How to make a show poster

If a flyer was only posted on Instagram, did the show even happen?

Physical media has always been important to punk and DIY. Tapes, records and zines are the first things to come to mind, but flyers and posters are just as important. At our house there are posters from meaningful shows and tours past hanging on the walls, and even hundreds of flyers bursting out of the archives.

You’re organizing a punk show. Great! The purpose of this how-to is to stress the importance of doing physical promotion, and show you how to do it right – whether flyers (aka handbills, small paper you can hand out) or posters (larger papers you can staple/tape/wheatpaste up around town). I’ll mostly talk about posters in this guide, but at the end I’ll give some tips about how to shrink your posters down into handbill size to make them easier to copy and hand out.

A show poster is an advertisement. It should 1. entice people to come to the show, and 2. give them all the info they need to do so. Think about the person you would want to come to the show who wouldn’t necessarily come by default – your flyer or poster should be trying to sell the show to this person.

IF: your flyer looks cool but has scant information about the bands, time and location, and is only posted on Instagram, your show is going to be attended by the people who already know the drill. Your shows will get smaller and smaller as less and less new blood turns up.

IF: your flyer has detailed information about what the music is gonna be like, and what’s gonna happen where and at what time, more people who are on the fence will feel empowered to come.

A note about gatekeeping: People who care about punk and know where to look – whether at posters around town, on websites they don’t have to log into our use an app to access, in show listing newsletters, or being handed a flyer at a different show – SHOULD be able to find out about your show. If your flyer looks punk and has info that punks or punk-curious people can decipher, normies will simply not see it. Your show shouldn’t be “gatekept” from people who don’t wanna use Instagram (If you need more convincing about this, you should probably reread the manifesto.) I live in a pretty big city with lots of punks, lots of shows and lots of infrastructure for promoting shows outside of corporate platforms, and STILL once a month or so I find out about a show too late that I would have wanted to go to but didn't see because it was only promoted on platforms I don't use and can't access. It's unacceptable!

Making the poster

Think of the artwork and design of your poster as one among many important pieces of info. Just like album artwork, it’s meant to give people an idea of the vibe of the show. But it doesn’t matter if you paid too much money for some siiiiick art from the most hype punk illustrator, if your poster doesn’t have actual info that people need to know how, where, and when to see the show it’s totally useless!

Before you start making a poster (or sending out the info to an artist), first compile all the information that should go on the poster. Check that you are not missing anything, and that all of the information is accurate. Run it by the bands playing or anyone helping you with the show. You don't want to have to get someone to redraw everything because you made a typo in a band name.

1) Date

Day of Week, Date, Month. These are all essential. But don't forget the often-overlooked YEAR!!! If you take one thing away from this guide, put the year of the show on your posters. You might not think this is important, but it is. If your poster (or the show) was good, it will end up as wallpaper in some punk house bathroom and hoarded in flyer archives for years to come. Including the year is especially important in this digital age, where images are often shared online out of context.

2) Location

How much info you include for the location can depend on your city and the show. If you’re in a smaller place with only a few regular show joints in town and they're easily searchable, you can probably forego the address. If you’re in a bigger city with a lot of venues, you might want to include the address or transit stop to give people an idea of where they’re going. If the show is at a house or location that isn’t posted publicly, you can always add the classic “ask a punk.” If it’s a squatted or illicit event, put the instructions for how people can find out where the show is day-of. Don't tell people to DM an Instagram handle for the location c'mon.

3) Bands

Include not only the names of all the bands playing, but also where they’re from (for touring bands) and some kind of description. You can get indulgent and write a full sentence describing the band, but it probably shouldn't be that long. Just a few genre descriptors or a "members of" or "FFO" (for fans of). You and maybe some of your crew will already know these out of town bands (you are booking their show, after all), but many local punks will have never heard of them, no matter how hype you think they are! Give people something to let them know what to expect and you are more likely to get a better turnout, and more people checking out the touring bands. Even if it's a bit silly or ironic, some kind of description will give people on the fence a reason to come to the gig. If you’re insecure about your ability to describe bands or clock genres, just ask the bands how they’d describe their music or look on their website or bandcamp page.

4) Time

Include a door time and a show time, or if you only advertise one time, make sure it’s clear whether it’s when the doors will be open or when the music is starting. If people don’t know when things are happening, they are gonna be pissed that they missed their friend’s band, or annoyed that they have to stand around for 3 hours waiting for the music to start because you have to delay the show waiting for people to show up. Time on this earth is precious and limited. People have kids, jobs, and other things going on in their lives. If your show is running on clearly advertised times, more people with busy lives will be able to show up!

5) Price

How much does the show cost to attend? Is there a sliding scale? Is it PWYC (Pay What You Can) or NOTAFLOF (No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds)? Is the show a benefit for something? Are there advance tickets?

6) Age limits + consumption info

Is the show all ages? (it should be!) 18+ or 21+? Do attendees need to bring ID if they want to drink?

7) How to learn more

Include info for a website, hotline, forum, or whatever else exists in your town where people can get more info about the show, find links to check out the bands, or find updates if anything changes. e.g. “yourtown.askapunk.net”. Remember that people who don’t have Instagram or Facebook (aka real punks) cannot usually access the info without an account, so keep that in mind when including links or handles. If those are the only options in your town, try to do something about it!

Another note on art and design when it comes to show posters: the poster should be legible. Cool punk art is cool, but sometimes the show information can get lost in the art forest. A poster with really cool huge art and really tiny illegible information in a weird hard-to-read hand drawn font will probably look cool, but it won't help anyone new get to your show.

Turn your poster into handbills

Here's a little visual cheat sheet for shrinking down your poster to print as handbills:

If your original poster is Letter (8 1/2" x 11" aka regular ol' printer paper) or A4 (regular printer paper outside North America), OR if the digital version you're working with is roughly 4:5 ratio, you can fit 4 mini flyers/handbills onto one sheet.

If your original poster is a larger Tabloid (11" x 17"), you can comfortably fit two side by side on Letter/A4/Printer paper. You could print them smaller but unless the info on the original poster is huge and legible, you might not be able to read it well (and if you're on North American paper sizes there'll be a little extra space on the sides cause it's not the right height-to-width ratio – this is not a problem with A3, A4, etc sizes). If you want to print quarter-sized handbills of a larger poster like this, you might want to ask the artist to do a separate version that's optimized for the smaller size.

There's a few ways to "n-up" your posters (print multiple sheets on one page e.g. 4-up, 2-up, etc).

• Digitally: Maybe you have access to or know how to use design software like Photoshop (evil, expensive), GIMP (cool, free and open source) or something ethically in the middle like Affinity. If that's the case, you can shrink your design by a little more than 50% and then copy-paste until you fill your page like the examples above. BTW, in most cases you will want to save it as a PDF for easy printing.
• Analog: If you are using a photocopier or printer with a flat bed scanner, lay down your original and find the option to reduce the size by 50%. Make 4 copies of this. Cut out each of the small flyers and lay them out like the examples above.
• Pro tip: whichever method you use, leave a little extra space around the edges and between flyers to give you some wiggle room for cutting and print margins. Always print and cut a test copy before you run 100 copies.
• Pro tip 2: print a different show flyer (or some other message you want to get out) on the back side and it's a 2-for-1 special.

Don't make your show flyer 1:1 ratio (perfectly square). It's useless for everything except Instagram (including most other digital applications) and it's hard to print either full size or 4-up without wasting paper.

For more info about printing, paper sizes and layout, see my Punk's Guide To Printing Zines

Promoting your show!

• Go to shows and stand near the door as the last band finishes playing and personally hand a flyer to everyone leaving the show. This is especially important if there is overlapping interest/demographics, e.g. if your show is all ages (it should be), make sure you get to other all ages gigs to hand out flyers!
• Keep flyers in your bag and try to remember to hand them out if you run into people you know, or give those people a few extra to hand out.
• Put up posters around town! Get into wheatpasting, or go around to record stores, bars/coffeeshops, community sign boards, etc. If your show is all ages (it should be) put up posters around high schools, youth centres, and universities.
• Don't forget to send the info about your show to any local DIY show listing websites/blogs or print newsletters so people off social media can get the scoop.
• Got leftover handbills after a gig? Bring them to your jamspace, they’re great for setlists.