Gig posters used to be great. Then summer music festivals happened

The most famous music festival poster of all time?



It has to be Arnold Skolnick ’s iconic 1969 Woodstock one sheet. With its red background, lone dove atop a guitar headstock, and the tagline “3 Days of Peace & Music,” it’s an image seared into our collective pop culture consciousness. The curious thing? Unless you have a magnifying glass, you wouldn’t know there are 28 (rather legendary) bands on it—not to mention the finer details of an art show, crafts bazaar, food options, the whole “hundreds of acres to roam” bit, and so on.



[Image: courtesy of the author]



Fast-forward to Woodstock ’99. Its poster sought to channel the nostalgia of the original fest, but the hefty typographic band dump revealed that times were changing.



[Image: courtesy of the author]



Ultimately, that VW bus drove out of frame, and all roads eventually led to the place we are today: the ubiquitous Wall of Bands.



[Images: courtesy of the author]



BANDS . . . LOTS OF BANDS



How did we get here? Mitch Putnam—cofounder of Mutant and long an expert on all things rock posters —chocks it up to the festival band arms race. The number of artists on the original Woodstock bill seems quaint compared to some of today’s behemoth events. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to create a piece of art featuring 28 bands than 100. In the quest to have the biggest and best festival, though, art becomes a dangerous word, especially when a corporate curator is pouring significant cash into beefing up that bill. So we get the Wall of Bands—shameless, safe, yet technically highly effective and efficient design.



“If I say, ‘You can make a better piece of art by doing this [or that],’ it probably becomes a worse piece of advertising,” Putnam says. 



And that speaks to the evolution of the music festival poster at large. Putnam says he first started paying attention to festival flyers during the late-’90s rave scene. Compelling art appeared on the front, and the dominating list of artists ran on the back—lists that only grew longer as the events surged in growth. Meanwhile, the first Coachella debuted in 1999, and it would ultimately go on to set the tone for what festival posters would become by ditching that veritable front of the flyer for the cavalcade of bands on the back. 



Coachella posters through the years



Putnam says that when a client approaches a designer for a festival poster today, what they’re primarily seeking is an online advertisement, one that is also legible at different screen sizes.  Next in the Hierarchy of Poster Needs is something they can print and disseminate, hoping someone on that band dump snags a festivalgoer’s interest. Finally, the third consideration is to perhaps make some copies to sell afterward.



“The emphasis has gone from making a beautiful piece of art that could be sold as a poster to that being the last priority in the process,” Putnam says. 



Moreover, bands have rules about how big their names must appear on a given poster, where they’re placed, and all considerations beyond—and, well, according to Putnam, “the more rules there are, generally the harder it is to make a good piece of art.”



AN UNEXPECTED ONE-SHEET SAVIOR



Is there any chance we’ll backslide to the ’60s? Putnam doesn’t think so. But he does cite one festival that’s keeping the art of the poster alive, and you might be surprised by which one: Coachella, the event that perfected the Wall of Bands to begin with. Putnam says the festival hires a fairly major poster artist like Emek every year to create a collectible one sheet for the event—no band names in sight.



Instead of negotiating the rights and hierarchies of the bands, this collectible post opts out entirely, leaving only the name of the event, the date, location . . . and, gloriously, the art.  



“The best strategy for any festival,” Putnam says, “is to make a piece of art, and make a piece of advertising—and keep them separate.”