When it comes to spreading the word about your upcoming show, the days of hitting the streets with a hammer tacker in one hand and a stack of posters in the other are waning. This isn’t to say that telephone poles are no longer a good advertising platform, but reaching your audience online is cheaper, takes less time and effort, and allows a direct-to-fan connection that is generally going to be more successful. Still, the basic concept of the gig poster is a music institution, and it continues to thrive online. Creating a sharply designed digital poster to share with your friends and fans not only adds legitimacy to your event, but it also gives you a go-to image to use in conjunction with your other promotional efforts on your sites and social networks.
So, how do you make one of these things? If you’re like most of us, you don’t have the money to hire a professional artist. If you know your way around a graphics program on your computer, you’re probably in good shape, but what if you don’t? If you have an iOS device, there’s an app called Phoster ($1.99 from the iTunes app store) that provides an intuitive, easy-to-use approach to poster creation that takes care of most of the design work for you.
Phoster provides 72 free templates to work with, and from there you can import your own photos from your photo library, or take a picture with your device’s camera. Tap on the imported photo to open a box that allows you to adjust the contrast, brightness, and saturation. You can also collapse, expand, and move it around with hand gestures.
From there, adjusting and changing the text is just as simple. Tap on the dummy text to type in whatever you want, as well as to choose colors, font, and size. Tap and hold a line of text to move it around within the frame. There are some basic limitations to how much you can do to the text, but if you start with a template that you like, this shouldn’t be a problem.
When you’re done with your basic design, you can choose from 19 different kinds of “paper” you want it printed on. After that, there’s a simple interface that lets you share it on popular photo sites, social networks, email it, or send the design to your wi-fi printer.
I’ve been using the iPad version, so I can’t say how well it comes across on the smaller screens of the iPhone or iPod Touch. But I’ve been having a great time playing around with it on my iPad, and was able to come up with some cool designs in just a few minutes. The photo editing capabilities are a little lacking, so you might want to pick up Photoshop Express, a free image editor from Adobe that would be great to use in conjunction with Phoster.
Check out the Flickr pool for Phoster here to see some designs that people have come up with.
Have you used this app? If so, show us what you made with it!
Make sure your fans know they can buy your music on iTunes, CD Baby, Amazon, Spotify, and more!
