Just realized concert posters from the 70s are way smaller than I thought

I was digging through a box at an estate sale in Portland last weekend and found an original 1974 Grateful Dead show poster. The frame was maybe 14 by 22 inches, which blew my mind because I always picture those old rock posters as these huge billboard sized things. Turns out most of the Fillmore era stuff was printed on standard newsprint or tabloid sizes to keep costs down. I looked it up after and the typical run was only a few hundred copies, so the small size makes sense for cheap distribution. Has anyone else been surprised by the physical size of old posters versus the modern reprints we see everywhere?

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rowan_hayes2mo ago

Standard newsprint or tabloid sizes" is close but not quite right for most Fillmore era stuff. Those were usually printed on heavy card stock, not thin newsprint. Think more like a thick postcard, maybe 14x22 at the biggest, but a lot of them were even smaller, like 11x17. The reason they're small is they were meant to be handed out on the street or tacked up in record shops, not plastered on billboards. If you find an actual 1974 Dead poster in that size, it's probably a handbill version, which they made for free distribution at head shops and such. The full sized posters were a bit bigger, but still never billboard huge. Either way, cool find, just don't go thinking it's the same print run as the big ones people frame today.

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