The Psychedelic Poster in Black and White?

With all the hoopla surrounded around the beauty and art of the psychedelic poster era one wonders what the poster for a pop concert might look like in the early 60s just before the psychedelic explosion. These posters did not start with the color vibrance that is so popular and well-known today. The pre-color early 60s poster artists used numerous design techniques based on the French Art Nouveau poster. Surfaces were often broken with multiple framing devices. There was abundance of classical printers ornaments, rules and stars, as well as, for the typography, variations in font and weight. Unfortunately it was the printers that were most responsible for these early compositions, without a designer on hand, these printers remain anonymous.

In the 1960s the use of exaggerated typography was widespread, featuring layouts based on the horizontal bands, sometimes featuring black-and-white photos if they were available.

The first true rock periodical was Rolling Stone and in its early years was printed only in black and white. The popularity of these typographic treatments grew through Jan Wenner’s publication without color. Here we can focus on the hand lettering that tended toward a great organic unity of composition, and made a much greater use of typographic impact only in black-and-white. Looking at these posters with this mind set will show you how truly extraordinary these designs were.

Thus began the design of the “slow” poster whose message required an unusually long time to figure out. Later these posters reach their peak with the color additions in the work of Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso. The very earliest examples of psychedelic posters do not yet display their quality. 

We find the poster known as “The Seed” that many experts of this movement considered to be the first psychedelic poster. The promotion advertises concerts by the Charltons held in the first two weeks of June 1955 at the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City which was a small town in Nevada. Designed by two members of the Charlatans, George Hunter and Michael Ferguson it was was printed only in black. The poster picks up look of the wild West posters of the 19th century medicine shows or traveling circuses prevalent during this period. These hand-drawn techniques were not quite yet the organic styles that were to evolve a few years later but were the spring board that would adapt to the combination of typography in color and photography with the work by the legendary artists of the psychedelic era known as the big five. They are: Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly.

We must admit that even though the text might have been based on existing typefaces of that era, the compositions were truly organic, and these artists made a much greater use of color contrast that has ever been seen before in the history of graphic design. We also must recognize then that one would have to have had an LSD experience to produce these vibrating works of art. Stoned out or not, the big five artists were master craftsman, geniuses of color, and compositional wizards that provided an invaluable reference to a culture that is still looked upon with enthusiasm by the younger generation of artists today.

They did not copy the Masters of the Art Nouveau movement, but brought their own modern sense of originality that reflected the world around them.

When I was a very little kid my best friends brother did attend Woodstock. I know he was there–because he couldn’t remember anything about it either. He did, however, come back with one hell-of-a poster!