When you picture hippies, you probably picture bell bottoms, long hair, and LSD. You might also think of a very specific graphic design and illustration style, seen on concert posters and album covers: curly, cloudy, barely legible lettering, trippy color combinations, and decorative meandering borders. This style was first conceived in San Francisco by a handful of designers in the late 1960s. Their job? Make posters for bands like The Byrds, the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Steve Miller Band, Jimi Hendrix … all of whom were just getting their start, competing for nightly stage time at venues like the Fillmore and the Avalon.
But these designers didn’t invent that now-iconic style. In fact, they were heavily influenced by an art movement that started in the late 1800s called Art Nouveau.
*Psychedelic is newly coined words that refers to a state of psychological ecstasy that combines 'psycho' and 'delicious' and, which also produced this condition as an artistic act and it spread internationally around New York in the mid-1960s.
“In the late 1800’s new technology was changing the way the world worked, and the way that it looked,” the Vox video above explains. “Some people, especially artists, living through the technological revolution, were not so into all the new industry. To be blunt, they thought it was ugly.” They responded with organic forms and intricate patterns that evoked a pre-industrial world while simultaneously showcasing, and selling, the most modern ideas and products.
Drawing on the handcrafted aesthetic of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Gothic revival, the florid, ornate paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, a fascination with Japanese woodblock prints, and the strange, beautiful illustrations of sea creatures by Ernst Haeckel, artists began to challenge late Victorian orthodoxies. The style we now know as Art Nouveau emerged.
Read more about Art Nouveau and other major design movements: https://books.google.com/books?id=Kmx...
To learn more about the history of California graphic design, check out: https://www.amazon.com/Earthquakes-Mu...
