Psychedelic Poster Art vs Skate Graphics
Skate Graphics was influenced by Psychedelic Poster Art.
Psychedelic Poster Art
The hallucinatory concert-poster style of 1960s San Francisco, built on vibrating complementary colors, melting hand-lettering you can barely read, and swirling Art Nouveau revival forms.
- Vibrating complementary colors placed edge to edge
- Melting, hand-drawn lettering bent to fill the composition
- Sinuous Art Nouveau and Vienna Secession revival curves
- Dense, all-over compositions with little empty space
- Deliberately challenging, near-illegible typography
Skate Graphics
The bold, gnarly illustration of skateboard decks and skate zines—screaming skulls, dragons, and cartoon mayhem rendered with heavy outlines and high-contrast punch.
- Heavy black ink outlines around figures
- Lurid skulls, monsters, dragons, and claws
- High-contrast flat color fills
- Aggressive hand-lettered logotypes
- Horror-comic and hot-rod illustration influence
At a glance
| Psychedelic Poster Art | Skate Graphics | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | c. 1966–1971 | 1970s–present |
| Discipline | Graphic Design | Graphic Design |
| Region | United States | United States, Global |
| Family | Vernacular/Pop, Counterculture | DIY/Subculture, Vernacular/Pop |
| Formal traits | hand-lettering, vibrating-color, art-nouveau-revival, dense-composition | hand-drawn, bold-outline, illustrative, high-contrast |
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