During the 1960s, a poster craze emerged due to the climate of social activism that was occurring. Posters were more often hung on apartment walls that outdoors as ways of stating one’s political views. The media and the general public associated the posters that emerged at the time with antiestablishment values, rock music and drugs therefore the posters were labeled psychedelic posters. Many of the artists that were involved in the poster movement were largely self-taught and had clients that were rock-and-roll dance promoters. Thus the posters reflected the dances that they advertised in terms of the swirling letterforms that were warped to the point of illegibility and done in bright contrasting colours. I chose to highlight Robert ‘Wes’ Wilson as he has been referred to as the godfather of psychedelic poster art and is considered the innovator of the style. I find that I have to really focus if I want to read the actual text in the poster but I’m very drawn to the graphic treatment of the text. The way the text has been set, it becomes part of the visual, the pictures so that you can appreciate the poster as a whole with the swirls and colours. It seems that the lettering is very true to the times in the sense that if a person were to take some psychedelic drugs, that’s what the wording would look like. The time is also one of rebellion against government and conventions that restrict. The lettering defies the legibility rule of typography completely and is more focused on the aesthetic quality.
Submitted by: Teri Yeung
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