The official poster for the Woodstock festival was designed by Arnold H. Skolnick (February 25, 1937, Brooklyn, New York). He is an American graphic artist and book publisher.

Skolnick was approached on very short note, and received only little information about the festival. He had a mere three days to complete the job. From an interview conducted by John Voci in 2019: “[Woodstock’s organizer] said, ‘We’re going to have a festival with arts and crafts and music,’” Skolnick said. “And I turned it around to say ‘three days of peace and music.’ So, it started with the words.”

It was the era of elaborately designed posters for rock concerts. “Everybody was doing psychedelic posters, which I think are awful,” he said. “A poster is supposed to be so simple that if you’re driving by slowly in a car, you can see it.”

Skolnick’s straightforward design features a white catbird perched on the neck of an acoustic guitar. While “3 Days of Peace & Music” is custom made, with letterforms that were cut out and pasted (just like the illustration), all other text is set in Akzidenz-Grotesk. This typeface was known in the United States under the name Standard. “An Aquarian Exposition” and other large elements use Standard Bold.

Skolnick received one royalty check of about $15 for his work.

From the back cover, in the words of Peter Marin:

The Free People is a photo essay about a new generation of young people and the quality of openness and sharing that permeates their life. It is a book about their music, their work, their mobility, what they read and what they buy, their styles, about why they are free people and how they live.

Much has been made of the Woodstock Music Festival. This is not a book about that festival; it is a book about the people who went there.

The book contains photographs by Swedish photographer Anders Holmquist (1933–2008), with an introduction by Peter Marin. The book was first published by Outerbridge & Dienstfrey in the United States of America in 1969.

The colophon includes notes on the fonts in use:

This book, designed by Samuel N. Antupit, has been produced by offset lithography on seventy pound Hopper offset white vellum paper. The title is set in Cooper Highlight, a variation of the Cooper Black issued by American Typefounders in 1921 and named for Oswald Cooper. This typeface is derived from Cooper’s Old Style (designed in 1919 for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler) which bears more than considerable resemblance to Goudy Antique designed by Frederick W. Goudy in the same year. The smaller display matter is set in Linotype’s Pabst Extra Bold Condensed, derived from another design by the prolific Goudy, Pabst Old Style. The text matter is set in ten point Garamond Light Italic, an Intertype version of the French letter cut in 1620 by Jean Jannon. Jannon’s types were acquired by the French National Printing Office where, in the nineteenth century, they were rediscovered, reissued and mistakenly attributed to Claude Garamond, proprietor of the world’s first independent typefoundry.

You can browse through a digitized copy of the book in the Internet Archive.

Santana’s Acoustic amplifier and sound system backline is seen as Richie Havens performs to 400,000 people at the Woodstock festival in 1969.

Acoustic Control Corporation, started by Steve Marks in 1967, made sound systems, musical instruments amplifiers and a small batch of stringed instruments. The company found great success in the late ’60s and early ’70s, simply because there was a need for loud amplifiers. Acoustic in all its forms has used the Extra Bold weight of Venus Extended as its wordmark, in lowercase letters. In some cases, the largely identical Annonce / Aurora-Grotesk V is used. The latter is distinguished from Venus by horizontal terminals in c or e.

The company is probably best known for the Acoustic 361 bass guitar stack, featuring a solid-state 200-watt power amplifier and a single 18″ Cerwin-Vega loudspeaker, weighing in at around 150 pounds. Famous artists that used Acoustic equipment include Larry Graham (Sly and the Family Stone), Robbie Krieger (The Doors), John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), John McVie (Fleetwood Mac), and Jaco Pastorius. Founder Steve Marks sold the company in the early 80s and the brand went silent for decades.

Acoustic has been brought back two times in the new millennium. Most successfully by Guitar Center in 2007 as Acoustic Amplification, where products are made in China and meant mostly for beginner musicians. The unrelated Acoustic USA was more shortlived but more dedicated to reproducing original ACC amps, built in the USA with endorsers like Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Badge with the logo in lowercase Venus, screwed onto an Acoustic A20.

A promotional poster (or catalog cover?) from June 1971. The typeface used here is Annonce.

Cover of the 1968 catalog. Judging from the c, this is Venus breit fett.

Jaco is considered by many to be one of the best ever bass players. Acoustic amplifiers are just as much connected to his memory as his 1962 Fender Jazz Bass “Bass of Doom.”

Flea, a big fan of Jaco Pastorius, is seen here “planking” on three Acoustic 361 stacks made by the shortlived Acoustic USA.

John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin was one of the original company’s biggest endorsers.

One of John Paul Jones’s Acoustic 361 bass stacks sold for £13,750 at Christie’s auction in 2008.

Product shots of Guitar Center’s Acoustic Amplification.

I was pleasantly surprised (and completely shocked) to find out that Guitar Center’s site for Acoustic Amplifiers uses an Annonce/Venus follower as webfont: It’s Improvenu Wide by Photo-Lettering, which is distinguished from the older bold wide grotesks by its rounded dots. The digital version was made in the 90s by Castcraft.

Country Joe & The Fish were very successful in San Francisco’s late 60s psychedelic rock scene. Protest song (and B-side on this release) “The Fish Cheer” was one of the group’s best known tracks and it actually got them barred from the Ed Sullivan Show right before a scheduled performance. The band performed at 1967’s Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock added even more to their legend.

This is the sleeve of a German single release, featuring tightly spaced Kabel Black. See the artwork for Trey Gruber’s 2019 releases for a contemporary revisitation of a similar aesthetic. In the use shown here, Kabel Black is used with unusually high hyphens and stylistically incongruous apostrophes.

Joni Mitchell actually didn’t play Woodstock because of scheduling conflicts. Her boyfriend, at the time, Graham Nash performed (for only the second time) with his band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The song was partly inspired by his account and tells the fictional story of a festival-goer’s experience while traveling to the festival. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young actually did a cover of the song which became the better known version.

This French sleeve uses Amelia, which was available from local dry-transfer manufacturer Mecanorma as Orea. The narrow grotesque is probably their British Inserat Extra Condensed. It is virtually identical to Letraset’s Compacta.

A-side “Handsome Johnny” was originally released in 1966 by Richie Havens. This single was reissued in 1970 after Woodstock's success. This cover is was for the French re-release.

The artist’s name is probably a hand-lettered variation of Seymour Chwast’s Art Tone Black Bottom (like Boot Black, but with closed apertures at the bottom). Titles are set in Folio eng (see Folio Condensed), which was available from Mecanorma as Folio-Caravelle Bold Extra Condensed. The condensed sans used for “comme à woodstock” (which roughly translates to “as played at Woodstock”) is unidentified. The information on the back is set in three styles from Egizio.

A 7″ 45-RPM sleeve for a 1970 USA reissue of Sly and the Family Stone’s single “I Want To Take You Higher” on both side A and B. The song was originally released the year prior. Record labels looked to try capitalizing off of Woodstock’s and its film's success. The band played Sunday morning August 17, 1969 from 3:20 a.m. to 4:20 a.m. following Janis Joplin. This particular sleeve was a radio station copy, so this was maybe a call for more airplay.

What typefaces were used for the Woodstock movie posters? The answer appears to be simple: It’s Burko, designed sometime before 1969. The poster was released by Warner Brothers in 1970. But … wait. A closer look reveals that ‘a’, ‘y’, ‘m’, ‘n’ as well as ‘3’ are off. The various outstanding s-ligatures are remarkable, too. Are they custom? Or were there alternates?

At first glance the German version of the poster adapted the typeface, but with shortened ascenders. Also, the ‘es’ pair isn’t that pretty. The figure ‘3’ was taken from Futura, which was also used for the footer. Furthermore, ‘f’, ‘g’, ‘l’ and maybe other letters are modified Burko.

Improvisation, handmade and a peaceful coexistence are three keywords that could describe both the “3 days of peace, music and love” and the typography of these movie posters (and the strange photomontage of the crowd too).