There’s a lot of graphic design that goes into helping your music grab attention. First, there’s the logo for your band. The designs for your t-shirts. Your album artwork. And then there’s the matter of the posters advertising your gigs. If that particular area is of interest–designing the perfect, eye-catching poster of a show–check out a site called Gigposters.com.
It was founded in 2001 to document the styles and evolution of the rock concert poster. Online, there’s more than 100,000 images featuring just about every single band you can ever think of. It’s fascinating.
For something more concrete, there’s a book called Gig Posters, Volume 1: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century. It runs about 40 bucks, but if you’re an art student, you’ll definitely find inspiration here.