Introducing Wes Wilson
Silver Addy award winner
- This project was a look into poster designs and the impact they have in society today. Our assignment was to pick an artist and create a poster introducing him or her to Spring Hill; however, the catch was that we had to base our style and design for the poster off the artist’s work. I came across Wes Wilson, an American artist and one of the leading designers of psychedelic posters. He created a style that is now synonymous with the peace movement, psychedelic era and the 1960s. His work moved around the page inviting you in and that was exactly what I wanted to create. I started out with sketches of a female face that I knew I wanted to center the rest of my poster around. Using the psychedelic feel as inspiration, I hand drew all of the lines, attempting to recreate the feeling of movement. Wes Wilson is most known, though, for inventing and popularizing a "psychedelic" font around 1966 that made the letters look like they were moving or melting. Naturally I saw this as a challenge, but one I wanted to take on. I created a type for this poster, completely original, but inspired by those of the artist I had come to respect. This poster design won a Silver Addy Award on the regional level.
