Name: Clinton Reno
Location: Ohio
Website: http://clintonreno.com/
Facebook: Facebook
Twitter: @mr_reno

How closely do you work with the bands?

Well, about 85% of the time it’s through the venue, the promoter, or through one of my wholesalers. There are those handful of times that I get to work in some way with the band- My Morning Jacket, for instance, used a poster I had done for their Cleveland show as an exclusive New Year’s Eve t-shirt for their show at the Fillmore.

And then there are times where a poster I’ve done will get the attention of the band and a working relationship, or in some cases even friendships, will come out of it- Karin & Linford (the duo at the heart of Over the Rhine) are a great example. I’ve enjoyed doing all sorts of work with them, from posters, to album covers and even t-shirts, but along the way I’ve become a friend as well.

But yeah, in either of those examples it all started with a poster that had already been created.
And even though I’m not working closely with the band in most cases I try hard to make sure the poster fits the band’s image. Whether it be lyrically, or based on their current brand, or the tone & feel of album artwork or web design. Going in that’s how I start a poster- nailing as much of that down as I can. And I generally don’t take jobs for bands with whom I’m unfamiliar, so that’s a good start right there.

I was hoping to see a John Tesh poster by you someday but I guess that’s now out of the question. What was the best creative experience you’ve had making a poster?

Well, I guess the first thing that comes to mind would be the recent series of 4 color process prints I did. I love using a few photographic elements in my prints, but never had I used an entire photograph like this. And having never really achieved a high level of transparency before in any of my previous work I was nervous and had always put off trying for fear that it would look ridiculous.

I went in knowing I wanted to make the pieces still look like I had done them stylistically, all the while having a new somewhat more photographic quality to them. So I turned up the colors, the saturation, the contrast, and brought in some heavy black shadows all in the hopes of giving these giant robots that I had illustrated a nice setting in which to live (all the while understanding/hoping that the black-lined illustration was an odd juxtaposition within these photos).

Take us back to the beginning though and tell us how you broke into poster making?

Well, after college I worked at a text book publisher. One of my co-workers was a writer for a local music publication that stopped printing either shortly before I met him or shortly after. Regardless, with the magazine no longer in business he started his own sot of thing on the ol’ world wide web (pretty new to me at the time) and he asked me to contribute by doing drawings of some of the bands he was featuring. One of these bands was a band called “Buck” and for one reason or another I never got past a sketch stage with that particular drawing. Fast forward maybe 2-3 years and my buddy emails and tells me to check out Buck’s profile at mp3.com- they were using the sketch as their profile picture.

I didn’t have as much going on back then so I fired an email their way saying I could make it so much better than a simple sketch so I did so and they loved it. That band was no longer together but the gentleman that I had contacted said he would love to have some work for his new band, bobot adrenaline. So in my spare time in the evenings I would do some web graphics, maybe a flyer here and there. I was working on a poster (to date still unfinished)* when I met a guy by the name of Robert Duffy who was starting a website called donewaiting.com.

Somehow I got involved with him and starting doing anything he could throw my way. Flyers for shows he was doing, graphics for his site- anything. With a few posters under my belt I started uploading them to gigposters, still kind of naive as to how it all worked, or to how big this poster community really was. I made my way to a show of another local poster artist, a real heavy hitter by the name of mike martin (enginehouse13.com).

When I introduced myself he said he was a little familiar with my work (not too noteworthy because if you’re on gigposters you quickly find out who else is doing work in your city) but that if I wanted to be taken seriously I needed to stop doing digital posters and start screen-printing them (though he may have said so in much more colorful language as only he could).

So with what little knowledge I had of the process from high school, and with the expertise and help of mike and a few other kind souls on gigposters, and the gigposters forums in general, I was able to relearn the process.

And that’s about where we’ve been for the last 4 years or so.

*it was all digital prints back then so I would crank them out on the computer. the poster was coming along and I was pretty excited about it, but on christmas eve the company I was working for (I was using that computer because it was so superior to my own) had a break in and all the macs were stolen. man oh man, should have backed that up huh?!

I’m guessing your experience with the web explains why you have one of the better designed websites of the studios I looked at. You seem to have embraced social media like Facebook, Twiiter and blogging as well. In what ways has your website and social media benefited you?

My buddy and I used to joke that thanks to the internet we’d claim to be “international accessible” as to sound very popular. Maybe only mildly funny, but yeah, with a huge part of what success I’ve had coming through the web in general I feel as though things like twitter, blogging and so on are just natural extensions of that- new avenues to do the things you have to do to get your work as many places as it’ll go.

I mean, some of the stories I just mentioned have me owing everything to the internet or people connected to it. And I think things like twitter can give people an opportunity to see a little more than just the finished piece- whether it’s a sketch, a link to a detailed process post or just something personal they wouldn’t otherwise know. You know, for anyone that might be interested in having that info- some are not.

And I’ll be sure to pass along your compliment to the friends that made my website happen. I had very little to do with it so I love it and unashamedly will brag on it.

Can you shed some light on what makes Flatstock so uniquely collectible?

Well, I’m sure there are different reasons for different people, but I think ultimately it’s the fact that they’re limited pieces of hand created art.

They’re ideally meant to promote a show and then get torn down (sometimes being torn down while promoting the show), but in a way that only adds to the collectibility of them- they’re little moments in time. They’re not on a gallery wall when they’re first seen so stumbling across one, especially if it’s for a favorite band, I think really makes it feel like quite the find. And there are so few- 100-200 pieces out there, so it’s not something that was mass produced that every fan of whatever band might have in their collection.

Finally, I love your newest piece — the  Decemberists robot. Can you tell me a little about the concept and where I can get me one?

I’ve had the privilege of doing every Columbus poster for the Decemberists over the years, and quickly caught on that this band was one whose fans were poster lovers. And the band has such a great visual presence both in the artwork they use and in the way they present themselves, that using similar imagery was, i thought, a great way to really connect with the band, the music and with fans as well.

So up until this point I had used either Meloy or Funk (or neither in the very first poster) as the driving image. But this time I thought it would be fun to kind of get the whole band involved in some way- and I felt telling a story of the band collectively controlling this old timey robot was an interesting way to do that, paying attention even to the placement of each band member. It’s available on my website, which you can find here: www.clintonreno.com.

Intrigued by flatstock? Check out the article:

50 Beautiful Gig Posters (Flatstock) For Your Inspiration

Like this article? Comment!