This poster takes on an almost arcade-game feel, in it’s bright portrayal of the comedy-folk duo. The poster accurately captures of the light-hearted feel represented by the band, and uses some truly creative typography.

AC Newman

This poster uses a very washed out color palette to evoke a sense of calm. A simple color overlay gives the impression of the street being underwater, and the simply lines give a very natural feel, almost like a piece of etching.

Rooney and the Minglers

This poster is very simplistic, yet has a great attention to detail. Despite it’s basic composition, the designer has used subtle textures and varying typography to give a professional, yet retro feel.

Weezer

This poster uses extremely bright colors and abstract typography to catch the viewers attention. White space is utilized well, as the pink backdrop really defines the blue textual area.

Xiexie

This poster uses simple illustration and negative space to evoke a beautiful night landscape. The jagged edges create a sense of unity and order, which is supported by the muted colorscheme.

The Project

This poster evokes a very stylized yet hand-drawn feel, through a combination of stenciled elements and textures.

Rubic

This poster uses awesome illustrations, combined with simple colors and subtle halftone effects to achieve a very professional end result. The abstract illustration fits perfectly with the imperfect typography.

Franz Ferdinand

This poster combines a fun, almost childlike illustration with very strong typography. The strengths of this poster lie in the details, such as the excellence combinations of colors, and use of subtle patterns.

Peephole

I love the sketched feeling that this poster has too it, as well as the surreal heads of the birds, which creates a stylized, retro feel. Awesome work on the part of the designer!

Lomita

This poster is full of contrast, which helps the highly grungy design. Combined with this is simple, but stylish typography, with a hand-written appearance to it. The viewers eye naturally follows the lines of vision created by the typography seemingly spraying out from the bunny, and the entire design is encased by the grungy, dark border.

The Space Race

This poster interprets the band name very literally, but also very well. The rocket illustration is combined with ironically soviet influenced typography, and the entire piece has a very clear direction to it.

Band of Horses

Band of Horses are one of my favorite all time bands, and it’s good to see this poster doing them justice. I love the detailed, retro feel of the bottom half of the poster, and the way that the upper typography exposes a background photo is really engaging.

TOY

This poster uses very plain colors and retro patterns/typography to create a very old-style poster. The end result is extremely linear and uniform, with a clear hierarchy of type sizes.


Radiohead

This poster uses very angular illustration to create a stylish end result. The type appears to be an extension of the main illustration, and the whole piece fits together very well, in part due to the extended hands drawing the viewers eye all over the poster.

White Denim

This poster is extremely grungy, with a textured background and faded illustration. The illustration and text is broken up with erratic lines and impactful textures.

Death Cab for Cutie

This poster is extremely simple, only providing the band name, venue and date, plus a simple, almost child-like illustration. The illustration is eye catching, yet the overall simplicity ultimately draws the viewer’s eye to the informative text at the posters bottom.

Cold War Kids

Some posters are far too busy. This isn’t one of them. This poster makes excellent use of white space, and really draws the viewer’s eye to the band name and illustration. Very well executed.

Foals

This is another poster that makes use of retro-style illustration. I also love how the waves at the top of the poster are created through the use of negative space.

Modest Mouse

This poster is one of the most abstract uses of typography that I’ve ever seen. At first it just appeared to be an artistically positioned set of shapes, but the band name appears to you like an optical illusion. Nothing else is needed but white space.

The Builders and the Butchers

This poster is really stylish. I love the simple, yet powerful illustrations, and the way that the black text seems to echo outwards in larger, more obscure type. The main typography appears to be like a fence that the birds are standing on.

Tapes ‘N Tapes

Another poster that interprets the band’s name literally. The montage of colorful tapes creates a fantastic frame for the central text.

The Dirty Sound

This poster combines bars of bold color with a faded, retro illustration. The varying sizes of the bars creates a sense of perspective, pushing the hot air balloon out towards the viewer. Simple but effective.

LOW

This poster uses symmetry to great effect, and carefully combines faded, retro illustrations with a subtle old-style textured background. Ultimately the eye is drawn down the montage of illustrations to the band name and details.

Embodiment

This poster is an example of simply awesome vector detailing. The swirling vector shapes show a great attention to detail, which really pays off as the overall feeling is one of sophistication and artistic-tendencies, whilst the skull brings out something more sinister.


About the Author:

Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.

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14 Comments:

  1. Wow, these certainly were interesting and inspiring. I’ll bookmark this for future reference.

  2. Tehswift says:

    These are beautiful. Will look back at these again.

  3. aravind says:

    wow!!
    Great roundup!!!
    thanks…

  4. elinix says:

    wow
    great collection
    thanks a lot
    elinix

  5. Adam says:

    Some of those are terrific – a great way of getting people interested in a band. I love the wild west feel of Band of Horses. The Xiexie one reminds me a bit of Keane’s style on their second album.

    • Tom says:

      Thanks for commenting Adam! I agree, I’m much more willing to listen to a band if they are well presented in terms of visual design.

  6. Jim MacLeod says:

    I spend a lot of time on http://www.expressobeans.com There are tons of great posters on there. Pearl Jam posters originally got me hooked on this artform, but I’ve branched out my collecting since then.

  7. Dano says:

    Hey Tom,

    This is Dan from DKNG Studios. I just want to say thanks for posting up our work. It really means a lot to be getting such positive feedback.

  8. lizzy says:

    who is the artist of lomita?

  9. Great collection! What i love most in this list is the Iron & Wine and the Flight of the Conchords they are very coloful and used creative typography.

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