Style combination · Pairs well
Psychedelic Poster × Screenprinted Gig
The 1960s Fillmore and Avalon posters are its ancestor; borrow one swelling, shape-filling title from them, but keep the band, date and venue line readable.
Mix them and make something Psychedelic Poster Screenprinted Gig
01
What each style brings
Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.
Psychedelic Poster Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster
- Type from Psychedelic Poster
- Colour from Screenprinted Gig
- Form from Psychedelic Poster
- Composition from Psychedelic Poster
- Surface from Screenprinted Gig
02
The type
Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.
Text · Screenprinted Gig
Hand-pulled, numbered screenprints that revived the rock poster in Austin from 1991, led by Frank Kozik, and spread via Flatstock fairs and, from 2004, Mondo to 'alternative' film posters, for collectors as much as the show. The gig posters lean to fluorescent inks, innocent cartoons in bizarre scenes and dense psychedelic layers; the film posters, often by the same artists, to Bass-like silhouettes or a whole cast on one sheet. A few flat inks, opaque or overprinting, sometimes metallic, carry hand-drawn lettering and usually one witty idea, sweet and sinister, nostalgic and knowing.
Oswald; Screenprinted Gig used Hand-drawn display lettering by the poster artist, drawn into the image and Condensed sans-serif and wood-type-style capitals for the band, venue and date line
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Screenprinted Gig, with a counter-accent from Psychedelic Poster. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
Psychedelic Poster Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster
-
#1d1c1aground · 36% -
#f1ead8ink · 14% -
#f2b134accent · 18% -
#ff6a13accent · 14% -
#e2482faccent · 10% -
#e4007caccent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #1d1c1a;
--ink: #f1ead8;
--accent-1: #f2b134;
--accent-2: #ff6a13;
--accent-3: #e2482f;
--accent-4: #e4007c;
--font-display: "Federant", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Oswald", sans-serif;
}Use it with care
Screenprinted Gig & Alt-Movie Poster: Film characters, logos and band names belong to their owners: Mondo's Star Wars and Marvel posters were made under licence from Lucasfilm and Disney, so clear the rights before printing a fan 'alt poster'; gig posters are the living trade of named independent printmakers, so commission or credit them rather than generating look-alikes of a recognisable artist's hand; and when you borrow the scene's sweet-and-sinister mix, keep the sinister half to monsters, skulls and noir rather than hate symbols or real atrocities: Kozik's own art drew on the iconography of Franco's fascist regime, under which he spent his earliest years in Spain, and that is not a costume to reuse.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With Psychedelic Poster
- Rave & Acid House Graphics Pairs well · Carry the vibrating fluorescent palette into rave-style chrome and airbrush to signal the 1960s-to-1990s lineage on purpose.
- Angura Theatre Poster Pairs well · Tokyo's angura theatre posters met psychedelia halfway; swap Art Nouveau curls for collaged Japanese ephemera and ukiyo-e waves while keeping the fluorescent silkscreen inks.
- Minimalist Graphic Design Contrasts · Set a single dense psychedelic panel in a field of white space for maximum shock and a clear focal point.
- Art Nouveau Pairs well · Borrow Art Nouveau's framing borders and flowing hair, then push the colour to fluorescent clash for an instant 1967 look.
- International Typographic Style Contrasts · Its exact opposite on legibility; one melting, shape-filling word can loosen an otherwise rigid Swiss layout.
- Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster Pairs well · 1970s Hindi film titles already flirted with psychedelic lettering; fuse the two for swirling, glowing title logos.
- Underground Comix Pairs well · Take the cover from the ballroom poster, with its clashing flat inks and melting letters, and keep the hatched black-and-white panels inside, as Zap did with Moscoso and Griffin.
- Hipgnosis Photographic Concept Sleeve Contrasts · Same Pink Floyd scene, opposite answer: Hipgnosis's 1969 Royal Festival Hall poster is still a psychedelic dreamscape collage, but by Atom Heart Mother the band wanted 'something plain' and got a cow. Swap melting hand-lettering and vibrating colour for one calm photograph and almost no type.
With Screenprinted Gig
- Pop Art Graphics Pairs well · Shepard Fairey called Kozik 'the punk rock Warhol'; take Pop's appropriated cartoons and halftones and give them a gig poster's single idea and hand-lettered title.
- Polish Poster School Pairs well · Both swap the star's photograph for one idea; add the Polish school's painted ambiguity to a flat screenprint when a film poster needs to unsettle rather than wink.
- Australian Poster Collective Screenprints Contrasts · Both hand-pull flat, hand-lettered screenprints from the same psychedelic root and both reach for fluoro inks; the Australian collectives printed for unions, marches and community causes (and some bands), often from photo stencils, and pasted them up at night, while the gig and alt-movie poster prints for one show, one film and a collector's wall, trading agitation for wit and nostalgia.
- American Mid-Century Modernism Pairs well · Saul Bass's film posters are a favourite model of the alternative movie poster (Film Comment found the Bass homages 'far too plentiful' in 2014); borrow his one cut-paper symbol that holds the whole story.
- WPA Silkscreen Posters Pairs well · Firewatch, the game Olly Moss art-directed, takes its look from National Park posters, and Killscreen (2014) likened its trailer to the Federal Art Project's 1930s national-park posters; give a fannish subject that calm public-service look and the wit shows.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Contrasts · Riso gives translucent soy inks and grain on small sheets; choose the screenprint for heavier ink, opaque where it must cover, on a large sheet that collectors frame, and riso for cheap, quick runs.
- Bandung Distro Graphics Pairs well · Both screenprint scene-made graphics for bands; distro moves the print from paper onto cloth.
- Spotify Duotone Identity Pairs well · Add hand-lettered, flat-ink poster drawing to recall the gig-flier roots of the look.