A 30+ year retrospective on Mike King. Mike, a Portland native and graphic designer, has been designing concert posters throughout the Northwest since 1977. Mike has designed more concert posters than any other designer – numbering in the 5000-6000 range. From Punk, Alt, Metal and Jazz, to Classic Rock, Blues, Spoken-word and Pop – for arena shows, to independent clubs, and everything in between, as well as influential music festivals such as Sasquatch! and Bonaroo - the cross-section of genres, venues and concerts covered by Mike’s work is staggering!
While Mike’s career path might have emerged as a happy accident born from having a little talent for art and a lot of love for music, the work that has resulted from that fateful setup has proven to have had a lasting impact in the eyes of design fans and collectors all over the world. His work has been featured in art books published by Chronicle (Art of Modern Rock, 2004), Abrams (Swag: Rock Posters of the ‘90s, 2003) and others, but those collections have never been as interesting or revealing as a book about something as compelling as rock poster art should be.
Maximum Plunder takes a close look at the medium of rock posters, reproducing high-quality photographs and scans of more than 1,000 of Mike’s posters, and detailing anecdotal bits and pieces of the history of live music in Portland, and the rest of the Northwest.
While Mike’s career path might have emerged as a happy accident born from having a little talent for art and a lot of love for music, the work that has resulted from that fateful setup has proven to have had a lasting impact in the eyes of design fans and collectors all over the world. His work has been featured in art books published by Chronicle (Art of Modern Rock, 2004), Abrams (Swag: Rock Posters of the ‘90s, 2003) and others, but those collections have never been as interesting or revealing as a book about something as compelling as rock poster art should be.
Maximum Plunder takes a close look at the medium of rock posters, reproducing high-quality photographs and scans of more than 1,000 of Mike’s posters, and detailing anecdotal bits and pieces of the history of live music in Portland, and the rest of the Northwest.
