Concert Banner Usability

So, I went to the Wicker Park Fest both days this weekend, and while it was a really fun time (pretty unbeatable for $5, and Daedelus killed it on Saturday afternoon), it also spawned a debate about how they designed their stage banners.

Each stage had two tall banners, one on each side, with the names of each act and the times they'd be going on throughout the day. The interesting choice, though, was that they violated normal reading convention by placing the final act at the top of the banner and the earliest act at the bottom. A few people I talked to agreed that this was really disconcerting, but then one of my friends made the point that as the crowd gets bigger (later in the day), it's easier to see the tops of the banners.

Although I'm not sure which concern wins out from a usability perspective, I think this is an interesting example about looking at things in context. Since I'm a user experience person, I noticed the inconsistency, but since I'm a 6'1" user experience person, I missed the potential upside of that design choice.