The 60’s where a time of great change ushering in a new culture that thrived off the youth, brought attention to important political and social issues and inspired a new generation of artists and graphic designers who sought to explore new designs and styles rather than fall into the uniformity of the corporate international style. The posters created during this time utilized elements such as the organic curves and line popular in art nouveau, vibrating often conflicting colors that bring a feeling of intensity to the work, and manipulating images from popular culture. The 60’s psychedelic posters were often called pushpin styled after the the studio that pioneered the ideology behind the style. These poster were made in contrast to a different era of graphic design, the era of the international style which focused on element such grid structures, asymmetrical balance and most importantly legible san-serif type.
The overall difference between the during the time was a desire by the youth to change how action and events were taking place to not fall into the same uniformity. One graphic designer by the name of Victor Moscoso was success in this era came from creating psychedelic posters for musicians and bands who played psychedelic rock and roll at clubs and at dance halls such as the matrix. In contrast Ralph Coburn was an artist with a MIT background who created simple abstract works with line and simple colors. Victor Moscoso use of psychedelic type in his Neon Rose #6, poster reflects the popular counterculture of the 60’s by use of organic curves, intense vibrating colors and going beyond legible design that was considered more desirable to the youth of the era than that of Ralph Coburn’s international style poster for the MIT jazz band, 1972 which contained structured grids, reduced colors, and the promotion of legibility over all else.
Like so many of Victor’s other posters of the Neon Rose collection #6 was created for a band, the poster’s band was known as the Blues project who played at the matrix club. Victor’s Neon Rose poster has all the traits that are commonly found in psychedelic posters of the time and masterfully use each one to create a dazzling image. The first of the major elements is the use of organic free flowing serif typeface that encircles and radiates from the image of the nude lady as waves, the type also merges into the border of the poster which shows a great use of integration of type not only as a separate element but as part of the image itself. The second major element is Victor’s use of the colors blue, green, and orange of matching intensity which make the image vibrate as the colors compete with one another for control over the visual. The last of the major psychedelic elements present in the poster is the image of the nude lady who came from a 1890’s french postcard which Victor make use of as the centerpiece of the poster having the type seemingly radiate from her. The interesting visual of the Neon Rose #6 poster ties together to produce an image whose composition free flowing and unconstrained by grids which was used by the earlier international style reflects the spirit of 60’s counterculture movement.
The international style is a design based on the ideological concept of creating a design that is logical, rational, and whose type is legible above all else something that could easily give off a professional feel. Ralph Coburn’s MIT poster uses the international style’s main elements in the poster to show off the conformity of minimal design and the clearcut nature of what the poster is advertising MIT’s jazz band. The first major element that quickly catches the eye is the type font which is a very basic bold san-serif font that covers the poster as the initial and only visible element. The second major element is not as visible as the first but it noticeable when looking at the typography, the letters are all neatly aligned by a grid and the negative space between the letters proves it by having equal kerning between each letter. The last of the MIT poster’s major elements come in the form of a reduced color scheme using only black and white on the entirety of the poster as to emphasise the contrast between the san-serif font and the background of the poster.
Representing two vastly different eras the push-pin style and the international style carry with them design elements that reflect the ideals of graphic designers of their eras. The element of color is expressed differently between both posters as the push-pin style focuses on using color to create striking visuals the MIT poster focused on the reduction of color. The Neon Rose poster uses the element of color to produce an effect that reflected the nature of light shows common at the time by the use of a conflicting color scheme to bring out a trippy visual. With the MIT poster there is a reduction of color to the point of only having black and white which helps puts more focus to what the poster is promoting than that of its own design which was important for a time vested in being professional. The second element had to do with the how both posters dealt with the use of line in each of their compositions and styles. For the Neon Rose it used art nouveau’s organic lines within both the typeface and negative space to create a wave pattern in its composition that allowed it flow through out the poster. For the MIT poster the use of girds locked in the design in a very methodical composition were not a single letter is out of place which cause rectangular shapes to appear in parts of the negative space between groupings of letters.
The level of legibility is an important difference between the two posters as the how readable they are is a major aspect of their styles and their compositions. For the Neon Rose poster legibility of type wasn’t important in fact Push-pin styled posters stretched legibility to the very edge often being hard or near impossible to read and it was thought that only the youth were able to understand posters like this because they deciphered rather than read it. With the MIT poster its legibility was highlighted as the primary element of the poster’s composition because the international style was all about trying to promote a commercial idea or organization as legible as possible which the jazz san-serif typography did. The MIT poster also has the grid and the reduced color aspects of the poster as secondary elements as to emphasize the primary element of legibility. Along with the contrasting elements in the two posters, the history behind the two style show the rationale behind why they’re designed the way they are.
Each of the two posters represent fundamentally different points of times in graphic design history that were defined by the events and ideology of their eras and how people approached graphic design as a medium. The Neon Rose coming from a time that sought anti-establishment ideas and valued political and social reform that had been long desired by the youth of the age due to the actions of both government and corporations that they believed acted carelessly and ignorant towards the country. The major events that brought forth the counterculture were the vietnam war, the fight for equality for african americans, and the wave of feminism. The Push-pin style became the choice of graphic designers during this age due to how free and unrestricted the designs were and how they could use it to promote ideals and information about current issues. The MIT poster represented the ideal of a conformed, easy to read, and professional poster in a time where the people sought a sense of unity and the growth of large corporations where on the rise. After the second great war people had greater prosperity and wealth to spend on fancy new goods and the corporations began promoting their products as often as they could which would create the consumer culture of the 50’s. The international style became the go to design for corporations largely due to the concise nature of the style to create a simple but memorable trademark or poster that could reflect the company itself. When looking at the historical nature between the two styles it’s easy to see why the counterculture of the 60’s prefered a style that was open, vibrant, and flowing.
The Push pin style was seen as the desirable choice of graphic designer and counterculture during the 60’s due to its use of expressive elements in its composition than that of the more ordered element in the MIT jazz band poster. Both styles were a representation of their era and their elements reflected that with the Push-pin style focusing on fight on important issues and the international style focusing on corporate identity and product promotion. The shift between these two style can be seen as a corporate age in graphic design being succeeded by an age where youth was the driving force behind graphic design promoting and influencing an entire decade.