Psychedelic Design blog post

Alton Kelley is a graphic designer who was prominent throughout the 60s and was famous for his psychedelic posters. Alton Kelley was born on Houlton, Maine in 1940 and at a young age, fell in love with rock n roll and motorcycles. His mother was a schoolteacher and would inspire Kelley to do art. He began to study art classes in high school and later studied industrial design at a local college and later moved to San Francisco for more opportunities. Coincidentally, he arrived at a time where the hippie subculture began to emerge. In 1966, he teamed up with Detroit designer Stanley Miller and the two would form a multi media collective called Family Dog which would turn San Francisco’s pop culture into a psychedelic world. The two would work together to design posters and album covers which would take inspiration from native Chinese and American art, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Bauhaus. One of Kelley’s famous work is creating the poster for the band, the Grateful Dead which shows a skeleton wearing a garland of roses on its skull and holding a wreath of roses on its left arm. The Grateful Dead was satisfied with his work and would use Kelley’s work as a part of their image and would make Kelley work on the next album covers. Kelley and his partner would also do posters for venues such as Avalon Ballroom and Fillmore, and posters for other musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Bo Diddley, and Country Joe and the Fish. In total, Kelley made over 150 posters. Kelley’s posters and album covers would become popular among the public and would even be printed on t-shirts. In 1968, Kelley and Miller received commissions from rock promoter Bill Graham and through him, Kelley’s work would go international and had his work presented in exhibitions. He continued his work during the 70s and in 1979, received a Grammy for his contribution to the Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits retrospective.

Kelley’s psychedelic work is very enjoyable to look at. His style of pop art and art nouveau really shows as his colours really pop out and have patterns that are really ornamental and detailed. He combines the traditional ornamental elements with psychedelic elements really well as they blend together really well thanks to the text’s melting effect. I also like how he uses a duotone effect to make his work pop out