Punk's do-it-yourself call to arms led to a widespread adoption of the rhetoric, if not always the practice, of independence from traditional means of production. During the early period of punk's development in the United

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Punk's embrace of autonomous, do-it-yourself, artistic production has been widely documented as a key element of the punk 'explosion'. At times, however, the rhetoric has exceeded the actual practice, and the boundary between DIY authorship and professional production has become blurred. Though much early punk visual material was indeed raw, rough and ready, and often appeared to run counter to any kind of formal aesthetic criteria in respect to design or taste, it was also widely the product of trained graphic designers and illustrators with a keen awareness of the appropriate visual language required to reflect a new, self-styled, anarchic and polemical subculture. Even many of the celebrated 'do-it-yourself ' punk pioneers relied on access to professional services for reproduction, including printers, pre-press art workers and record sleeve manufacturers. However, much like the punks who chose to make their own outfits, rather than buy 'official' clothing from the burgeoning punk boutique (and mail order) market, some fans and enthusiasts attempted to create their own punk graphics, or decided to adopt a naïve model of détournement in order to adapt or personalise jackets, shirts, school bags, scrapbooks and even record sleeves within their own collections. These home made artefacts can be viewed as products of subcultural participation and belonging, as an individual's response to punk's call to arms and as markers of possession. They may also help us to better understand an underlying, distilled and unmediated interpretation of punk's 'natural' visual language.

A broad range of radical, new art and design approaches came about during the punk and post-punk boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, though as is the nature of the profession, the graphic designer’s anonymity often kept them out of the limelight and away from wider public acknowledgement or recognition. In an age of ‘anyone can do it’, punk inspired not just musicians, but also artists, designers, filmmakers, photographers, writers and a whole array of new creatives. Some simply took the opportunity to make something immediate and of the moment, without the need for any kind of formal education, training and guidance, while others found their way into a new career as a result. A colossal new book by Mike Coles, Forty Years in the Wilderness: A Graphic Voyage of Art, Design & Stubborn Independence, charts a pictorial history of the designer’s work under the Malicious Damage banner, from early record sleeves, posters and flyers promoting Killing Joke alongside label-mates Ski Patrol and Red Beat, to the ambient house experimentation of The Orb, and more recent music graphics for Shriekback, Headcount and Vertical Smile. Part autobiography, part personal reflection, part celebration, this publication may lead to a critical reappraisal of the designer’s work alongside more widely acknowledged contemporaries, though such considerations are far from being a driving force for the project, and the title ironically sums up Coles’ attitude towards independent and autonomous production.

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