This poster, for an Apollinaire exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, was designed by design duo Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, known as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. In the late 1960s, they created psychedelic posters for many of the English bands of the time, and decorated and advertised Nigel Waymouth's King's Road boutique, Granny Takes a Trip. They also designed for concerts held at the UFO club and Saville Theatre, and for underground magazine Oz. Their influences came from the decorative and eroticised designs of Art Nouveau, combined with the melting rainbow colours of LSD visions and pop art inspirations from the post-war media; traces of Disney, horror movie monsters and comic book characters can often be seen hiding amongst the images.

Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French poet of the early 20th century, who is credited with coining the word "surrealism", and created one of the first works to be described as surrealist, the play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias), written in 1903.

Christopher Logue (1926-2011), who wrote the poem in the borders of this poster, was a modernist English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. His lines tend to be short, pithy and often political.