Lollapalooza began in 1991 as a farewell tour for Perry Ferrell's band Jane's Addiction. It went through a bit of a rocky time in the late 1990s - early 2000's, but in 2005 it was officially revived as an annual three-day festival in Grant Park in Chicago. Ever since then it's been on the rise, AND it has a pretty great art scene going on. Personally, I really enjoy looking at the posters they design each year for the festival. So I started wondering, who designs these posters? And how do they go about this process?
The 2016 Lollapalooza Poster
Designer: Frank Kozik
Once upon a time, when both this artist and Lollapalooza were young and unknown, Kozik designed their poster for the 1995 tour. At that time, Kozik was a designer for alternative band and had been a working artist since the 1980's. He got his start when he became involved in the underground punk rock scene of Austin, Texas and got noticed when he hung black-and-white posters that he created for his friends' bands on telephone poles. He worked with many of the bands that ended up touring Lollapalooza -- Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sonic Youth, etc. -- when they were small, local bands. He kept in touch with them when they got bigger, and eventually he was making large silkscreen concert posters for Pearl Jam, Green Day, Neil Young, and Nirvana, among many others.
When Lollapalooza approached Kozik to do the 2016 25th anniversary poster, he decided he wanted to go with something like the "classic early 90's style" -- to him, "Lollapalooza was always very carnival-esque. Especially the first ones. It was very much like, we're gonna take this hedonistic thing on the road," he said in an interview with Lollapalooza. He wanted it to recall the colorful cartoon style of the posters of the early 90's.
The Strongman Poster
Designers: Billy Baumann and Jason Teegarden-Downs
Billy Baumann of
Delicious Design League, the firm that designed this 2012 poster, said, "it was probably all inspired by the idea of Chicago being the city of big shoulders." He also noticed that one of Lollapalooza's older posters had a sort of circus theme going on, and he wanted this poster to "be recognizable to a Lollapalooza crowd" and have classic Chicago features in the design. The dancing hot dogs in the bottom corners are a tribute to the hot dog being something everybody in Chicago loves. They also fit into the vaudeville-era style with the strongman because they're dressed up like little song-and-dance men, which is really very cute.
Baumann said the biggest challenge with the creation of this poster was fitting the entire band lineup in the design. It ended up in the nearly-perfect circular shape of the strongman. As Baumann told
Chicago Magazine, "It's not really a deep poster. It's just a fun image with an incredibly rotund weightlifter from the turn of the century."
The 2011 Poster
Designer: Hebru Brantley
Hebru Brantley is from Chicago, so it makes sense that he would be asked to design Lollapalooza's 20th anniversary poster. He grew up in Chicago during the 1980's, and, according to his
website, his "work touches on tough subjects in a way that may be easily digestible to the viewer." His poster for Lollapalooza was created with acrylic and spray paint (his signature graffiti style) on a 48" x 48" wood panel. The character is Flyboy, based upon the Tuskegee Airmen, calmly hovering above the chaotic sketches underneath him.
Check out the
portfolio on Brantley's website! His art is quite engaging and thought-provoking.
Aw, so many great posters.
I'm from the Chicago area and I've seen some of these posters, but I never knew the history behind them. I like how you described the designers and their styles!
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