Meeting Marty Petersen, Artist of the Iconic “Justification for Higher Education” 1980s Poster

My childhood took place in the 1980s and early 1990s, and I was raised to love cars, whether it involved helping out my dad with weekend projects or admiring photos of my grandpa’s vintage ride. Even my mom has always had automotive style. I was one of many young people during that era to have a framed 24×36 poster hanging on my bedroom wall during high school that said, “Justification for Higher Education.” It showed a five-car garage at an oceanfront estate, complete with a lineup of exotic cars and a dramatic sunset to set the mood.

Over 30 years later, that original dream has become my reality – at least in part. I did indeed pursue higher education, jumping swiftly into a Master’s degree program after graduating with my Bachelor’s. At that point in my life, I didn’t have room to pursue car-collecting, but I tried anyway. I juggled two cars around until about 2011 when I added a third, and in mid-2012 I added a fourth. The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve now owned 47 vehicles overall and currently juggle a dozen, some of which are my dream cars. In a sense, I guess the higher education promise did come true, even if I don’t have a home on an oceanside cliff and none of my cars are very exotic. In fact, to be completely honest, my cars are boring in comparison to the ones featured on the original poster.

Life came full circle in May 2023 when I received a comment on my YouTube channel from a Marty Petersen, who stated that he was the original artist of the “Justification” poster. He was responding to this video from summer 2018 wherein my friend Greg and I re-created the poster using a few of the exotic cars in his collection. I reached out to Marty to make the connection and ended up chatting with him on the phone for about 30 minutes.

The story goes that Marty had been working as a bartender and a freelance illustrator in the mid-1980s in Aspen, Colorado. Two students from the University of Colorado in Boulder, named Jeff and John, had been referred to him from a local business called Art Hardware. They had a specific marketing project in mind for a poster design with a catchy sing-songy tagline. He said, “I was just a ski bum, and this was project offered a good chunk of change for me. They got the vehicle photos from car dealerships, and I did a basic sketch of how to lay them out.”

Marty continued, “The oceanfront sky and sunset I just airbrushed right onto the photo paper. We had little odd-shaped exposed areas because you’d have to cover up sections of the photo; each vehicle had to be added individually. The owner of the photo lab didn’t know if they could expose an image that large (two feet by three feet).” The process was tedious, requiring patience and innovation. “It was kind of airbrush hell at times because the photo paper had an emulsion on the front, and it didn’t like the masking materials. There was a lot of painting and retouching. As a starving artist, I was happy for the money, so I worked hard to make it happen.”

Eventually the five-car garage was filled, the house was colored in, and the scenery was set. Marty decided not to sign his autograph at the bottom because he was so nervous about having something happen with the photo paper and ruining the entire project. He did, however, get credit in printed text along the bottom of the image.

The poster hit retail stores in 1989 and soared in popularity. At one point, Marty received a phone call congratulating him on his success. “About what?” he asked. “The Justification Poster is the highest grossing item at Spencer’s Gifts,” he was told. I asked Marty if he ever envisioned that the poster would be as popular as it was. “I had no prediction whatsoever, no way,” he said. “It seemed like a silly and frivolous concept.”

Marty went on to continue his career in illustration, working on children’s books, commercial art, book covers, technical imaging, and posters. His modern-day website is available here and contains highlights from his portfolio. Nowadays, computer-generation has taken the place of a lot of the old-school airbrushing. Thanks, Photoshop!

The automotive landscape has evolved in the last few decades, and Marty, who now lives in Pueblo, says he has some ideas for a possible follow-up version of the famous poster. Nearly 40 years have passed since the original one took shape. What vehicles (or airplanes, helicopters, and yachts) do you think should adorn the next iteration?

If you’re big on 1980s nostalgia like I am, perhaps you’ll relate to the original poster and still long for those sports cars of yesteryear. The good news is you’re likely to find them in listings on ClassicCars.com. As for the real estate and cliffside property, you’ll have to look elsewhere!