Face the Music

Each year as winter fades into spring, music lovers from around the world rejoice: It’s festival season. Drawing more than 32 million Americans to at least one event each year, it should come as no surprise when your social media feeds become saturated with outdoor concert photos and videos April through September. 

Multiday music festivals have gained popularity around the globe, drawing between 800,000 and 1 million people to Milwaukee’s Summerfest, 2.65 million fans to Morocco’s Mawazine Festival, and upwards of 3 million attendees to Vienna’s Donauinselfest. In the UK, the annual Reading and Leeds Festivals (sister events that occur simultaneously in south and north England, respectively) draw tens of thousands of music enthusiasts with lineups over the years including Nirvana, The Cure, Fleetwood Mac, Panic! at the Disco, Adele, and My Chemical Romance. 

What’s a concert without Instagram-worthy graphics? UK-based full-service print service provider Imaginators serves as the preferred supplier for Reading and Leeds Festival, creating enormous stage backdrops that even concertgoers at the very back of the crowd have no trouble seeing. “Our relationship with Reading and Leeds Festival began almost 20 years ago when we were working with the brand sponsor and promoter who wanted to produce new graphics for the stage, which had previously been hand painted; advances in inkjet technology made it possible for us to print directly to specialty substrates,” says Matt Tydeman, Imaginators managing director. “The original stage for Reading and Leeds Festival was complex, but has evolved significantly to include advances in materials, lighting rigs, sound systems, and video wall technology – all of which we work closely with to ensure a seamless finished stage.”