If you look at the website gigposters.com you’ll see an incredible wealth of talent pored into the world of indie rock poster design and I often wonder why we don’t see more of that in movie posters. Of course the answer is partly that gig posters can be much more abstract and oblique; there is an anything goes feel to them. But they are also much more ephemeral—existing only to advertise a single show—and that makes the work that goes into them even more impressive. My current favorite gig poster designer is Jason Munn, who goes under the name of The Small Stakes, originally from Wisconsin and now based in Oakland CA. His work is dazzlingly clean, simple, striking and witty. I was glad to discover that Jason had in fact designed a film poster, so that I could include him in this column. His poster for Wayne Coyne’s wacky labor of love Christmas on Mars was made for a one-off screening at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse (ample subject for a future column) and is very much in keeping with his indie rock designs, some of my favorites of which can be seen below and which can also be purchased on his website. Gigposters.com have collected the best work of a number of contemporary designers, including The Small Stakes, in an excellent new book Gig Posters Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century, which was published just last month.
