Bill Graham’s long-running numbered poster series for shows at the Fillmore Auditorium is generally dated to the Jefferson Airplane weekend of February 4–6, 1966 (often cataloged as BG-1), establishing a consistent framework for San Francisco rock-poster production and collecting.
Chet Helms’ Family Dog Presents begins issuing numbered posters for Avalon Ballroom events; multiple references identify the first Family Dog show at Avalon as April 22–23, 1966 (commonly associated with early FD posters by Wes Wilson).
Wes Wilson’s Fillmore Auditorium poster for June 17–18, 1966 (Quicksilver Messenger Service and the Wailers) exemplifies the emerging San Francisco psychedelic typographic style—dense, flowing letterforms that made information itself into image.
Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley become key visual voices for Family Dog/Avalon promotions in 1966, helping define the era’s Art Nouveau–inflected psychedelic imagery that would soon migrate across concert posters, handbills, and album art.
The underground newspaper The San Francisco Oracle (published 1966–1968) becomes a major platform for psychedelic graphics—integrating poster-like layouts, collage, and hand-drawn ads that circulated visual motifs across Haight-Ashbury culture.
Victor Moscoso starts Neon Rose (associated with posters for the Matrix and other gigs) to gain creative and printing-rights control, expanding the poster scene beyond venue-commissioned work into artist-led production and sales.
Rick Griffin produces a psychedelic poster for a January 7, 1967 event at the Oracle Office (San Francisco), illustrating how key poster artists moved between concert promotion, underground press, and broader countercultural media.
The Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park becomes a mass counterculture gathering amplified by psychedelic print design—closely tied to the Oracle’s announcements and the Bay Area’s concert-poster ecosystem.
After Wes Wilson’s departure from the Fillmore operation, Bonnie MacLean emerges as a leading designer for Bill Graham’s poster series in 1967, bringing a distinctive Art Nouveau–revival approach that broadened the psychedelic poster’s stylistic range.
A July 17, 1967 Moore Galleries poster advertises a group exhibition featuring Kelley, Mouse, Moscoso, Wilson, and Griffin—evidence that the concert-poster makers were being positioned as fine/collectible artists while still producing ephemera for the street.
Bill Graham opens Fillmore West on July 5, 1968, expanding San Francisco’s major concert-poster production pipeline (numbered series, printers, street distribution) beyond the original Fillmore Auditorium era.
The 1969 Fillmore West/Winterland run headlined by Led Zeppelin is promoted with BG-170, credited to artist Randy Tuten—illustrating the “second-wave” diversification of designers sustaining the San Francisco psychedelic concert-poster tradition into 1969.
Psychedelic Poster Art in San Francisco (1966–1970)
