Few festivals have travelled as far from their origins as Coachella. The 1999 debut — headlined by Beck and Rage Against The Machine, with Pavement and the Chemical Brothers close behind — nearly bankrupted its promoters, and there was no festival at all in 2000. Today it's arguably the biggest festival brand on the planet.
The posters chart that transformation, and Coachella's poster design itself — the stacked, size-graded typography — became the visual language every other festival copied. Note the missing years: 2000 (skipped after the debut's losses) and 2021 (COVID; the 2020 poster below is for an edition that never happened).
