Wes Wilson was an American designer and key figure in the psychedelic design movement.
Robert Wesley Wilson was born on July 15th 1937 in Sacramento, California.
His career as a poster artist started at a San Fransisco print shop, where he did the layout and design for handbills. He then designed posters for dance concerts at The Fillmore Auditorium.
Wilson was one of the earlier pioneers of the movement. His inspiration came from some light shows as well as his own psychedelic experiences and this resonated with the younger audience of the time.
When asked for his design process, Wilson explained that he determined his choice in colours from the hallucinogenic experiences he had and we can see that there was a strong drug influence in his work similarly to many other designers in the 60s.
I like the colour choices in the posters above, I prefer when he sticks to a simpler colour palette as there is a lot going on already with the type. I also like the variation in line weight.
Wilson’s earlier work was very unique but his style soon became copied by other artists. One of the distinctive elements of the 1960s psychedelic style was the appearance of melting letters. The idea for these trippy fonts came to Wilson as he was flipping through a catalogue, when he stumbled on a page about Viennese Secessionist lettering.
We can find resembles between psychedelic art and art nouveau like this painting down below.
An example of his hand lettering, the distorted text gives it a trippy feel and the poster is almost illegible, which makes it look more like a piece of art than a graphic.
Wilson was the quintessential poster artist of the 60s, and his style still influences music posters today.
Sources:
https://musebycl.io/design/how-wes-wilsons-psychedelic-concert-posters-steeped-past-soared-future
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