The Wonder Women of Retro Design

Design movements appear suddenly and sometimes without warning. The design we now term as "Retro" design began by a small number of New York female designers working primarily in the record and book publishing industry. 

A field known in the 1980s for its traditionally conservative ways was rocked by a new approach to cover design. The designers Paula Scher, Louise Fili and Carin Goldberg created works using graphics from the turn of the 20th century and between the World Wars mixing fonts and color combinations that playfully connected the kinky and eccentric typefaces of that period. In these Retro designs, the typography is the key element becoming a star and focal point of the composition.

Paula Scher is––without question––the wonder woman of the movement. In Retro, we see an important historical design lesson to keep our eyes affixed. It’s human nature to cherish a past and forgotten beauty––and in this case, the many grand characteristics found in historical design. Early 20th century design––hidden away like some magician prodigy under the stairs––was just waiting to be re-opened by an experimental designer like Scher. She admits openly that she would have done anything at the time to avoid using the popular Helvetica font (which she unwaveringly still detests). Working at CBS records during the 70s her work attracted national attention.

In 1978 the record industry crashed, as inflation took a powerful toll on what was an industry of healthy photography budgets. Scher used this situation to her advantage creating almost completely typographic solutions. Combining her design history knowledge and a fascination with lesser-known typefaces, Scher applied a Retro design approach to her design solutions.

Most designers would have avoided the forbidden typefaces she used completely, and no doubt, the response to her initial work was under whelming. But Scher’s vision eventually began to gain ground. Her typographic solutions were eye opening, as she pulled from the visual vocabulary of Russian Constructivism and Art Deco, while reinventing them with a modern twist. The Russian Constructivists were dead serious about communicating to the masses to support a new society that emerged after the revolution. Scher puts a whimsical twist on how this type and imagery can be used to communicate in a playful manner.

Not surprisingly, Louise Fili credits Scher as her main influence. Fili took frequent trips to Europe to unwind from the hectic schedule of book publishing at Pantheon books. It was Europe that provided her with the inspiration and a very original approach to American book jacket design in the early part of the 1980s. Wandering the Italian seashore resorts built between the World Wars, she began photographing the antique signage that was commonplace. Her passion continued as she began collecting European graphics from the 1920s, 30s and 40s that she found at French and Italian flea markets. These ornate styles were almost completely forgotten. 

After the Second World War the New Typography movement began as an international graphics style towards clarity, readability and a rejection of superfluous decoration.
Typefaces before then became so unused that they did not even make it into the conversion to photographic or digital form.

Like Scher, Fili reinvents these old typographic specimens adding color and imagery that reflect the spirit of the past while projecting the content of a book in a unique way.

It is in their efforts that the Retro design approach has become a current consideration of any art director’s vision. When used appropriately, Retro design can be a highly effective solution for any designer with an eye on the past.

Use judiciously is my warning. You’ll know when it’s just right to implement a Retro look into your project.

The psychedelic artist-stoned out tripster or poster design genius?

The psychedelic posters produced in San Francisco between 1966 and 1968 have become a legend of contemporary Western culture and the psychedelic era often compared to the psychedelic trip itself. An unusual and extraordinary burst of creative spirit was driven by the music of Haight-Ashbury and the poster artists were no doubt embedded in this scene.

In the history of the modern poster, which barely covers two centuries, the psychedelic poster stands out––but were the artists driven by the LSD experience alone or were they modern geniuses of color achieving movement with variations of hue and optical effects?

Truly, these posters are art objects that historians do not know what to do with or what to make of. Not unlike the remembrance of the music, the drugs, the counter culture and alternative lifestyles, documentation of these artists is a bit blurry. As the popular joke goes, “if you remember Woodstock––you weren’t there.”

Most agree on the superiority of 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 also know that the psychedelic posters were almost always hand-lettered, and even though the text might have been based on existing typefaces of that era, the compositions were truly organic, that made much greater use of color contrast that has ever been seen before in the history of graphic design. It must be assumed then that one would have to have had an LSD experience to produce these vibrating works of art.

Wes Wilson's pre-psychedelic efforts

Wes Wilson is probably the best known of the big five known for his poster designs for Bill Graham owner and producer of the Filmore East and West concert venues. His early poster produced for the Beatles at candlestick Park in late August 1966 shows nothing of the route he would partake in his future endeavors. The text for this poster is highly readable and the design is static. The passages in Wilson’s psychedelic poster concoctions done for the likes of Jefferson Airplane and the Byrds would have one in a trance in the act of reading––if reading them was possible at all. In his posters of the late 60s and early 70s Wilson feathers the letter forms and build up his compositions with a series of asymmetric curves and opposing curves. Certainly his influences came from Art Nouveau, but the color sense used here is a lava lamp of LSD excitement. In an article appearing in Time magazine in 1967 and titled “Graphics: Nouveau Frisco,” Wilson listed Van Gogh, Alfonse Mucha, and Gustav Klimt among his influences––but the comparisons stop there. Very contrary to typographic tradition, Wilson took his lead from the world he was embedded in. 

Psychedelic rock included phenomenal light shows, with slide projections and strobe lights that were intended to kick in the sensory experience of LSD or mescaline. It is impossible to fathom the utopian ideality of the this era without considering the role of drugs and their influence on art and artists. Timothy Leary’s book the Politics of Ecstasy published in 1968, was well in sync with the findings of Dr. Humphrey Osmond, the author of the studies he made on the use of LSD and mescaline as a treatment for schizophrenia. In an article in Look Magazine in September 1959, none other than Cary Grant spoke out about his successful treatment with the drug. The posters created in Haight-Ashbury with their movement of swirls and spirals and clashing complementary colors were a clear reference to LSD participation. 

The psychedelic movement was quick to disappear and in the spring of 1967. Wes Wilson discontinued his work for Bill Graham (he noted for financial reasons). In October of that year, and anarchist performance group called the Diggers put together a well publicized San Francisco parade to parody a funeral that they entitled “Death of the Hippie-Son of Mass Media”.

The hippie, as well as psychedelic poster art, had died. The organic curvilinear letter forms like the ones seen on the Are You Experienced Jimi Hendrix album cover would soon be replaced by the sparse (but memorable)design done by Richard Hamilton in 1968 for the Beatles White Album.

Were the 60s psychedelic artists stoned out tripsters or poster design geniuses? 

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!