Stone Roses – Poster design
the brief…
When the Stone Roses announced a gig date in Manchester it became a huge occasion. The Manchester band are well-known in many areas but in Manchester they are legends. The homecoming gig was hugely anticipated and the Manchester Evening News was of course going to provide extensive coverage.
It was decided to produce a promotional pull-out covering the dates of the gigs and offering a free promotional poster as a pull to get more people reading. Music fans love a poster and Stone Roses fans are no exception therefore the design was crucial. The poster needed to scream ‘Stone Roses’ but also be beautifully designed so that people would be happy to put it up on their walls. I decided simplicity was best, using a huge lemon to perfectly portray the band’s image without even using their name and a quote about Manchester from frontman Ian Brown would appeal directly to Mancunians. A black band running along the bottom added key info of the gig dates and the MEN logo. The cover of the pull-out was designed using the stencil style of font adopted by the band in the 90s with a Jackson Pollock style paint flicks across it using the new song title ‘This is the one’ as a cover quote with double meaning.
I am a big Stone Roses fan so I loved the opportunity to be involved in this project. A few weeks later I headed upstairs to see the Head of Entertainment in the MEN offices for another job and he had the poster displayed on the wall near to his desk, success I reckon!