Swag 2

Crackling with sexual tension, comic flourishes, macabre drama, and science fiction clichés, rock posters are as vibrant and varied as the music they celebrate—and more popular today than ever. With imagery that ranges from eye-popping and crassly outrageous to subtle and esoteric, these graphic manifestos of rock rebellion have matured into a full-blown phenomenon, four decades after the first great wave of rock art roared out of San Francisco in the 1960s.

In Swag 2: Rock Posters of the '90s and Beyond, noted designers Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz have collected a fascinating assortment of images created by 50 of the most important poster artists working today—from 1960s pioneers such as Jim Phillips to gifted painters to graphic design studios as diverse as Patent Pending Industries and Asterik Studio. The foreword, coauthored by poster artists Nels Jacobson and Dirk Fowler, provides a fitting introduction to this colorful world where rock posters reign supreme.Swag 2: Rock Posters of the '90s and Beyond is a raucous and rollicking compendium of contemporary rock art that provides a kaleidoscopic snapshot of our time.