Psychadelia 60's

Psychadelia 60’s

The psychedelic movement began in the mid 1960’s and had an effect, not just on music, but also on many aspects of popular culture. This included style of dress, language and the way people spoke, art, literature and philosophy. The name “psychedelic” refers to drugs that were popular with the youth culture of the time. Americans in the 1960’s and 70’s addressed many controversial issues-from civil rights, the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation and nonconformity. Many eastern Mysticism and psychedelic drugs.

 Posters for rock concerts tried to visually express the feeling of tripping out. Psychadelic images made to recreate the sensation associated with mind expanding drugs. Distorted imagery and illegible lettering in garish colours applied to posters magazines and album covers. In the 60’s there was a populist vulgar and fanciful commercial graphic design. 

Designers of psychadelia were inspired from the movements Art Nouveau-curvilinear shapes, illegible hand drawn type, lettering is wrapped and elongated almost illegible, using close value complimentary colours, recycling of images from popular culture and intense optical colour vibration inspired by the pop art movement. Artists clients were rock and roll groups and promoters.

Designers from psychadelia were Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso,

Wes Wilson:

Wes Wilson was best known for the psychedelic font around 1966 that made the letters look like moving or melting. Another thing that Wes Wilson is best known for the posters for Bill Graham, he invented a style that is now synonymous with the peace.

Victor Moscoso:

Moscoso was trained as a graphic designer. His technique was to reduce photographic images to their basic essentials. Moscoso was inspired from Art Nouveau: curvilinear shapes with vibrating reflect the concert, he simply used them for the graphical effect.

Influences of op Art and Pop Art:

The popularity of the op art and pop art was in the 1960’s. Op art is an abstract style that has geometric shapes, lines and colour juxtapositions to create optical illusions for the viewer. Pop art was first started in Britain in 1955 but the pioneers of movement were the Americans. Pop art and pop culture were used mostly for the products of the mass media evolving in the late 1950’s and 60’s like packaging , television, advertisements, comic books and cinema. Pop culture was like a protest against the seriousness. Pop art made its way to the United States in the 1960’s with the help of ground-breakers Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

Roy Lichtenstein was well known for the way he used stencil-like dots, thick lines, bold colours and thought bubbles to represent the comic book style. His paintings were the size of billboards.

Andy Warhol became famous pop artist when he was begun to make labels on food cans and bottles.

Some influences of Pop art today:

References:

•             Psychedelic 60s | Graphic Design History. 2014. Psychedelic 60s | Graphic Design History. [ONLINE] Available at: http://visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com/psychedelic-60s/. [Accessed 30 December 2014]