Born [...]]]> Rick Griffin was one of the most widely recognised and respected designers and illustrators during the Psychedelic Counter-Culture movement during the 60′s and early 70′s. He created many posters, album artworks, comics and designs for a range of publications and musicians, and rose to become one of the iconic designers of his time.

Born in 1944 in California, Griffin was one of the first of the post-world war two ‘hippy’ generation. His father was an amateur archaeologist and often took Rick along with him on his expeditions, exposing him to a vast array of artefacts from Native American cultures and relics from old ghost towns. He loved the tribal styles and decorations, and these can be seen as an obvious influence in some of his later work (particularly in the vivid colour schemes he was famous for).

In the early days of surf culture, surfboards were 250+ redwood boards, which were incredibly cumbersome to carry – surfers had to be strong enough to carry and control the board, which meant that the culture was limited to  a more mature audience. However, in the 50′s, new lightweight foam and fibreglass boards were introduced, and a whole new section of the youth culture was taken up by surfing. Griffin was taught how to surf by his friend, and later colleague, Randy Nauert on the local beaches, and this introduction to the world of surfing was what eventually opened the door to his illustrative career.

He started drawing in high school, copying illustrations from Mad Magazine, and slowly developing his own style of surf doodles – classmates would pay him $.50 to draw an illustration on their shirt. As he became more and more involved with the emerging surf scene, some of his doodles and characters made their way to the front of local surf magazines, and at a screening of the movie Surf Fever Randy introduced him to John Severson, who employed Griffin as the staff artist for his publication Surfer Magazine after he left high school.

Despite this, and a short stint at Cal Arts (at the time called Chouinard Arts School) in Los Angeles, Griffin’s main interest was in music. When his band, the Jook Savages, travelled to San Francisco to perform, he designed the poster for a gig they played at a psychedelic art shop. The poster garnished so much attention to his skill as an artist that he eventually decided to start designing posters full time.

He entered the psychedelic scene at just the right time – with magazines and newspapers calling California the “hippie paradise” , where ”long haired radicals roamed the streets and smoked pot”. His next big poster was for the Human Be-In event that kicked started the Summer of Love. The poster depicted a guitar-weilding Native American on horseback – a clear throwback to his interest in their culture in his youth. By now Rick was gaining a lot of attention, with his work becoming very in-demand.

Another scene that was gaining traction was the Rock and Roll scene, with many gigs being held at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium, with Griffin designing posters for both. At the time he also worked alongside ​Bob Seidemen and Louis Rappaport to start a company, Berkely Bonnapart, who designed psychedelic graphics for a number of years with Griffin at the helm of the production for the majority of the posters.

One of the unique things about Griffin’s posters was the range of subjects he took inspiration from. From his interest in Native American culture to his passion for surfing, and his later involvement with the hippie movement, his eclectic interests created a very special style that, for a few months at least, he really had a monopoly over. Another thing that differentiated him from other designers and illustrators of the time was his intense passion for his work – not only drawing from his contemporaries, he had a great respect for the older packaging labels, stock certificates, and symbols like the Great Seal on the dollar bill. This was reflected in his work, as he laboured over each piece of artwork ‘equally hard’, whether it was a small unpaid project, or a promotion for a massively important event.

Unlike many modernist designers, Griffin received very little formal training in the arts, relying instead on his own experiences and visions to carry his artwork - creating a very post-modern, personal style to his work. This gave his work a very individual twist which often does not come through in many modernists’ pieces: it can often be hard for the untrained eye to tell the difference between works by different modernist designers, as they rely a lot more on grid systems and rigid enforcement of the rules. Griffin’s work on the other hand follows few conventional rules of design, representing instead how he envisioned the product or event should ‘feel’. It’s a good reflection on how the times were changing in the 60′s, where people were allowing themselves to be more free emotionally, and were rebounding almost aggressively against the modernist movement.

Despite his work being very free, it’s obvious that a lot of his ideas in terms of type were based on typefaces of previous years, evolved and expanded to fit the style he was going for. For example, a lot of his posters use typefaces reminiscent of the wood-type fonts from the old-west, but hand drawn to become bulbous in places, or to fit into rounded shapes that they would never normally be seen in (as seen in his poster for The Jook Savages, above). This shows something special about how he regarded the practices and rules of previous graphic generations – he obviously respected them for their finesse and the impact of the way the type was made, but he is almost playful in the way that he contorts and bends the different fonts to fit into his art. It’s quite amazing how he manages to pay homage to the fonts while rebelling against them at the same time.

Another period that he draws a lot of inspiration from is the Art Nouveau movement. He took some of the styles of the times, and expanded and grew them to extreme proportions, often making the text almost abstract to the average viewer. A lot of the typography in the Nouveau movement was Gothically inspired, but a lot more organic with a lot of contrast in the lines and extra frills added to serifs to give it a more flamboyant, airy look. Griffin took this and added to it again, not only adding more frills and extra lines, but pushing the organic look to the edge, giving a lot of his typographic work a look almost that of an illustration of hair, or water. His surfing background and love for drawing surfing doodles gives a lot of credence to this – he loved the wavy lines and simple illusions of depth that could be given to a piece with just a few extra additions. However, he never pushed it too far. Many modern metal bands use the same ideas of organic lettering, but take it to a point where it looks messy, and is too hard to be read (often times even by fans of the band). Despite Griffin’s work being very complex, it still looked ornate, and the text was beautifully coloured to help guide the viewer’s eyes.

Another part of the Nouveau movement that Griffin often drew from was the use of borders, and masking images within central circles or shapes. While a lot of his work was extremely psychedelic, it was usually given a border that enclosed the image, giving it a look like that of a window ‘viewing’ the artwork behind it. The poster on the right is a great example of his Nouveau inspirations: the psychedelic artwork inside the oval may have been hard to stomach if it was filling the page, but its placing grounds it and makes it much more attractive; the text surrounding the image is very obviously inspired by that of early Nouveau posters (as well as carnival styles); and the colour scheme is far more complex than would appear on first glance – the harsh contrast of the middle illustration is held in by the thick, comic style drop shadows of the surrounding borders, the text is is coloured with a two tone effect similar again to that of a carnival, and the blue background gives a great contrast to the rest of the image, putting it into context and really making it pop from the page.

This is definitely too cool to not check out. NorthStudio have made  a fully interactive 360 panorama video of the Vancouver riots. Be sure to have a look at planet mode for added trippiness.