Gig poster art has been one of the more influential mediums in my life. Bright colors, cartoon culture, wacky visions—all tied together with your favorite music. What’s not to love?! I first started working on poster illustration in college, and as soon as I was able to attend more shows as a 21-year-old, I began interacting with the promotors and bands in the local DIY scene. This led to opportunities to use my imagery on a regular basis, and in some cases, with bands that I work with to this day. Since then, I’ve been lucky to draw up stuff for some of my favorite musicians. I’ve also met a lot of great people over the years through this work. (In fact, I originally met OLG’s Matt Kelley through a mid-2000’s gig poster design.)
This coming weekend, I’ll be releasing a book that’s been a year in the making—Rock, Paper, Pencil: The Gig Poster Art of Jake Sauer. It’s a 113-page dive into almost all the music-related imagery I’ve put together in the last 15 years. Up to this point, I’ve never really collected all my work into one place, so this is an attempt to get it all together in a cohesive volume. It’s been fun taking a look back as I’ve actually attended a large percentage of the gigs in the book. It’s also been quite the challenge to pull files that were created on my first computer, ha. Now that I have some slick paperbacks in hand, I want to make them available to those interested, so I’ve decided to put on a one-time release at The Brass Rail—a venue that’s hosted a lot of shows represented in my art.
Here’s the Facebook event representing the release. Hope to see some of you music-loving, art-thuggin’ types out there!
If you’re interested in a book, but can’t make the release, direct message me and I’ll try to get you on a list for a mailing in May.
