Peter Max is an extremely influential illustrator who became a pop culture icon in the late ’60s and early ’70s, appearing on the cover of Life magazine and making TV appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His distinctive psychedelic patterns are instantly recognizable and look sort of like Rorshach tests exploding with color and undisguised positivity.
Here, on the other hand, is the poster for Library Week, 2014.
Pardon me for saying so, American Library Association, but your poster sucks. Where are the books, American Library Association, or is that screwed shut lime-green rectangle supposed to be one? Where is the color and excitement and movement indicative of a commitment to reading, American Library Association? What we have here, aside from the death of inspirational illustration, is a fatalistic collapse of integrity in the face of peddling technophiles and politicians who believe, or claim to believe (so long as the checks are rolling in), that long reading is no longer “relevant” in the digital era.
Hell, I guess we get the Photoshopped culture we deserve.
(Images via Open Culture and American Library Association)
2 Warps to Neptune 