Audience- For the next part of the brief, a print for the artist needs to be made in order to communicate information to the fans. I have conducted research into posters and how they are used to convey vital information to the fans to not only reinforce that they have a great understanding on the band/artist, but also how they will engage and appeal to the audience. Some examples have been placed in the document with this text, some of these examples are actually posters I have collected over the years, showing that posters are an effective way of the audience finding out that a new tour/album is being released. For example, this ‘Circa Waves’ poster explicitly indicates to the audience that the band has announced a tour, this is seen with the last of dates and venues. I chose this poster as I feel it is engaging to the audience. It is an important factor that the promotion team have actually used the bands album artwork as the backdrop, as this allows fans to instantly recognise the print as they have already seen the image somewhere before. This can appeal to the audience because, in the current state of live music, audiences like to see a link between the album and live performances, therefore by adding the album cover as the main background/colour scheme it shows that the live performances will almost replicate the album. It is also important to notice the venues mentioned in the tour poster, and through thorough research I have seen that the venues mentioned in the poster range from a capacity of 300-500. This is an important aspect as fans of indie music are often perceived to more enjoy gigs which are more ‘lowkey’ and ‘underground’ because it is less mainstream. Therefore it appeals to the audience as the venues are a reasonable size for this certain audience to enjoy.
Design-
It is important to notice that in the example I have shown, that
the main artist band name is clearly exhibited at the top of the page, which
will ultimately make it instantly recognizable for avid fans. It is also to
notice that the band carries the same logo throughout every promotional
material, which reinforces my idea of making the print recognizable, and also
it could be argued it makes the band a ‘brand’. This makes it much easier to
hand out these posters to record stores/live band events/venues as the audience
will inevitably visit these locations as this is what they are interested in.
Because of this, I feel that we should also include the band name/logo at the
centre of the poster and have a distinctive logo, as this conveys a
professional image and persona of the band. This poster is a great example of
how colour scheme can be used to give a slick and professional look. When
producing our poster, text image cohesion is a paramount aspect to consider as
it makes the poster seem much more defined and can also be perceived as
satisfying by some fans. On the poster, we can see that they actually use the
album artwork, this is a clever idea as it allows the tour and the album to
intertwine with eachother. However when producing our poster, maybe we could
use a live performance of the band as the main backdrop, as this would allow
the audience to actually visualize the artist. This is shown in the poster for ‘Saint
Raymond’ (see below).
.
Layout- As shown in the
two examples, the heading and image of the artist are the two largest elements
to the pages. This is a vital aspect as it allows the public to instantly see
who the artist is. Both examples have the tour dates as the main form of text,
and is clearly displayed in the centre. This justifies my previous point of how
effective the poster is when it comes to exhibiting information to an audience.
With the venues being surrounded by a white border in the ‘Circa Waves’ poster,
it almost emphasises the main information of the poster. This is a unique way
of displaying the poster, because the layout is simple, however it is
undeniable that it is effective and clearly distributes the main purpose of the
print; to inform. The magnitude of certain parts of information is a key
aspect, as it can magnify and amplify certain parts of the poster which are
important. I feel that when we produce our poster, we will make the band/artist
name the biggest size, as this will allow the audience to subconsciously
recognise the band name, and then we will have the tour dates big, but not as
big as the band name as this can almost overload the audience with information,
which could ultimately disinterest and discourage the audience.
Content- The content of
the poster needs to be as minimal as possible, this is because audiences will
be catching the poster at a quick glance, therefore if the poster had lots of
information and a lot of writing, then it would not be eye catching. For this
main reason, the band name, the venues and dates of the performances and also
where the audience can buy the tickets would be a reasonable amount of content
to insert into the poster.
