With a long and colorful history that dates back to the 60's, concert posters have moved far beyond their roots of simply informing people of when a band was playing, into a full scale art movement with shows of their own dedicated to the art.

Here are 20 colorful concert posters from some of my favorite designers and printers in the scene.

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Delicious Design League

Steve Walters

It's no big surprise that the art world tends to favor the left leaning candidate during a campaign, but what might be more surprising about this years election is the sheer number of artists who are rallying around and using their talents to support Barack Obama.

Well known artist like Shepard Fairey, Ron English, and so on... have brought the most attention to the 'Art for Obama' phenomenon, which is documented nicely in this Wall Street Journal Article, but it's not only well known artist showing their support with great design and art. The Obama camp itself brought in 29 pages of great designs in an open submission for their Tees by the People campaign, and Etsy has nearly 2000 items tagged Obama, not to mention the almost 10,000 items on Ebay. Obviously campaigns are big business for everyone, but the outpouring of support by the U.S. art and design community has made this one of the most colorful campaigns in history.

Here are 12 palettes inspired by many of these wonderful prints. By the way, today is the last day to register to vote.

Another lovely flickr set from Joe Kral inspired this post (the last two can be seen here & here). This time we're taking a look at the premiere issues of some of the best design magazines.

*editor's note 7/12/2011 | We didn't include the name or any information about the stylist involved in this shoot, Edward Enninful, who rightfully deserves much credit. Thanks to COLOURlover LIZAR for setting us straight. The original article is still below.

Last year, Vogue Italy asked Steve Meisel, known for his work with both U.S. and Italian Vogue and his collaboration with Madonna in "sex," to do something crazy. I don't know if that was the actual art direction but from the results of the shoot it very well could have been. The idiosyncrasies of Meisel created a complete sensory overload: overlapping colors and patterns scattered randomly across the frame pulled together by models sprawled across wearing similar or complimentary patterns to those underneath them, giving the appearance that they too, are a part of the aberrant fashion quilt. And within these seas of color there are a great number of palette possibilities.

I found this great post at DEVKICK with a nice selection of posters and other artwork from the golden ages (1950-1970) of European graphic design. And, of course, great design means great color... check out the inspiring work below, and click over to the original post for more.

Cirque du Soleil™, the world famous “Modern Circus”, performs their Big Top shows on every continent. Their live music, incredible performers and colorful sets make them one of the most recognized shows in the world. Since 1984 they’ve put on more than 21 different shows, each with it’s own unique theme.

Cirque du Soleil™

This poster is from the troop’s first successful tour in 1984.

Le Magie Continue™

Cirque du Soleil created a new tour in 1986, titled La Magie Continue.

Cirque Reinvente™

Le Cirque Réinventé was an Emmy award-winning film in 1989, capturing the extraordinary Cirque du Soleil show of the same name that played for sold-out audiences in 1987.

Another lovely flickr set from Joe Kral inspired this post (the last one can be seen here). This time we're taking a look at classic book design from his Penguin & Pelican Collection set.

From the outset, design was essential to the success of the Penguin brand. Eschewing the illustrated gaudiness of other paperback publishers, Penguin opted for the simple appearance of three horizontal bands, the upper and lower of which were colour coded according to which series the title belonged to; this is sometimes referred to as the horizontal grid. In the central white panel, the author and title were printed in Eric Gill's sans serif and in the upper band was a cartouche with the legend "Penguin Books". The initial design was created by the then twenty-one-year-old office junior Edward Young, who also drew the first version of the Penguin logo.

The color schemes included: orange and white for general fiction, green and white for crime fiction, red and white for travel and adventure, blue and white for biographies; and the rarer purple and white for essays and belles lettres and grey and white for world affairs. Lane actively resisted the introduction of cover images for several years. Some recent publications of literature from that time have duplicated the original look.

Often when we think of commercial design work, we imagine 3 color logos and simple illustrations... but not all commercial work is so plain. Here are 20 commercial designers who create stunningly colorful work.

Matthew Curry | Imagefed

imagefed.com

I came across a lovely little 'Atari Game Manuals' flickr set from Joe Kral the other day and thought it would be a perfect addition to the wonderful collection of nostalgia inducing color palettes.

While technology may have limited the color palettes of some of the first, and most popular, video games, their colors are no less influential on modern game design and culture as a whole, and an important part to any design is its packaging. The game manual art on many Atari games may have been a bit exaggerated and deceiving leaving the gamer wishing the game looked more like the picture on the box, but are nonetheless full of classic color palettes.

Another sports title from Activision, Boxing presents a top-down view of a boxing arena, pitting you one-on-one against another boxer. You have two minutes to either score 100 points and win the fight or finish with the highest score at the end of the round. Your goal is to target your opponent's nose with either a left or right jab, and a successful hit causes your opponent's face to reel back. You can choose to fight against a computer opponent for a single player game or against a friend for a two player bout. This is old school boxing with no white towel and no referee, so keep your guard up and your wits about you and never give up!

Galaxian expanded on the formula pioneered by Space Invaders. As in the earlier game, Galaxian featured a horde of attacking aliens that exchanged shots with the player. In contrast to Space Invaders, however, Galaxian added an element of drama by having the aliens periodically make kamikaze-like dives at the player's ship. The gameplay was relatively simple. Swarm after swarm of alien armies attacked the player's ship that moved left and right at the bottom of the screen. The ship could only fire sparingly by default, but rearmed instantly when an enemy was hit.

When tourists visit Japan, one of the moments that they are usually hoping to capture in a photograph is a geisha in her full kimono. Although most people associate kimono with these beautiful cultural icons, the garment is in fact the national costume of Japan and worn in various incarnations by most of its residents. The origin of the word kimono actually comes from Ki (wearing) and Mono (thing), directly translating to "thing to wear". The T-shaped garment has an illustrious past, dating all the way back to the fifth century.

The earliest kimonos were actually directly influenced by traditional clothing of China. The garment actually has another name, "ganfuka", which translates directly to "clothes of Wu". It wasn't until the 8th century that kimono truly came into style, however, and the overlapping collar because a predominant part of the fashion.

Photo by roger jones

During Japan's Heian period (794-1192), kimono became increasingly stylized and elaborate, sometimes incorporating as many as ten layers of robes in varying colors beneath the top layer. Women also grew their hair to incredible lengths which complemented the long lines of the robes, resulting in one of the most striking and memorable presentations of the kimono over the years.