Arnold Skolnick, who designed what became the iconic pop-culture images of its time — the poster for the original Woodstock music festival in 1969 — died on June 15 in Amherst, MA. He was 85.

Mr. Skolnick’s poster design was a model of simplicity: it conveyed information and caught the sensibility of the moment. It had an attention-getting red background and the neck of a guitar with a white bird perched on it. “I got the assignment on a Thursday, and I brought it to them on Monday afternoon,” he told The Stamford Advocate in 2010.

Although best known for the poster, Mr. Skolnick also designed book and aa few film credit sequences, and worked in advertising. He also founded Imago Design, a design company that specialized in art books, and Chameleon Books, a publishing company for art books.

Not long after creating the Woodstock poster, Mr. Skolnick came up with another image seen by many: the cover for What to Do With Your Bad Car: An Action Manual for Lemon Owners. He told the Daily Hampshire Gazette, “I got a lemon. I put it on a Tonka toy truck. I put it on my kitchen table, and I shot it.”