Abstract: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 mak… Show more
“…It was like a visit from the Krays [notorious London gangsters]. (quoted in Bestley 2016) To an extent, the techniques adopted by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols were already wide ly accepted as the established graphic languages of anger and protest. The samizdat tradition of lo-tech graphic material disseminated through personal networks, originally a feature of the postwar Eastern European underground, where the term denoted the clan destine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media, led to the evolution of a particular visual style associated with subversion and revolution.…”
In parallel to the broad diversity of musical styles that accompanied the early punk explosion, the graphic design and visual communication strategies tell a similarly wide-ranging story. This chapter explores the complex relationship between the stereotype of “authentic” do-it-yourself (DIY) punk graphics and the music industry professionals who created many of the visual conventions that came to be closely associated with the subculture. While the groundswell of amateur artists, illustrators, photographers, typographers, and other cultural producers inspired by the subculture to create a new aesthetic should not be underestimated, their story has become almost the default history of punk graphic design. The role of design professionals—often with many years of experience within the music industry—has frequently been overlooked, an embarrassing secret kept in the closet for fear of undermining notions of authenticity and punk’s revolutionary rhetoric.
“…It was like a visit from the Krays [notorious London gangsters]. (quoted in Bestley 2016) To an extent, the techniques adopted by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols were already wide ly accepted as the established graphic languages of anger and protest. The samizdat tradition of lo-tech graphic material disseminated through personal networks, originally a feature of the postwar Eastern European underground, where the term denoted the clan destine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media, led to the evolution of a particular visual style associated with subversion and revolution.…”
In parallel to the broad diversity of musical styles that accompanied the early punk explosion, the graphic design and visual communication strategies tell a similarly wide-ranging story. This chapter explores the complex relationship between the stereotype of “authentic” do-it-yourself (DIY) punk graphics and the music industry professionals who created many of the visual conventions that came to be closely associated with the subculture. While the groundswell of amateur artists, illustrators, photographers, typographers, and other cultural producers inspired by the subculture to create a new aesthetic should not be underestimated, their story has become almost the default history of punk graphic design. The role of design professionals—often with many years of experience within the music industry—has frequently been overlooked, an embarrassing secret kept in the closet for fear of undermining notions of authenticity and punk’s revolutionary rhetoric.
“…It was like a visit from the Krays [notorious London gangsters]. (quoted in Bestley 2016) To an extent, the techniques adopted by Jamie Reid for the Sex Pistols were already wide ly accepted as the established graphic languages of anger and protest. The samizdat tradition of lo-tech graphic material disseminated through personal networks, originally a feature of the postwar Eastern European underground, where the term denoted the clan destine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media, led to the evolution of a particular visual style associated with subversion and revolution.…”
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Since punk emerged in the 1970s as a music genre and subculture it has gained significant academic attention. Punk as a concept now alludes to specific places or scenes, and has been established as a general anti-establishment attitude, as well as an anti-consumerist disposition, with a need to do-it-yourself (DIY). Drawing upon ethnographic and interview data from the east coast of Australia, this article analyses struggles that occur within punk spaces where women and queer identifying punks negotiate historically established male dominance. Punk scenes have the general illusio of being resistant to dominant norms and practices, which is attractive to individuals who feel like outsiders. Yet through symbolic violence, systematic oppression can be perpetrated against those who do not invoke idealised forms of masculinity or femininity. Using the affective transference of gendered norms in punk spaces, we find struggles that are often homogenised in punk research which attends critically to subcultural themes of collectivism and resistance. By unpacking these themes, this article puts forth the concepts of reflexive complicity – where men and women reproduce inequality in punk spaces – and defiance labour – moments of overt challenge to symbolic violence within punk spaces and scenes.
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