Talk About a Graphic Design Piece

Dylan Poster

Milton Glaser's 1967 poster of Bob Dylan epitomizes the hippie aesthetic. The hair is one of the distinguishing features in this poster, which makes sense symbolically given the importance of hair to hippie culture. Men with long hair were considered rebellious, and hippies were rebelling against the established social norms and institutions. Moreover, the musical Hair was released around the same time, highlighting the importance of hair as an emblem of rebellion and social change. Bob Dylan's hair in Glaser's poster is rendered in swirling lines of color. The stylized swirls of the long hair hearken to art nouveau, an era in which poster design became elevated to a fine art. Therefore, Glaser establishes a link between the Bob Dylan poster and the art nouveau era. There are connections with art nouveau's embrace of the poster as the foremost element of graphic art; and there are also thematic connections between the social changes taking place in the early 20th century and those taking place in the 1960s. Both were eras of social change, with the 1960s building on some of the work that had taken place especially with regards to women's rights. Dylan's hair in Glaser's poster is also rendered in a kaleidoscope of colors. Kaleidoscopes were also emblematic of hippie culture, perhaps because their swirling shapes, forms, and colors resembled the hallucinatory effects of mind-altering drugs. The design of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine animated movie shares much in common with the Glaser poster of Bob Dylan. Music and visual art became inextricably connected in the 1960s. Fifty years later, and it is impossible to imagine a band that does not take its design or its visual stage presentation seriously.

Besides the hair, Bob Dylan's black silhouette is central to the poster. The poster design is otherwise simple, with only two main features, the silhouette and the hair. The midpoint of the poster is the front of Bob Dylan's ear, where a tuft of hair curls up around it. After gazing at the colorful hair, the eye comes to rest on the sharp features of the singer's silhouette in profile. Dylan's head is tilted down slightly, as if he is deep in thought. Bob Dylan was known for his thoughtful and thought-provoking lyrics. Showing him with his head slightly bowed suggests that he is meditating deeply on something. However, his ear is also central, literally, to the poster design. This suggests that Dylan is always listening to what the world has to say.