Blacklight poster

Their Day-Glo Color Corp. marketed the ink chiefly to the military before a counterculture emerged to embrace the aesthetic.

[4] The 1960s saw the pervasive use of recreational drugs, especially mass use of hallucinogenics such as LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), mescaline, and marijuana for the first time.

[5] With the ability to glow and vibrate under ultraviolet light, the posters could simulate the sensations and visual distortions one experiences during an acid trip.

As of 2014, there are five companies actively producing new and classic flocked blacklight posters in a wide range of content, including music, nature, and pop culture.

Artists continue to make use of the material, notably Dorothy Cross's 1998 Ghost Ship (a decommissioned light ship painted to glow at night, evoking the pigment's original military purposes), or Hank Willis Thomas's 2014 screenprints And I Can't Run and Blow the Man Down (exposing black victims under fluorescent light, evoking the pigment's historic association with black radicalism).