Contextual and Cultural Referencing in Art and Design: Psychedelia

The meaning of the word psychedelic is “mind manifestation”. This type of art and graphic design was inspired and influenced by the visual highs one gets when on certain drugs such as LSD. This art movement took place in the 1960s, and it is only fitting so because LSd was created then and the bad effects it leaves on the human body were still unknown, so it was legal. Art is a reflection of the society at the time, and the society at the time was heavily centered around psychedelic rock music, social and spiritual sentiments, and as mentioned before, LSD.

The reasons for all this social and spiritual sentiments was an aftermath of the Vietnam war going on at the time, and a loss of civil rights and also nuclear issues. So the youths ingested psychedelic drugs to get a feeling of a more loving and spiritual world. The musicians at the time were the likes of Jimi Hendrix and The Who, and although its hard to say if art inspired music or if music inspired art, the good thing is a very unique platform was created for graphic designers. I am talking of course about the album and CD covers created for the big music artists.

Two huge designers from this era were Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso. Wes Wilson was not a person who was born with a passion for design, as a kid he used to love to study the wilderness and spend his time outside. His first poster was self published, and it goes by the name of “Are we next?”. It shows a swastika with an American Flag motif, and stands for his protest against the US’s involvement in the Vietnam war. In 1965 he started a firm in partnership with Bob Carr, called Contact Printing. They used to do posters and invitations to budding psychedelic parties and concerts, and Wilson began his career as a graphic designer then. In his work Wilson is very much influenced by Alphons Mucha and Vincent Van Gogh, and a main pillar for his way of design was Alfred Roller. It is safe top say that Wes Wilson was the father of the psychedelic poster.

Poster for the Chambers Brothers - Wes Wilson

Captain Beefheart and his magic band poster - Wes Wilson

Victor Moscoso on the other hand did study graphic design at Yale University. However when he came to do posters he started looking at it as ‘how can I change it?” and “how can I make this more psychedelic?”. He described his designs as rule breaking, illeglibla and he tried to create the feeling that you get in a concert where there’s an overload of sound by using vibrant, eye-irritating colours to get that feeling.