Music festival graphics: lineups, maps and set times

Good music festival graphics do four jobs: announce the lineup with a clear order of importance, list set times so people can plan their day in seconds, show the site in a map that still reads on a phone, and keep the date in front of people between announcements. Build them as one system, with the same background, type and stage colours throughout, and every post from the first lineup drop to the last set time will feel like the same event.

This guide takes each graphic in turn, with sizes, layouts and the mistakes that make festival posts hard to read. For the wider picture of how an event carries its look across signs, wristbands and screens, see event branding.

How to design a festival lineup poster

The lineup is the graphic people screenshot, share and argue about. Its whole job is hierarchy: someone glancing at it should know the headliners in one second and find their favourite small act in ten. That comes from tiers, not from squeezing every name in at the same size.

Use one typeface in several weights rather than a new font per tier: weight and size carry the ranking, and a single family keeps the poster calm. A condensed sans fits more names per line, which is why so many lineups use one. Separate names on the same line with a centred dot or a slash, and keep line spacing tight so each tier reads as a block. Visual hierarchy explains the principle behind the tiers.

Festival set times people can actually scan

Set times are a timetable, and timetables have a solved layout: stages across the top as columns, time running down the side, one graphic per day. People hunt for one act, then look sideways to see what clashes. A list sorted by stage hides the clashes; a grid shows them.

• Write times in the 24 hour clock or always add am and pm; never mix the two.
• Put start times only, unless sets vary a lot in length.
• Give every stage one colour and use it everywhere: column heading, map pin, wristband, screen.
• Make a story version at 1080×1920 for each day, because that is what people save and open at the gate.
• Post set times a few days before the gates open, then pin them to your profile.

Set times change late, and remaking twelve graphics by hand is where typos creep in. If your timetable lives in a spreadsheet, Gradiently Pro's bulk create can fill one designed page from each row, so a late swap means editing a cell and creating the pages again.

Festival map design for phone screens

The site plan your production team uses is not a festival map. The map for the crowd answers a few questions while someone is standing in a field with low battery: where is the stage, where is the water, where is the way out. Draw only what people walk to, simplify the shapes, and test it on a phone held at arm's length.

Post the map as a story at 1080×1920 and as a portrait post at 1080×1350, and print a large version for boards at each entrance. Keep the background behind the map quiet, so paths and pins carry the contrast.

Sizes for every festival graphic

A festival season touches most formats at once. These are the sizes worth designing at, so nothing gets stretched or cropped by the platform.

Remember that stories have interface at the top and bottom, so keep set times and map labels out of roughly the top and bottom 250 pixels of a 1080×1920 frame. Social media safe zones shows exactly where. For the Facebook event header, the event cover size guide covers the crop on phones.

Festival posts between the announcements

The weeks between the lineup and the gates are where many festivals go quiet. A steady run of small, useful posts keeps tickets moving and makes the big announcements land harder.

1. 1

   Artist spotlights

   One act per post, name large, day and stage small. Fourth tier acts gain most from this, and they share it.

2. 2

   Countdown

   A number and the dates, nothing else, at 30, 7 and 1 days out. See countdown post design for layouts.

3. 3

   Know before you go

   Bag rules, transport, what to bring. A plain carousel saves your inbox a lot of messages.

4. 4

   Day of

   Gates open time, weather, and the day's set times again as a story.

5. 5

   Thank you and recap

   The morning after, a single thank you, then a recap with your best photos and a date for next year if you have one.

One look for the whole season

The festivals people remember have a look you could recognise with the names covered up. Pick one background, one type family and one set of stage colours, and use them on every graphic from the first teaser to the recap. Full bleed colour behind type is the backbone of most festival identities, and it only works if the words stay readable wherever they land; text on a gradient covers how to keep every line legible.

In Gradiently, the background is a Mark: a living gradient that, once you claim it, no other event can export with. It makes room behind your lineup by itself and renders at every size from story to A3 poster. Make the lineup once and the other formats follow from the same design.