John Van Hamersveld is an American graphic artist and illustrator who designed posters and also record jackets for pop and psychedelic bands from the 1960s onward. Among the 300 albums he art directed are the covers of Magical Mystery Tour by the Beatles, Crown of Creation by Jefferson Airplane, Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones, Skeletons from the Closet by the Grateful Dead and Hotter Than Hell by Kiss.
Born in Baltimore in 1941, Van Hamersveld moved to Southern California when he was 9 years old and he grew up surfing near his home in Rancho Palos Verdes. In 1964, Van Hamersveld was a student at the Art Center College of Design and the art director of Surfing Illustrated and Surfer magazine. He was hired by director and filmmaker Bruce Brown to design the iconic “The Endless Summer” movie poster. Using photo techniques for the central image and hand-lettering the title Van Hamersveld created a "national phenomenon" image that has endured as a 1960s neon masterpiece of the LA modernist poster.
Based on the immediate attention The Endless Summer commanded, Van Hamersveld became the Head of Design at Capital Records at the tender age of 25. During that time, he worked on the artwork for about 300 albums by Capitol artists including the Beatles and the Beach Boys.
In 1967 Van Hamersveld frequently visited his surfer/poster artist friend, Rick Griffin, in San Francisco and had attended many of the psychedelic dance concerts at the Fillmore and the Avalon. He had money from his Capitol Records job to travel and had two two loft studios with his roommates wanting something to do. One day he awoke out of a dream to a vision of the word “Pinnacle,” and so the three friends started Pinnacle Productions to stage rock dance concerts in LA at the Shrine Exhibition Hall near USC.
Van Hamersveld naturally designed the posters while his partners managed the deals and dates. They produced 14 shows from November 1967 through mid-1968 with some of the most important artists at the time including Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, Jeff Beck, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground and Vanilla Fudge.
John Van Hamersveld’s landmark 1968 Pinnacle rock concert posters, especially the world-famous Jimi Hendrix portrait, created a monumental influence on pop culture artists for generations to come, including Shepard Fairey, who modeled one of the images in his "Obey Giant" series on Van Hamersveld's 1968 poster advertising a Jimi Hendrix show at the Shrine Auditorium and later wrote about Van Hamersveld's design, "It's an illustration with the perfect balance of designed restraint and idiosyncratic, organic style. The image also, though highly stylized, conveys the essence of Jimi Hendrix"
His popular 1970 cartoon poster Johnny Face—a grinning face with wild eyes that a radio station later splashed across 224 billboards in Los Angeles and Orange County—represents “the end of the ‘60s era,” Van Hamersveld said. An enormous mural of a javelin-throwing man for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles highlighted his ‘80s forays into corporate graphic design, teaching and large-scale art. Learning from graphic designer and friend Saul Bass in the ‘90s, he shifted his career and designed the restaurant chain Fatburger’s diamond-and-circle logo and sign.
Returning to his rock roots more than 20 years since drawing his last concert posters and record covers, Van Hamersveld created the swirling 2005 reunion poster for Cream. He launched the business Post-Future with his wife Alida Post, selling prints of his past posters, and also reworking them.
Van Hamersveld continues to produce art in Los Angeles