IT WAS FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY book cover by me

My contribution to American Beatlemania anniversary: I designed this It Was Fifty Years Ago Today book cover a few months ago. Music historian, writer, producer and author Harvey Kubernik wrote this unique perspective, just released this week to coincide with selfsame anniversary of the Beatles first appearance on tv's The Ed Sullivan Show to 73 million viewers, or 40% of the entire nation. 

 Info to obtain this unique perspective on real-life Beatlemania amongst then and future entertainment industry personnel and fans, click LINK.

 My graphic idea was to emulate limited color printing solutions of 1964 (examples below) while tying it in to the publishers' exclusive black and white Ed Sullivan show photograph. This design style emulates a true to the era, pre-psychedelic juxtaposition of black images on eye-dazzling, Op Art day-glo colors as popularized by Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley, Roy Lichtenstein and others. Psychedelia so dominates 1960s' histories that many forget the plethora of other styles before and after, wherein graphic designers employed their outrageous creativity to circumvent limited printing budgets (inapplicable to our It Was Fifty Years Ago Today book. We just wanted it to look era-apropos as opposed to second guesses by those who weren't there.)