One thing I know I cannot do is bring up the subject of Rock Posters without having my ass handed to me by whomever might be walking by at the time. I’m perfectly willing to accept them as an art form, but as a designer who seeks communicative truth, I find them, as whole, wanting.
The ORPG® is a real idea I once had, and I believe the state of confused stupor that followed is accurately depicted is today’s strip. Imagine it — an entirely library of randomly (and with high probability, ironically) placed, royalty-free stock images and vintage illustrations that you could adjust and move to your hearts content, plug the relevant info into, and output to separations at any size. Anyone could make a rock poster that looks at least as good as half the crap that’s out there today. While this idea does have certain devious overtones to which I am party, image how helpful this web-device would be to struggling musicians. Professional-quality design for zero dollars, as opposed to the tens of dollars they usually pay. Google ads would, presumably, fill out the rest of the millions in our collective coffers.
–nv–
Nate Voss is a designer, illustrator, talkshow host and design journalist. Working in Omaha since 2001, Nate served four years on the Board of Directors for 
Donovan oversees all creative development at
Wouldn’t it be awesome if the random clip art featured pictures of dead horses and people beating them?
Gig posters don’t bother me as much, now that I’ve witnessed classmates graft that aesthetic onto ANY project they’re working on.
What would make this laundry detergent distributor really take a stand against the competition and emotionally connect to its low-income target market? How about a grainy heart illustration taken from a medical book? And slap some angel wings on that bitch! AND PUT ‘EM ALL OVER IN DIFFERENT SIZES TO THE EFFECT OF A LAZER BEAMMMMM! Done. Next project?
You know, this would probably actually work quite well.
I’m sure Nate’s idea would work for those really bad, unreadable concert fliers for local bands. I’m thinking a templated design would at least improve the readability of them, but even in that instance, would it really increase the “communicative truth”. Maybe even those horrible local concert fliers communicate exactly what they intend to.
Kadavy, I challenge you to create Nate’s OPRG (have fun collecting the vintage illustrations) . . . then upload the resulting posters to gigposters.com and see how the group reacts. Make sure the information is believable enough, so the posters are taken seriously. After that, compare the posters to AA, Heads of State, Jay Ryan, Hatch, Small Stakes, Yee Haw, Decoder Ring, Burlesque, Hammerpress or the native Nebraska poster people for that matter Nyffeler, Nielsen, Pachunka, Schmickle, Swift, Schmiedeskamp, Weis, Boe.
I’d like to hear more about this “communicative truth.” How exactly a gigposter featuring vintage ephemera (for the sake of the argument, I’m going to ignore the hundreds of artists who draw their own posters) any different, any less honest than advertisements for a design contest that feature laundry or tarot cards? How is that less truthful in its communication?