There was a simple aesthetic to the early flyers, imagery that often incorporated the club venues logo (before the Rave scene exploded out of clubland and into the illegal warehouse and field venues), or the club promotors logo, a club or Rave name, an address, but most importantly the details of the DJ’s to be playing. These simple often hand-drawn or montaged pieces shared the same D.I.Y production and ethos as the earlier Punk flyers, but with a completely different message. As the Acid House and House music phenomenon grew and grew it became obvious the ethos of clubland and its strict door policies, full of bigoted white privilege and demands for smart clothing, were alienating those who were the pioneers, movers & shakers and purveyors of the scene, and they soon took the events out of the clubs and into illegal spaces to fulfil the need and desire for young people to express and lose themselves in the new experience. With this move away from clubland, Flyers became an irreplaceable and vital communication tool and the way promoters appealed to those who were to become ‘Ravers’.

The early parties would have been impossible to fill without the flyer.
Often handed out to those leaving a club on a Friday or Saturday night they would also be found within the independent record stores and fashion outlets where those on the scene would congregate, they were a vital component of the Rave scene, allowing promoters to keep the proposed warehouse parties a secret often until the very last minute, thus avoiding the police and any chance of the event being closed down before it had begun, ensuring those who needed to be there, the Ravers, could avoid the Police and make the event. The flyers themselves contained all the required information needed to be able to attend the party, pager numbers (before the advent of mobile phones and long before social media), often a meeting point, which pirate radio station to tune into, and always details of what you’d expect to find when you arrived; Turbo sound, light shows, chill-out areas and the DJ’s playing.

This lo-fi, simple communication tool was the driver of the early rave scene and was soon to become an accredited art form that has been championed ever since. With the advent of the word-processor and computer, cheaper printing techniques and digital art it also enticed graffiti, street, graphic and contemporary artists to utilise their skills to create more intricate and finer artwork that became a bi-word for the scene. By the end of the Eighties and early Nineties, Raves had become the norm across the UK and soon the World.  Dance music was now de-rigour for every recording artist and the flyer an art-form and means of communication that had become the essence of rebellion and the Youth movement it helped create.