Rave Flyers - Art or advert?

Whats the best ever rave flyer?

2012-01-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

With over 20 years of rave flyer designs to look at it maybe a hard job to pick out the best one. We of course love our early ones including Fantazia Summertime with the computer generated designs as they were simple but iconic for the time but the work involved in creating them does not compare to our latest range of flyers that are far more complex which is allowed by much more powerful computers, layered photoshop images and greater availability of extra images. But I digress. Even I don't see a Fantazia flyer as the best ever rave flyer (though I do wish it was!). No in my personal opinion the winner from all those years has to be.....

Universe Tribal Gathering 1993. Not only was the party huge, but so was the flyer. Multiple pages and featuring original super hero characters. It was a real inspiration and the map of the huge site made the party look immense and of course all those that went know that it was. I remember us all flicking through it time and again in the office marveling at how Universe could have afforded to produce it. Its also a very collectable flyer now selling for over £10 each. Many have copied its Superhero style over the years and it has served as an inspiration to our own latest event flyer for Fantazia Superheroes at Motion on the 31st March. Whats your favourite flyer and why?

A host of Fusion and Fibre Optic rave flyers added

2012-01-25T14:00:00.000-08:00

We have added a host of Fusion and Fibre Optic rave flyers to the archive. Fusion had a very distinctive series of rave flyers that still look great today. There venues range from the small from sterns, Bath Pavilion to Sanctuary and Wembley Arena. See which is your favourite. View now...

100 new rave flyers scans added to the Rave Flyer Library

2011-12-06T23:25:00.000-08:00

We have added over 100 new rave flyers to the Fantazia Rave Flyer library. We have more than 600 other scans due to be added to the library over the next month. We aim to make the library the largest and easiest place on the web to find a flyer scan free of charge. Addition this time fill in many of the blanks in the B, C, D and E sections by promoter including this great Diehard one featuring a load of flyers. View more Rave flyers now...

What is the most expensive rave flyer that there is?

2011-09-17T01:20:00.000-07:00

We have just sold a Dreamscape 1 flyer in mint condition for £25 equalling a Fantazia Club Tour at the Barrowlands flyer that we sold some time ago. Generally flyers don't sell in very large amounts but it is undoubted that some have a special place in peoples hearts and that some just really are very rare compared to others. We printed 1 million flyers for the Fantazia One Step Beyond event in 1992 (the biggest event of ours by some way) and yet they are still very collectable which means rarity is not everything in the price as with that many floating around it just can't be as rare as other event flyers that where only printed in the 000's.

What is the rarest flyer you know about? Which would you love for your rave flyer collection and why? Did you go to the event or just love it as a form of artwork?

Whats the worst ever error on a Rave flyer?

2011-09-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

We love rave flyers as an artwork, but they were an advert back in the rave days and still are today. Computers back in 1992 were not widely owned or used and certainly your typical rave promoter was not someone you could guarantee would be good at typing, spelling (or even reading) and many had a tendency to over exaggerate the attractions at a rave event to make it sounds as appealing as possible. Ignoring these exaggerations (he says blushing) what obvious blooper mistakes have you seen on a rave flyer? I was looking at a Fantazia Club Tour flyer from back in 1993 (Club Tour 9) and noticed that it had the event listed in the wrong year! Doh! No harm done I guess as people would realise when it was but I am sure other companies must have got the actual day wrong? Maybe the venue?

Why did these things happen? Time pressure, typing error, last minute changes to the license or venue the list goes on. However let it be a warning to all you budding promoters out there! Proof read, proof read, proof read oh and get someone else (and possible 10 others) to proof read your lovely looking artwork!

Do post your comments on the worst mistake from a rave flyer from then and now....enjoy a browse of the rave flyer archive...

Rave Flyer Library updated: Amazon, Amnesia House and more added

2011-09-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

We added about 30 new flyers to the rave flyer library today infilling many of the images for flyers listed under A, B and C. We continue to scan and add flyers as time allows and as always are pushing to finish them all as soon as we can. Notable flyers added this time were ones from Amazon, Amnesia House, Awol, Bare Necessity, Bass Odyssey, Club Kinetic, 3D, Dance Paradise and many more.

As always if you have any scans we can use of early rave flyers do get in touch.

View the latest rave flyer additions added...

Buy this original picture that was used in this Eclipse flyer

2011-08-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in purchase the original artwork that this flyer was based on do email sales@fantazia.org.uk your offers! Own a little bit of rave history.

What would an original piece of rave artwork be worth?

2011-08-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

We were approached today by the original designer of some of the Eclipse, Coventry's artwork wanting to know what the original hand draw image might be worth. We had no idea. What do you think? The flyers can sell for £10 so would £50 be enough or £100 or is it just priceless? Well we hope to be able to put a price on it soon as the designer may be looking to sell it and we will be offering it to you as soon as we get an interview and showcase of his other work up on the site. It would be great to track down more of this sort of stuff!

Rave flyers were collectable by kids in 1992

2011-06-27T04:22:00.000-07:00

Rave flyers were massively collectable back in 1992 check out this article about how rave flyers were the new swapping item in the playgrounds across the country.

Visual Energy by Simon Parkin now on Fantazia rave flyer dissertation

2011-06-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Simon Parkin for giving us permission to reproduce his dissertation "Visual Energy" about how rave flyers influenced the acid house scene from the early days. Click the title link to read it the full piece. Section 1 covers the origins and rise of the scene whilst section 2 is the one that deals the aspects of the flyers. With sections on piracy, visual sampling, technicolour, express your self and mind blown amongst others.

This is a great complimentary article to kick off our ever expanding rave flyer library with and it well worth a read. Enjoy.

Evolution, The Edge & Equinox & Quest flyers added

2011-06-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Our big push to finish the rave flyer library continues a pace with another 100 images added today alone, including flyers from Evolution, The Edge, Equinox, Dance Trance & Quest amongst others added.

We are determined to keep the pace up and get all the flyers in our collection scanned and added by the end of July.

We hope you enjoy being able to easily browse so many rave flyers in one place. If you have flyers that we don't we are happy to receive scans to fill in the gaps in our collection.

Amnesia House and Desire flyers added to the library

2011-06-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

Some great new flyer scans added to the library from Amnesia House and Desire added to the library. enjoy. Some real classics. In there

Rave flyer updated under way Eclipse, Slammin Vinyl, Starlight done

2011-05-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

After a long wait which we at Fantazia really apologies to the old skool rave fans out there for the project to complete scanning in of all the rave flyers we have in our collection and available is finally back underway. Today we completed adding the missing flyers we have for parties from Eclipse, Obsession, Slammin Vinyl and Starlight, we expect to continue to add flyers through June until they are all complete. Enjoy

More Fantazia flyers onto t-shirt

2011-05-23T04:28:00.000-07:00

We know how much you all love our flyers and we noticed recently we had not updated our t-shirt shop to allow you to get more of them on t-shirt. So now we have! Including the recent tours of Scotland and our 20th Anniversary parties. Oh and can you believe we did not have the Summertime one available. Now it is!

Fantazia Flyers on T-shirts
Or design your own

Follow Pez on Facebook and get insights from a rave artist legend

2011-04-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

Just been looking at Pez the famous rave flyer artists page on Facebook. Well worth checkout to get insights into the past and present of his rave designs. Many companies including Helter Skelter and World Dance used Pez designs as the basis of their flyers. Fantazia never did though. Maybe one of our 20th anniversary bashes should feature a Pez, could we swap the current girl based designs?

View Pez's page on Facebook...

Natalie Bates flyer wall

2011-04-06T01:58:00.000-07:00

Another amazing rave flyer wall this month thanks to Natalie Bates

Thrash's Flyer wall from the early 90s

2010-12-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Just been reading your site & saw the request to send in photo's of old flyered bedrooms..... well, here's mine circa Xmas '93.

I lived in Bournemouth at the time in case you were wondering.... I'm the one with the curtains hairstyle in the photo.

Cheers

Thrash

We love these pictures. Not just a wall but a whole bedroom. Rave flyers were loved then and are still loved today. So many of us had walls of them and we would love to see your rave flyer wall/bedroom pictures. Who needed wallpaper!

Flyer Walls & Article on flyers

2010-11-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

Found these two recently about flyer collecting and a picture of someones flyer wall. Class

Rave Flyers Trumps Game your suggestions

2010-10-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since I create Top Trumps styles games for Fantazia events, drugs and rave DJs from the past and present and sitting here I was thinking of doing some new ones tonight to fill my night. One I could do would be on Rave Flyers... whats 5 category's would be used? My suggestions would be... Rarity, Age, Style, Collectability and Value. Any better suggestions?

We can now do canvas prints of any of the flyers for sale

2010-10-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

If you want a canvas print of a rave flyer that does not have an asterisk then we can now do that for you as long as they are for sale in our shop whether or not there is a preview of the flyer available to see. Masses more opportunity for present buying this Xmas

Linked rave companies and venues

2010-10-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

Working on the rave flyer library is time consuming stuff, catalogue, scanning, coding etc etc, however there is many interesting things that come to light. One of which is how many different rave companies were actually run by the same people. Knowing many of the people as we did we were aware of some of the links however even we had forgotten who were behind some of the events (they were the competitions after all)! We will attempt at some point to simplify some of those connections by making it clear when they are linked.

Why did they have different brands? Some like ESP (who's main brand ended up being Dreamscape) tried a number of different brands out at the same time before discarding, Big Bad Head, Supernova and others names to concentrate on the one that had the most resonance with ravers. Other companies/promoters had to ditch successful/well known brands to ditch negative image or to escape creditors. This was the case with Chris Griffin who was behind Perception, Mythology, Vision and Devotion. I will comment some more on this at a later stage.

It also becomes clears how many of the rave events were carried out and many of the same venues. The Sanctuary was popular and staid named the same, however many of the rave venues used over the 90's went through various names changes over the years. We all know The Eclipse became The Edge but it changed its name again when it became the home to Coventry University and carried on holding more events. Other venues also changed their names over the years as well.

If you can help fill in some of the links between companies and venues there do make a post as we like to hear more....

Our offer of rave flyers for sale just got bigger and much cheaper aswell

2010-10-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

We have just add over 400 new classic rave flyers for sale to the rave flyer library. This includes many early ones from 1991 and 1992. Including rare Eclipse ones amongst others. And what's more the price of the flyers have been reduced in price in many instances with the average price for a mint condition ones now only £4.99 including postage.

We have many more rave flyers to add and these will be added soon.

If you are selling your flyer or tape collection... we are buying

2010-02-11T23:08:00.000-08:00

If you need some cash or want to free up the space under the bed and have a large rave flyer or tapepack/compilation cd collection then consider getting in touch with Fantazia. We regularly add to our vast collection if the price is right. Email sales@fantazia.org.uk

Print your favourite rave flyer onto a canvas

2009-11-13T10:50:00.001-08:00

Rave flyers have long been considered an artform and they really are a classic image from the age of raves. Well now Fantazia are able to really turn your favourite rave flyer into a piece of artwork by having them printed on to canvas or as a poster.

Buy your favourite flyer on canvas now

Prices start from £17.99 including delivery via courier.

I have had a great one done of the Fantazia Story so Far book cover and it looks amazing. This image is available if you to would like a copy as are the Fantazia logos. Just ask and we will see what we can do for you!

Rave Books have you read any of these?

2009-08-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

Befitting of a scene that had as much of an impact and was as loved as the rave one was many books have been written about what has become the Second Summer of Love. We have added a page to the Fantazia site which details many of these books and you can read that below:

Read Rave Book listing now

I have yet to located copies of all the books yet as a number of them are out of print. I can however personally recommend: Altered States, King of Clubs and Energy Flash as great reads.

The Rave Flyer Wall....classic

2009-08-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

I had one. Did you? Flyer walls were widespread and a much loved thing with hundreds of thousands all over the country from aspiring pre teenages, teenagers and older.

Each week you would go to you local record shop and collect the new flyers. Some times they were rashioned to stop you taking loads and after reading them for the latest new attraction, 100k rigs etc and new DJ name which would evoke images of drug taking and happy people (Ellis Dee - Vibe etc) you would carefully add the flyer to your flyer wall. This flyer wall would grow like some colourful mould taking over first one wall then another and if you were really dedicated eventually the ceiling.

The one showing is of Wesley Cole Alcorn's. If you have a flyer wall picture do email it to us: fantaziamusic@gmail.com as we would love to use it.

Is this the most Glowing flyer ever?

2009-08-11T22:28:00.001-07:00

We have just released the flyer for our next big event Fantazia The Ultimate UV Glow Show. And what a stunner this flyer is. Once again featuring the gorgeous Fantazia girls but this time with what must be the most glowing flyer effect of all time, surely....?

Click the title to view the full flyer

Talking of rave magazines,,,

2009-05-26T00:34:00.000-07:00

Talking of rave magazines by 1992 rave had gone from a niche movement, acid house, to the main stream. More than 500,000 people were regularly going to raves throughout the country, people were very passionate about it as well and that dedication spawned quite a large number of magazines like Eternity, Blaze, M8 etc many of which ran for a long time. Eventually as the scene declined this either closed or transformed into House music mags, like M8.

These magazines are a great resource for ensuring that rave music and the scene was/has not been forgotten

Rave Magazine covers

2009-05-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

We have started adding scans of our large rave magazine collection to the flyer archive. We know they aren't rave flyers but they were a great part of the scene and worthy collectors item. The likes of Eternity, Dream, To the Core and more carried many articles and event reviews.

Whats the most expensive flyer?

2009-05-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Well we don't know for sure so if you do then we would like to hear your suggestions for the award. However we know of one collector who says a Fantazia at the Hacienda flyer can sell for inexcess of £50.

Now that is a rare flyer as it was for a promotional night aimed at other dance promoters from 1992, another very rare Fantazia flyer is the Prodigy gig at the Barrowlands again in 1992. Others to watch out for are our Aussie gigs ones.

If you are lucky to find any of these you have hit the jackpot. Of course many of the Fantazia ones are highly prized and sell well, but many were made in large numbers so can normally be found for between £5 - £15

F is of course for Fantazia

2009-03-10T03:30:00.000-07:00

Part of the initial appeal apart from putting on massive night reliably with awesome music was the imagery that we used. Featuring computer generated graphics on an A4 sheet of quality paper the flyers were very striking, collectable and visually instantly recognisable as Fantazia. Starting from 1991 until we rebranded with the Big Bang event in 1993 we used mainly these images. They are still some of the most collectable rave flyers there are from the period. Click the title link to view more images

After moving more towards the house music end of dance we adopt the use of pictures of scantily clad arresting looking ladies on the front of our flyers / albums. This continues to this day.

Which do you prefer?

Massive range now for sale

2009-01-14T15:48:00.000-08:00

We have still got to add some of our flyer collect. Well in fact half of our collection. This is turning out to be a long slow job. But if a job is worth doing, its worth doing comprehensively.

Good news is that we have now put for sale all the rave flyers we have in stock that we have currently listed. We mainly only have 1 copy of each flyer so once they are gone they are gone.

Prices vary depending on how nice, what company, the condition and rarity and age. However its not hard and fast so some are almost certainly to cheap and other fairly expensive, but that just the way it goes.

We are thinking of offering special rave flyer starter packs which a collection of small, large flyers. Useful to get any collection going.

Only S & Q to go

2008-10-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

We only have a few more flyers left to add from our collection of scanned rave flyers. After this we will be taking a breather as this has been a mammouth task. We will come back to adding more later in the year or as people send them to us.

We will for a while be concentrating on making the flyer library more useful by linking the flyers with reviews of the actual events where we have them and also to sites where you can buy the mix CDs if you want to.

The Flyer library expands

2008-10-14T03:30:00.000-07:00

The Fantazia flyer library has finally started to get a decent amount of flyer on it. We have now finished upload many of the ones we already have scanned and you can now view over a thousand flyer images by clicking the title above.

We hope you enjoy the efforts we have gone to. Its the first time there is a comprehensive amount of backs as well as fronts on the internet.

We have a lot of work still to go and be assured we will be giving this some priority in the coming months until its finished.

Why did flyers get smaller?

2008-06-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

I made an earlier post about size o flyers in the early 90's getting bigger and bigger. But what is obvious is that after a certain period the began to get smaller again. Now I am sure their was an element of cost saving on the printing involved but that doesn't fully explain things. The reality was that it was very expensive to transport and hand out large flyers. New methods were evolving to reach clubbers. Companies like Out of Hand were formed who gave out flyer bags containing many rave companies flyers and other stuff all at the same time. This was cheaper and easier for them and also for the promoter. The limitation was the size of the bag, this was normally less than A5 in size.

I like the flyer bags when I get them as they contain so much however they do lack that feel and I do miss the large ones that would look great on your wall, these little ones just dont compare for that.

Do Women get offended by the imagery?

2008-06-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Along with a lot of the fashion, music, leisure industy we use pictures of sexy ladies in skimpy tight clothing to advertise our events and products. This start for Fantazia with the House Collection and House Collection Club Classics albums where each featured a girls posing or dancing on the cover, the series was a massive hit and we have continued using the same imagery for events as well since then. This includes the massive series of sellout events in Scotland as well.

Now clearly the albums sold and the event flyers attracted people (at least the men). But do women find this a turn off?

I think not, half the audience are female and half of them are dressed in a similiar way. Now maybe a squarer section of the society would disaprove, but they are most likely the ones that would not attend in anycase and we don't miss them.

What do you think?

Slow progress!

2008-05-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

Its a mammouth task scanning a listing all our flyer in the library. We are working hard on it though and we expect to be able to list a massive amount of new ones soon! So look out for them

So who designed flyers from the hardcore/rave days?

2008-04-27T02:33:00.000-07:00

Fantazia had their own in house designer back in 1992 who did many of their classic flyers, Obsession similarly used some one they new and who was local to their home town of Cheltenham. Many of the other rave companies like Helterskelter, World Dance, Dreamscape, Raindance and more used either Junior Tomlin or Pez. If you click their names you can read interviews and profiles on both of them. Well worth checking out for a bit of scene history.

Current hardcore rave flyer designs

2008-04-27T02:09:00.000-07:00

There is definitely a certain style to the present day rave/hardcore flyers. In 1992 Fantazia lead the way with computer generated graphics, like this one from the Second Sight. These days the look of hardcore flyers is very different.

The likes of Hardcore Heaven, HTID etc use a new style, bigger bolder text, with photos from the events. They seem very busy and the front image is either not prominent or secondary to the logo lettering. Things should change though and I like the look. If we still did the same old imagery it would be a back step and very unimaginative. Fantazia use a seperate style, similiar to the past but instead with the trademark (from the album series) girl picture. These are not stock shots either, but from photos shoots expensively styled and shot, which is why they don't look tacky like some other imitators who attempt to use the same format.

So whats different with the Rave Flyer Library?

2008-04-26T00:06:00.000-07:00

We are putting lots of effort into the rave flyer library. It takes an ages to scan every flyer both front and back and internal pages as well. So whats the difference between our archive and other sites? Well we are making an effort to scan the flyers in a higher resolution than most sites have used (now that the internet is much faster, we think you deserve to get flyers of a resolution that can be printed. You can also read all the text on each flyer. Plus a smaller image pops up to see if this is the flyer you are looking for before having to open the main flyer.

But the biggest change is that we have also included the backs of the flyers, which most sites have not taken the efort to include. This means you can now read the details of who was on the line up, where the venues was etc etc.

We hope to also link the flyers to any reviews etc we have from the night. Lots more work to go but we hope you like what we have done.

Y is for Yikes

2008-04-25T23:57:00.000-07:00

Yikes held rave style events from around 1992 one of their first being at the Rivermead Center in Reading. They were more drum n bass/jungle than classic hardcore with the pa at this one being 2 Bad Mice and DJs along the lines of JJ Frost, Randal etc. The image shown is from a party from New Year 92 that they did in conjunction with Kaos at the Academy in Brixton. Its our favourite of the flyers we have so far found.

Rave flyers now for sale

2008-04-25T23:36:00.000-07:00

You can now buy many of the rave flyers we have in the archive as we have them on sale. Price and conditions of each flyer do vary and we hope to have bundles of flyers for sale soon for those who want a cheaper way to get their collection started. If you have any questions about the flyers do get in touch.

All will be sent in board backed envelopes for their protection.

Which brings us on to, if you have a collection of flyers and would like an offer, let me know and we will see if we can come to a deal. Send us any email to sales@fantazia.org.uk

Z is for Zest

2008-04-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

Zest is for Zest at Venue 44 in Mansfield. Though why do so many flyers not have the year on!!!! We dont know to much about this night, so if you can help with the years, or reviews do get in touch.

We have just completed another big upload and loads more flyers are now in the archive.

Does Size matter?

2008-02-09T10:49:00.001-08:00

As the rave scene evolved and I guess printing got cheaper, rave flyers went from A5 to A4 to A3 and then to designs with many pages or folds. Which ones do you prefer? I think the A3 ones have the most impact, but were easily damaged when collected at the end of the night. Plus they don't fit in any of my filing systems as they are so large.... A4 are perfect IMO. A5 just a little to small to get that visual impact...

A is for Amnesia House

2008-02-07T12:31:00.001-08:00

Amnesia House have been around since 1989 and though there early flyers are not stunning examples of what a classic rave flyer is, some of their later ones are classic examples of how raves used popular culture to advertise events. Take the Benson & Hedges flyer as an example. Its unmistakable as the cigeratte packets but it Amnesia as well. A number of other companies used this same trick including the Eclipse (classic Eastenders one for instance) and Sterns/Interdance.

I don't think they are as nice to look at as some of the more computer imagery ones but they are a very distinct style. What do you think?

Growing up with Rave Flyers

2008-02-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

Why are Rave Flyers so collectable and well loved by a large section of people? Many website have been dedicated to them and more than any other recent form of advert they are revered, swapped and collected. Is it because many people were at chool when they firt came out and they were an aspirational thing to collect, alluring to future parties yet to be experiance. Or was it because if you went to those parties their flyer, with list of attraction, mega turbo sounds sytems and a line soccer team sized lineup that would play the tunes you loved, would remind you of thoe nights....

Or do they jut look cool, with the new age style computer generated graphics combination or original artwork from the likes of World Dance & Dreamscape designer Pez who created magical scene....

I don't know but we are going to explore some of those flyers in this blog and hopefully get your opinions on whether i am just talking bollocks. Do post details of your favourite ones and comment on the rave flyers I post up.

If you want to look at a collection of those flyers from the past or just haven't got a club what I am talking about do check out the Fantazia Rave Flyer Archive. We are aiming to include all the main flyers on here and unusual this will include the reverse and inner pages which rarely get shown on fan website already on the web....