60s Graphic Design: Psychedelic Design to Pop Art | Envato Tuts+ (2024)

If you're a big fan of 1960s design and are always looking for opportunities to incorporate its aesthetic into your own projects, then you're in luck.

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Today, we're highlighting1960s graphic design and showcasing some terrific resources from Envato Elements and GraphicRiver that you can use to give your projects that wonderful retro 60s look.

Major Design Influences of the 1960s

From the Southeast Asia wars to the Civil Rights Movement, student protests, Woodstock, Stonewall, the Moon landing, Beatlemania, rock 'n roll, hallucinogenics, and miniskirts, the 1960s were a decade of intense political, social, and cultural upheavals which had a profound effect on the graphic design of the era.

The functional and unemotional design of the 50s, with its clean minimalism, geometric shapes, and rejection of the ornamental, was washed away by this firmly postmodern spirit which embraced experimental styles, wild imaginative forms, dizzying optical illusions, and vibrant colours seen in widely distributed posters, flyers, and album covers.

The two major trends that arose in this period were Pop Art graphic design and psychedelic design. Let's take a more in-depth look at each.

Pop Art Graphic Design

You may have asked yourself more than once: "What is Pop Art?" Well, the first thing you should know is that Pop Art is a postmodern movement which started in the 1950s in the UK but really came into its own in the 1960s. It was a rebellion against what was seen as the elitism of fine art and an embracing of the images, icons, and themes found in popular culture—namely television, advertising, magazines, comic strips, and mass-produced everyday objects used by average people.

In their celebration of the everyday, Pop Artists tended to use accessible techniques to create their art like reproduction, screen printing, and collage, and they often used irony, satire, and humour in their work.

Two of the best-known artists of the Pop Art movement were Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, and it is their work which came to represent the movement as a whole and influenced graphic design the most.

Design Characteristics of Pop Art

  • Bold, vibrant colours
  • Images and icons from popular media
  • Celebration of everyday products
  • Irony
  • Satire
  • Humour
  • Comic book aesthetic of Roy Lichtenstein
  • Screenprinting aesthetic of Andy Warhol

Cool Pop Art Style Graphic Design Resources

Pop Art Photoshop Action (Lichtenstein Effect) (ABR, ATN)

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If you are interested in blending pop art and graphic design, this is a great Photoshop action for giving your images the Roy Lichtenstein effect. The Photoshop action is fully editable and really easy to use, so that in no time you can create your own 1960s poster design or any other retro 1960s graphic design you care to.

Sour Crunch(OTF, TTF, WOFF)

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Looking for a great pop art style font for your next project? How about Sour Crunch? The font comes in uppercase characters only and offers irregular shapes that give a dynamic look. An excellent choice for creating 1960s poster design.

Pop Art Ideas for Garage Sale Flyer(PSD)

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Having a garage sale? Check out the Pop Art Ideas for Garage Sale Flyer template. The template is offered in well-organised Photoshop layers which make editing text and colours super easy.

Pop Art Text Effects for Illustrator(AI)

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This terrific pack of art text effects is great for retro 1960s graphic design styles. It contains eight different styles, all of which are fully resizable, so you can scale them as big as you like without losing quality.

Craptons 60s Graphics Font(TTF, OTF)

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Craptons 60s Graphics Font is another great choice if you want to bring a Pop Art style to your project. The font contains both upper and lowercase characters, numbers, punctuation, and multilingual characters.

Halftone Brushes + Bonus Patterns(AI, EPS)

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This Pop-Art-inspired brush set is a great way to add that signature halftone effect to your work. The pack contains 26 halftone brushes, divided between scatter halftone and line halftone effects. By adjusting the settings, you can change the size, scatter, and rotation, or even make them pressure-sensitive for use with a graphics tablet. This is a terrific Pop Art style resource.

Pop Art Poster Action(PSD)

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Creating the famous Andy Warhol effect is now a few clicks away with this wonderful Photoshop action. There are four actions included, which allow you to generate four different colours. For the best results, use photos in the range of 800px to 3000px.

Psychedelic 60s Graphic Design

Psychedelic style began to gain attention in the mid-1950s and had a tremendous impact on many aspects of popular culture, including music, dress, the way people expressed themselves, graphic design, and more.

The term 'psychedelic' came from hallucinatory drugs like LSD and Psilocybin that were extremely popular at the time among young people and were commonly known as psychedelics. The drugs intensified sensory perception, sometimes distorted perception, and created hallucinations accompanied by extreme feelings of either euphoria or despair. The phenomenon popularly known as tripping became quite popular among musicians, artists, and others seeking an elevated or spiritual experience.

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Soon graphic designers started creating 1960s psychedelic art for band and concert posters and album covers which sought to visually express the feeling of tripping. This was represented by intense colours, swirling patterns, optical illusions that appeared to make designs vibrate, highly stylised and often illegible hand-drawn type, Art Nouveau-inspired curvilinear shapes, and tons of ornamentation.

Characteristics of Psychedelic Design

  • Bright, intense colours
  • Swirling patterns
  • Optical illusions that appear to make designs vibrate
  • Highly stylised and often illegible hand-drawn typefaces
  • Art Nouveau-inspired curvilinear shapes
  • Tons of ornamentation

Cool Psychedelic 60s Graphic Design Resources

Woman Psychedelic Art Design Portrait(EPS)

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With its bright colours and swirling patterns, this is a perfect example of psychedelic art. It was made in the digital age, though, so it comes as an EPS file with vector elements assembled into a portrait—a technique that would amaze the sixties pioneers of the style.

Abstract Psychedelic Art Background(EPS)

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Here’s another background that will give you a shift in consciousness if you stare at it too long. The dense concentration of lines converging in the centre makes the whole image seem to vibrate. It would also be a great way to focus the viewer’s eye on whatever you want to put in the centre.

Acid Psychedelic Fractals(JPEG)

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Things got quite trippy in the late 1960s, and the design of the period reflects that. This amazing set of five psychedelic backgrounds perfectly captures the creativity of the 1960s counterculture. They’re all high resolution, so you can use these backgrounds in any project you like.

Morgy Font Psychedelic Design (OTF, TTF, WOFF)

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How cool is this 1960s psychedelic art font? It's just what you need when you want to create 1960s poster design or any other 1960s-inspired project. The display font comes with over 50 ligatures and alternates that are perfect for creating your own standout text.

Janger Display Font (OTF, TTF, WOFF)

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How awesome would your poster or T-shirt look with this 1960s psychedelic art font? Janger is a bold and fun display font that offers uppercase characters only. Use it to bring a retro 60s vibe to your next project.

Gruvilicious: Retro Groovy Font (OTF, TTF, WOFF)

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Gruvilicious is a psychedelic style font inspired by 60s music albums and posters. It captures all the qualities of 1960s psychedelic fonts and is an excellent font for projects that require a fun and funky display font.

Hippies 1960s Psychedelic Art Music Festival(PSD)

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This template is a perfect 1960s-inspired design for a music festival. It captures some of the best qualities of 60s graphics. The A4 template is easy to customise. Change the text and colours to adapt it to your needs.

Psychedelic Music Flyer(PSD)

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If the flyer above doesn't quite do it for you, how about this terrific psychedelic 60s graphic design? It comes with well-organised layers that you can edit in Photoshop.

Choose Your Favourite 60s Design Elements

That's it for our look at 1960s graphic design. Now you know all about the era and where you can find superb design resources when you want to bring a retro touch to your projects, head on over to Envato Elements and GraphicRiver and download your favourite resource today.

And if you're interested in more 60s graphic designs, check out these super helpful articles below:

  • Create a 60s Psychedelic Style Concert PosterKyle Pero03 Sep 2020
  • 32 Cool Retro Fonts to Download in2024Melody Nieves02 Dec 2023
  • A Look at Graphic Trends That Define the 70s (Retro Fonts, Text Effects, and More!)Laura Keung04 May 2022
  • 24+ Best Free Retro Fonts (50s–80s Fonts to Download)Daisy Ein17 Apr 2021
  • Quick Tip: How to Make Pop Art with Live TraceCheryl Graham19 Feb 2010
  • How to Create Pop Art Photo Effects With Photoshop ActionsJohn Negoita24 Dec 2020
  • How to Create a 60s Retro Flyer DesignLaura Keung10 Jul 2019
60s Graphic Design: Psychedelic Design to Pop Art | Envato Tuts+ (2024)

FAQs

What was the style of graphic design in the 1960s? ›

The psychedelic art style is probably the one most associated with the '60s graphic design style. This is known for its neon shades, groovy lines and vivid typography that give the impression of an image that is always moving.

What was the psychedelic art movement in the 1960s? ›

In common parlance "psychedelic art" refers above all to the art movement of the late 1960s counterculture, featuring highly distorted or surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation (including cartoons) to evoke, convey, or enhance psychedelic experiences.

What were the design trends in the 1960s? ›

Psychedelic patterns were everywhere in 1960s interior design, from wallpaper to upholstery to rugs. Bold colours, swirling motifs, and optical illusions created immersive and dynamic spaces that reflected the spirit of the psychedelic movement.

What was the design movement in the 1960s? ›

The Swinging 60s was the decade of exaggeration in design and fashion—short hemlines, Op Art (optical illusion art), and vibrant colors. It was also an era of social and cultural upheaval with the women's liberation and Civil Rights movements, Rock and Roll and the Summer of Love.

What is the 60s art style called? ›

Emerging in the mid 1950s in Britain and late 1950s in America, pop art reached its peak in the 1960s. It began as a revolt against the dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art should be.

Why did graphic design grow during the 1960s 1970s? ›

Several major directions emerged in American graphic design in the 1960s. Political and social upheavals of the decade were accompanied by a resurgence of poster art addressing the civil rights movement, the women's movement, environmentalism, and the Vietnam War.

What is psychedelic Pop Art? ›

The psychedelic is a concept whose name is derived from the ancient Greek words, translating to “reveal the mind”) Visual styles of psychedelic art include curvaceous shapes inspired by Art Nouveau, illegible hand-drawn type and intense optical-color vibrations inspired by the pop art movement.

Who were the psychedelic designers in the 60s? ›

Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson make up the aforementioned five men, known as the “Big Five,” said to be “responsible for designing the majority of the best San Francisco psychedelic posters in the 1960s.” Of this particular grouping, Sandhaus is skeptical.

What was psychedelic graphic design used for? ›

Psychedelic design is an art form that tends to have intense colours, free-flowing lines, and kaleidoscopic patterns. It was created in San Francisco in the 1960s by artists who belonged to the hippie movement, first appearing as posters for rock concerts being played around the city.

What was the most popular style in the 1960s? ›

Ponchos, moccasins, love beads, peace signs, medallion necklaces, chain belts, polka dot-printed fabrics, and long, puffed "bubble" sleeves were popular fashions in the late 1960s. Both men and women wore frayed bell-bottomed jeans, tie-dyed shirts, work shirts, Jesus sandals, and headbands.

How does 60s art and design era influence design today? ›

The legacy of the 60s lives on in contemporary graphic design, with many designers still drawing inspiration from this revolutionary era. For instance, modern designers frequently borrow elements from 60s graphic design, such as geometric shapes, abstract patterns, and psychedelic typography.

What were the 3 big fashion ideas of the 1960s? ›

Fashion in the 1960s became progressively more casual across all genders and ages. Womenswear followed three broad trends: a continuation of the previous decade's ladylike elegance, the youthful styles of Mary Quant and the Space Age influence, and the late 1960s “hippie” style.

What is the 1960s pop art movement known for? ›

The movement presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced objects.

What were the two major art movements of the 1960s? ›

From these artistic experiments there arose several distinctive art movements during the 1960s. The most important were pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art. Photography also developed as a fine art during this time.

What movement began and changed graphic design? ›

Bauhaus was an influential art and design movement that began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. The Bauhaus school, founded by Walter Gropius, launched a new way of thinking. Six months after the end of World War I, the school encouraged artists and designers to use their talents to help rebuild the broken society.

What style of art emerged in the 1960s and why? ›

Final answer: The new art style that emerged in the 1960s was Photorealism, marked by its exceptionally realistic work created through the reliance on photography. It focused on light, color, and replicating the photo-like quality in large-scale works, often depicting familiar scenes and objects.

What was the architectural style of 1960? ›

With their flat and/or vaulted roofs, large plate-glass windows, open floor plans and a feeling of the inside and outside blurred into one, Midcentury Modern homes are those built between the late 1930s and the mid-1970s with the zenith being in the 50s and 60s.

What was the style of art between 1960 and 1970? ›

The visual arts of the decade reflect the social and political movements of the era, seen in diverse styles of Pop, Op, Minimalism and Conceptual art, and artists working in abstract styles responded to the influences of earlier artists.

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