SCISSORS AND GLU E PUNK DESIGN AND NEVILLE BRODY
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SCISSORS AND GLU E PUNK DESIGN AND NEVILLE BRODY SARAH LIN
Rockport Publishers Inc. Beverly, MA 01915
Published 2012 by Rockport Publishers Inc. A Division of Quayside Publishing Group Beverly MA 01915 Copyright Š 2012 Sarah Lin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher. 10 9 8 7 ISBN 0-14-628394-x This book was designed and produced by Rockport Publishers Inc. www.rockpub.com This publication is set in Univers 57 Condensed & Condensed Oblique 9.75/12, and Courier Regular, Bold & Oblique 8.5/12 Designer: Sarah Lin Printed in China
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ACNKOWLEDGMENTS
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 The History 27 The Aesthetic & The Art 67 The Politics
THE HISTORY
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‘WHILE [PUNK ROCK] HAD A GREAT IMPACT UPON BRODY’S WORK AND MOTIVATION, [IT] WAS NOT WELL RECEIVED BY HIS TUTORS...’
AB (Left) Neville Brody in studio
NEVILLE BRODY
Neville Brody was born in Southgate, London on 23 April 1957. At school, he studied A-Level Art, very much from a fine art viewpoint. In 1975 Brody went on to do a Fine Art foundation course at Hornsey College of Art, once renowned for its late sixties agitation, now part of Middlesex University. In autumn 1976, Brody started a three-year B.A. course in graphics at the London College of Printing. His tutors often condemned his work as “Uncommercial”, often putting a heavy emphasis on safe and tested economic strategies, as opposed to experimentation.
By 1977 punk rock was beginning to have a major effect upon London life and, while this had a great impact upon Brody’s work and motivation, was not well received by his tutors. At one point he was almost thrown out of the college for putting the Queen’s head sideways on a postage stamp design. He did, however, get the chance to design posters for student concerts at the college, most notably for Pere Ubu, supported by The Human League.
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(Right) Neville Brody, Anti-Design Festival Manifesto (Left) Covers of The Face Magazine
Initially working in record cover design, Brody made his name largely popular through his revolutionary work as Art Director for The Face magazine when it was first published in 1980. Other international magazine and newspaper directions have included City Limits, Lei, Per Lui, Actuel and Arena, together with the radical new look for two leading British newspapers The Guardian and The Observer (both newspaper and magazine).
THE FOUNDATIONS OF PUNK ROCK
punk rock are The beginnings of debated. This often furiously use everyone is partially beca itions of punk has different defin lly because its rock, and partia are found in foundation stones several places. originally used “Punk Rock” was garage musicians to describe the
of the ‘60’s. Bands like the Sonics were starting up and playing out with no musical or vocal instruction, and often limited skill. Because they didn’t know the rules of music, they were able to break the rules.
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(Left) Minor Threat (Right) The Clash
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the apte ‘60s saw The mid to la d the an the Stooges pearance of raw, t. They were MC5 in Detroi Their l. ten politica crude and of aft en often viol concerts were the g in en ey were op fairs, and th music world. eyes of the the derground is The Velvet Un The . the puzzle next piece in d by ge round, mana Velvet Underg g muin were produc Andy Warhol, e. is ered on no sic that bord
The Circle Jerks
Neville Brody continues to work as a graphic designer and together with business partner Fwa Richards launched his own design practice, Research Studios, in London in 1994. Since then studios have been opened in San Francisco, Paris, Berlin and New York. The company is best known for its ability to create new visual languages for a variety of applications ranging from publishing to film.
New York: The First Punk Rock Scene
They were expand ing the definitions of music wi thout realizing it. The final prim ary influence is found in Glam Ro ck. Artists like David Bowie and the New York Dolls were dressi ng outrageously, living extrav agantly and producing loud tr ashy rock and roll. Glam ended up splitting up its influence, do ling out portions to hard ro ck, “hair” metal and punk rock.
The first concrete punk rock scene appeared in the mid ‘70s in New York. Bands like The Ramones, Wayne County, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Blondie and the Talking Heads were playing regularly in the Bowery District, most notably at CBGB.
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(Left) Neville Brody, Design for Anti-Design Festival (Top) Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks Album cover
Jamie Reid’s iconic design for the Sex Pistols
single, God Save the Queen
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their The bands were unified by and ie, der ara cam location, . They shared musical influences p their elo dev to on go would all shift own styles and many would k. roc k pun m away fro was While the New York scene was k pun , day hey its reaching on ati cre te ara sep a g undergoin . don Lon story in
(Left) The Sex Pistols (Bot-
tom) Sid Vicious, bassist of the Sex Pistols
Research Studios also creates innovative packaging and website design for clients such as Kenzo, corporate identity for clients such as Homechoice, and on-screen graphics for clients such as Paramount Studios, makers of the Mission Impossible films. The company also completed a visual identity project for the famous Paris contemporary art exhibition Nuit Blanche in 2006. Brody’s team launched a new look for the champagne brand Dom Pérignon 15 in February 2007, having been appointed in 2004 to help the brand with its strategy and repositioning. Meanwhile, Across the Pond
England's punk scene had political and economic roo ts. The economy in the United Kin gdom was in poor shape, and une mployment rates were at an all -time high. England's youth wer e angry, rebellious and out of wor k. They had strong opinions and a lot of free time. This is where punk fashion as we know it eme rged, centering out of one sho p. The shop was simply called SEX , and it was owned by Malcolm McClaren.
Amongst countless other projects, in 1989, upon request by the then-director Gerhard Coenen, to Neville Brody, the young Swiss graphic artist and typeface designer Cornel Windlin, then working at the then called “Neville Brody Studio” designed the Corporate Identity for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) in Berlin, Germany.
Neville Brody, Design for Anti-Design Festival
In 1988 Thames & Hudson published the first of two volumes about his work, which became the world’s best selling graphic design book. Combined sales now exceed 120,000. An accompanying exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum attracted over 40,000 visitors before touring Europe and Japan. Brody’s recent projects include the redesign of the Bbc in September 2011, The Times in November 2006 with the creation of a new font Times Modern. The typeface shares many visual similarities with Mercury designed by Jonathan Hoefler. It is the first new font at the newspaper since it introduced Times New Roman in 1932.
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(Left) Poster for Fuse Lectures (Bottom) Covers of The Face, Brody’s punk typographic magazine
BRODY HAS PUSHED THE BOUNDARIES OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION IN ALL MEDIA
A sister company, Research Publishing, produces and publishes experimental multimedia works by young artists. The primary focus is on FUSE, the conference and quarterly forum for experimental typography and communications. The publication is approaching its 20th issue over a period of over ten years. Brody has pushed the boundaries of visual communication in all media through his experimental and challenging work, and continues to extend the visual languages we use through his exploratory creative expression.
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Enter The nt Bromley Continge
Malcolm McClaren had recently returned to London from the U.S., where he had unsuccessfully tried to reinvent the New York Dolls to sell his clothing. He was determined to do it again, but this time looked to the youths who worked and hung out in his shop to be his next project. This project would become the Sex Pistols, and they would develop a large following very quickly.
Among the fans of the Sex Pistols was an outr ageous bunch of young punks know n as the Bromley Contingent. Named after the neighborhood they all came from, they were at the first Sex Pistols shows, and quickly realized they could do it themselves.
The Sonics, a protopunk band from America
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The Punk Rock Explosion
Within a year, the Bromleys had formed a large portion of the London Punk scene, including The Clash, The Slits, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Generation X (fronted by a young Billy Idol) and X-Ray Spex. The British punk scene was now in full swing.
By the late ‘70s, punk had finished its beginning and had emerged as a solid musica l force. With its rise in popularity, punk began to split into numerous sub-genres. New musicians embraced the DIY mov ement and began to create their own individual scenes with spe cific sounds.
THE AESTHETIC
NB D GLUE: SCISSORS AN ES PUNK FANZIN AESTHETIC Y DI E TH AND
What is a fanzine? The American writer and academic Stephen Duncombe describes fanzines as ‘little publications filled with rantings of high weirdness and exploding with chaotic design’ where the producers ‘privilege the ethic of DIY, do-ityourself: make your own culture and stop consuming that which is made for you’. For Duncombe, fanzines represent not only a
‘shared creation’ of a producer’s own, often alternative, culture but also a ‘novel form of communication’. In particular it is worth noting Duncombe’s reference to the ‘chaotic design’ of the fanzine page and use of the term ‘chaotic’ in relationship to the development of a graphic language of resistance.
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PUNK DESIGN: BRODY’S NEW STYLE
Later he refers to the layout of the fanzines as ‘unruly cut-npaste’ with bare ly legible type and ‘uneven repr oduction’, drawing comparisons between ‘professional-looking pu blications’ and the fanzine as am ateur, falling somewhere betwee n ‘a personal letter and a maga zine’. A plethora of fa nzines emerged during the first wave of punk in Britain (1976–19 79). This was a
An outspoken critic of Helvetica’s bland uniformity, Neville Brody developed as a designer during the seismic social and cultural upheavals of the British punk era. Excitingly iconoclastic, Brody took a stand against the stifling effect of corporate typography, creating wonderfully modern and distinctive fonts like Arcadia, Insignia and Industria. Emerging in the Conservative Britain of the 1980s, his work is of great importance as a rallying revolt against tired tradition.
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period of substantial cultural, social and political change where punk reacted against the ‘modern world’ and the absorption of ‘hippy culture’ into the mainstream.
Neville Brody, Insignia Typeface
According to the cultural historian Roger Sabin, ‘Although punk had no set agenda like its hippie counter-cultural predecessor it did stand for certain identifiable attitudes. Among them an emphasis on working class “credibility”. A belief in various hues of class politics [notably anarchism] and an enthusiasm for
spontaneity and doing it yourself’. Punk also reacted agains t the mid-1970s ‘hit parade’ roc k music scene. The writer Hen ry Rollins reflects in his introd uction to one punk musician’s mem oirs, The Andy Blade Chronicle s, that at this time ‘rock was bor ing, rock was damn near dead’.
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alters seen as an Punk music wa sic mu e mainstream native to th ing th me provided so industry and s it h rating throug new and libe f’ el rs ou and ‘do-it-y independent e li addition, Ju approach. In book g in her 1977 in Davies, writ is ck Ro that ‘Punk Punk, argues be to s ence; it ha a live experi d live. seen and hear just cord at home Playing a re eer sh unicate the doesn’t comm
energy, excitement and ent husiasm which are the hallma rks of the music.’ Punk fanzines attempted to recreate the same buzz visually—an ethos enc apsulated by the Sex Pistol s who famously remarked in the New Musical Express ‘We’re not into music…we’re into chaos’.
(Left) Layout for Brody’s The Face (Right) DIY fanzine layout
HIS INNOVATIVE DESIGNS CLEARLY CONTAINED AN ELEMENT OF PUNK’S PLAYFUL SELF FASHIONING AND WIL FUL SCORN FOR
Neville Brody, Industria Typeface
Y
S
IL-
TYPE DESIGN
Just as the Sex Pistols had famously caused an upset during the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 with their irreverent single God Save the Queen, Brody’s typography seemed to lash out at the demand for order, corporate selfishness and Conservative conformity of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s reign. Despite always being knowledgeable of its history, Brody largely rejected traditional typography, always seeking to break free from convention.
Brody became a household name through his striking typography for The Face magazine in the early 1980s. Gaining a position on the design team, Brody quickly became a guiding force on the publication whose innovative editorial content, photography and typography established it as a veritable style bible for its culturally conscious readership. Brody enjoyed a freedom few typographers were ever granted, playing with page 31 composition and lettering, celebrating experimentation and abstraction over easy reading, challenging the reader to keep pace with his innovative designs, which clearly contained an element of punk’s playful self fashioning and wilful scorn for the norm.
(Bottom) Type Tart Cards for Wallpaper (Right) Brody’s design for Type Tart Cards
Fanzines adopted the DIY, independent approach that punk musicians had espoused. With the rise of newly formed bands came the establishment of impromptu clubs, small, independent record labels and record stores, including the Londonbased shop Rough Trade (which also distributed fanzines).
In the same way, fanzines offered fans a ‘free space for dev eloping ideas and practices’, and a visual space unencumbered by formal design rules and vis ual expectations.
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However, Brody’s most famous typeface was designed for Arena magazine in 1986. Appearing on the magazine’s banner, Arcadia borrowed from Art Deco but made it seem excitingly new through its tall geometry and condensed spacing. Quickly becoming something of a cult classic, Arcadia was embraced and widely imitated by the design industry, who recognised the modern serif as the perfect font for the post-punk new age. Brody’s typefaces Insignia, designed for Arena magazine in 1986, and Industria, designed for The Face magazine and released as a font in 1989, both tapped in to the spirit of technological advancement, particularly the new computer age, but also asserted the importance of independent stylisation. Both typefaces capture the 1980s zeitgeist, but are unmistakeably Brody’s creation, highlighting the importance of the individual artist over mechanical reproduction or corporate directed graphic design.
the commuAs one member of fanzines were ur ‘o s nity reflect professional, always clumsy, un ere design was ungrammatical, wh rather than due to inadequacy ethora of punkrisk’. As the pl materialinspired fanzines sual identity ized, a unique vi s own set of emerged, with it d a ‘do-it yourgraphic rules an atly reinforcself’ approach ne und ‘political’ ing punk’s new fo voice.
(Bottom Left) Neville Brody, album cover (Right) Neville Brody, Arena Magazine
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The Sex Pistols single release of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ (1976) summed up punk’s radical position where Malcolm McLaren, the self-proclaimed punk creator and Sex Pistol’s manager, was quick to point out, ‘“Anarchy in the UK” is a statement of self-rule, or ultimate independence, of doit-yourself’.
As if to pu nctuate th is point graphicall y, the prod ucer of Sideburns (Brighton, 1976) famously prov ided a set of simple instru ctions and a diagram of how to play three chords—A, E, G—alongs ide the pu nk command ‘Now Form a Band’. As with its music and fashion, pu nk advocated that everyone go out and produce fa nzines.
Neville Brody, Free Me From Freedom poster for the Embedded Art exhibition in Berlin
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ished As independent self-publ ame bec es zin fan , ons publicati municom al tur cul sub of vehicles ental cation and played a fundam punk of ion uct str con the role in comidentity and a political munity.
As cultural mouthpieces for punk bands, fanzines disseminated information about gig schedules, interviews with bands and reviews of new albums alongside features on current political events and personal rants. They fostered an active dialogue with a community of like-minded individuals often evidenced through the readers’ pages of fanzines and also at the gigs themselves.
Edward Colver, Flip Shoth, Pasadena, CA - Chuck Burke midair during Stiff Little Fingers/Adolescents/DOA show
eil an writer Gr As the Americ ‘a mos ts, punk wa Marcus sugges e as ap that took sh ment in time own s it ticipating a language an to ce it was a chan destruction… would at th ral events create epheme er ev at ements on wh serve as judg rt pa ed Fanzines form came next’. or rf pe ing cultural of this fleet nco y wa n in their ow mance. Each a of t en the developm tributed to c hi ap gr Y enduring DI distinct and punk. language of
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Cover of
Sniffin’ Glue, a punk fanzine
Ultimately, Brody’s rebel ethos sat uneasy with the evolution of the lifestyle magazine genre, particularly in the case of Arena, which seemed a little too aligned with company brands for a designer whose young work consisted of antiestablishment fanzines during punk’s heady heyday. It’s perhaps inevitable for a designer synonymous with a style, no matter how iconoclastic it is, to one day be subsumed and accepted within the design canon.
GE OF RESISTANCE A GRAPHIC LANGUA
But what does the DIY aes thetic that emerged in fanzines such as Sniffin’ Glue actually represent? Before turning to a more detailed discussion of oth er punk fanzine titles, it is worth exploring what a ‘graphic language of resistance’ in contemporary Western culture mea ns: is it even possible to charac terize it in any systematic way ?
Nevertheless, Brody’s early body of work is an important reminder that style can be a stance and one artist’s style can be an effective challenge to presiding political powers and stultifying cultural conservativism. There is no doubt that Brody’s star status elevated the standing of designers as artists throughout the United Kingdom.
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(Right) Joey Strummer of The Clash
DESIGNING HIS OWN CELEBRITY
Blame Britain’s cult of personality on the Beatles. By toppling class barriers, London’s Swinging Sixties altered the country’s notion of celebrity - linking it forever to the template of pop stardom. Today, Britain still supplies more than just models, modern dancers, and entrepreneurs. She produces Naomi Campbell, Michael Clark, Malcolm McClaren; figures who publicise their talents as if they were rock stars.
In London, his home base is a striking, glass-walled tower. To find the busy designer here, one must ring, enter and wait - then run the gauntlet of his secretary and minions. The boss, when he finally appears, is clad in black with small gold glasses. His manner may seem abstract, but it masks a well of concentration.
Neville Brody is a celebrity in this tradition. But he was certainly Britain’s first pop-star typographer. Brody is known around the world, with offices in Germany (at Meta Design) and in Japan (at Digitalogue).
Language, according to cultural historian Mikko Lehtonen, is essentially abstract and exists only through certain material forms such as ‘writing, photographs, movies, newspapers and magazines, advertisements and commercials’. These are conduits through which meaning is conveyed and where signs which stand for ‘mental concepts’ are arranged into languages.
Just as grammars and syntax are created through written or spoken language so too might be the structures of visual language. The semioticians Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen observe a shift taking place in the ‘era of late modernity’ from a dominance of ‘monomodality’, a singular communication mode, to ‘multimodality’, which embraces a ‘variety of materials and to cross the boundaries between the
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various art, design and performance disciplines’. Langua ge may be communicated through verbal or non-verbal means, or a combination thereof. The gra mmars of design operate in the same way as the grammars of sem iotic modes and may be codified. The music historian Dave Lai ng, for example, comments that pun k language drew upon discourse s found in the areas of pornograp hy, left-wing politics and
obscenity. Explicit sexual words such as ‘cunt’ and swearing such as using the word ‘fuck’ permeated the lyrics of punk songs, performances on stage and in the pages of fanzines. All these facets incorporated an explicit and violent use of language as part of a general shock tactic strategy meant to offend and draw attention to punk itself.
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Neville Brody, Collaboration with Bazooka for the AntiDesign Festival
Neville Brody made famous a job which, under normal circumstances, would remain obscure. He has a flair for self-promotion and an almost infallible sense of which vehicles suit his purpose. “If you have an idea,” he likes to say, “you make it happen.” After leaving the London College of Printing in 1979, only a year elapsed before he managed to start his own company. Neville Brody Studios began life in a one rented room. Using clients such as The Face, then a struggling lifestyle magazine, and record companies with names like “Fetish” and “Crammed”, Brody swiftly built himself a hipster’s reputation. He designed for the music industry, but also for fashion emporia; he did covers for rock biographies, yet also re-vamped New Socialist. Central to a prolific output was his view of British culture: “Britain’s main exports have always been fashion, style and image.”
(Left) Punk album cover and page from fanzin e
(Right) Ne ville Brody, Bazo oka
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k Flag (Left) Blac ville (Bottom) Ne 1-20 Brody, Fuse n Publicatio
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(Left) Ripped & Torn cover (Bot-
tom) Cover of The Graphic Language of Neville Brody
During 1988, three things cemented Brody’s status as a graphic guru. His work was hailed in a lavish book, The Graphic Language of Neville Brody. The book was then launched with an exhibition by London’s Victoria & Albert Museum - one of the institution’s largest-ever bows to youth culture. Plus, Neville Brody Studios bought its first computer.
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For punk fanzines, language is communicated graphically through a system of visual signs and specifically in the conveyance of a message of ‘resistance’. In the essay ‘Retheorizing Resistance’, Beverly Best examines the way in which the popular cultural text functions on ‘behalf of oppositional cultural and political practice’. Best argues in a similar way to Michel Foucault
that there ‘canno t be power relations withou t resistances, and that the latt er are real and effective because they are formed at the point wher e power relations are exerci sed’.25 Punk fanzines are site s for oppositional practice in that they provide a forum for cultural communication as well as for political action, which should be included in any broader political discourse.
George McKay observes that British punk may be considered as a ‘cultural moment of resistance’ and part of a DIY culture that ‘activism means action’. It is the self-empowerment component of a do-it-yourself culture where direct action begins. Yet, what of a ‘graphic language of resistance’? The Oxford Modern English Dictionary defines ‘resistance’ as the ‘act of
resisting’; a ‘refusal to comply’, for example as might be defined as in resisting authority. Duncombe, editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader, suggests that through the process of resistance we are freed from the ‘limits and constraints of the dominant culture’. In turn, ‘cultural resistance’ allows us to ‘experiment with new ways of
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and develop seeing and being ces for resisttools and resour be represented ance’. This may ntent, graphieither through co ere rules and cally or both, wh e disregarded prescriptions ar chael Twyman intentionally. Mi the ‘language establishes that c communicaelement in graphi tionship betion’ is the rela n content and tween informatio on, which he visual presentati
to account st take in suggests mu cluding factors in a number of ’ and ‘the of language the ‘users . Twyman is ces of use’ circumstan nt about his argume in r ea cl also l developchnologica the role te to the in relation ments have ages that of the mess ‘language ed’. communicat need to be
(Left) The Clash (Right) The Sex Pistols
With his book climbing bestseller lists worldwide, Brody and his team got obsessed by computer games. One entitled Crystal Quest, he says, cured him of “technophobia”. (Although Brody had by then designed four magazines - New Socialist, The Face, Arena and City Limits - he was still drawing every typeface by hand.) “I approached the Apple Mac,” he laughs, “with an attack mentality! I thought computers were just too digital, too mechanical.” Crystal Quest changed Brody’s mind. Now, the Mac is his constant companion - and the recipient of many elaborate metaphors. “People think of computers as if they were replicate brains. But the Mac is more like a saxophone. You don’t learn to use it, you begin to play it. You learn a whole technology so that you can improvise.” After his exhibition, work poured into Brody’s studio.
(Far Left) The Clash, London Calling (Left)
Neville Brody, Poster for Ocean’s Twelve
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He moved several times before settling his staff into the current premises. Yet now he is often absent, working in Paris, Miami or Tokyo. In every city, Brody is photographed, interviewed, videotaped: part of what he likes to call “the dialogue of design”. He wants, he says, to really widen the options of his profession.”Graphics, type - they’re always an invisible means of manipulation. I try to leave all my work open-ended. So it can be the audience who inputs evaluation.” Brody has enlarged that “audience” via some adventurous schemes. In 1990, he opened Fontworks, an electronic boutique that merchandises designer typefaces. Out of Fontworks came Fuse, a package-on-disc of specialist fonts, with five artists’ posters included in every “issue”. Only three days ago, Brody finished a personal project: The Graphic Language of Neville Brody 2, his second book.
This collection will be published as a bound volume. But Neville Brody 2 was originated digitally, and it will also be designed and sold as a CD-Rom. This is the latest format to engage Brody’s imagination. “All the current CD-Roms,” he says, with undisguised excitement, “are only startingpoints created by technicians. There’s no real content in them, let alone design. Interactive products call for a whole new language.” Such a call is just the thing to get the Brody juices flowing. As he hunches over the edge of a very cluttered desk (paper still remains a problem in this Mac-centred environment), Brody’s futuristic fervour seems almost contagious.
(Top) Double-paged spread for The Face (Bottom) Brody, album
design for Cabaret Voltaire’s Micro-phonies
We discuss his work for the Austrian National Broadcasting Service; stamps he designed for the Dutch national post office, even the athletic shoes he publicised throughout Japan. All Brody’s evaluations vibrate with optimism. He sees high technology as a means of global bonding.
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ee major He suggests that the thr manumeans of production—the age and d nte pri the , script age e vid pro , age c oni the electr e, hav ‘we , and ms, for different how ves sel our ask to , therefore ms for nt ere diff se the each of our can be made to respond to needs’.
Such a distin ction is usef ul for a study of fa nzines. In th is case, the us e of handwrit ing or typewritte n texts main ta ins a similar fu nction in te rm s of language whil e the ‘graph ic treatment re sponds to th e particular tech nology being used’. ‘Graphic lang uage’ is a vi sual system incorp orating not on ly image-based symbols but al so a typographic language.
graphic lanThe way in which will add value guage is depicted meaning. For to its intended Mealing, writing example, Stuart ge, has obin Visible Langua t styles and paserved that ‘fon size and color rameters such as lend additional are selected to ntial to plain interpretive pote text message.’
(Left) Out on Parole Album cover (Bottom Right) Neville Brody, Design for ICA
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This is formalized by using salient elements including italics, bold, underlined, capital letters, fonts, size and weight, etc., but also through the way images and texts are juxtaposed and presented in order to extend visually ‘the semantic potential of a message’. Such acts of resistance are normally ‘shared’
and in the process provide a ‘focal point’ and help to establish a community of like-minded individuals. Such a community is often considered as subcultural, borne out of a resistance to a dominant or parent culture, and seen as ‘subordinate, subaltern or subterranean’.
“People think that digital design is a fixed language,” he says. “But it’s not; it’s very fluid. It’s like I’m doing a painting where the paint refuses to dry. I hand it on to the someone else, who pushes that paint around. And the process is continuous - it will never stop.” This is a signal, he says, of imminent revolution. “And it’s going to be bigger than what happened with Gutenberg. Levels of communication are ready to explode.” Will that explosion project 61 Brody’s fame further? One design critic who says it may is Lewis Blackwell, editor of the British-based trade journal Creative Review. Says Blackwell, “Neville is indeed like a pop star; he was elevated very high very quickly. He could never be just an ordinary designer again. His work will always be compared to what’s expected of ‘Brody’. But: it’s a challenge he’s more than willing to meet.”
(Left) Neville Brody, Book design for D&AD
The Dead Kennedys
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THE POLITICS & THE ART
(Right) Neville Brody, Blur Typeface
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES
Neville Brody doesn’t want you to think outside the box: it would appear he’d prefer you do something like tear it up, tape it back together, spray paint it, wear it as a hat, and then throw it out. Brody wants designers to decide what to do with their own boxes. Since we’ve moved from a physical to digital space, Brody feels that experimentation has given way to an engineering approach. ”Facebook feels very much like a grown up version of AOL.” The world starts to look the same.
THE ‘ART’ OF PUNK
Punk arguably re presented the politics of the working-class experience, but also the more ‘artful’ ‘aesthet ics of proletarian play’, and was also middle-class in that there was significant art sc hool input. Malcolm Garrett, for example, states that he wa s introduced to techniques of co llage, stencilling, use of Letr aset and the photocopier whil e at college.
Length His own fanzine Today’s ted coc con 0), 198 ue, (one iss , reers oth and rt Ewa with Joe oass o als was He s. flects thi and mer for per k pun h ciated wit col own se who , der artist Lin er cov the on d file pro e lages wer gle sin t firs s ck’ zco of the Buz PeOrgasm Addict (1977), and nces ere ref own se who e ill ter Sav eets, a were visible on OK UK Str d punk single for Manchester-base group The Smirks (1978).
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ally rks ‘punk re Garrett rema nse of ere was a se stood out, th and you the street, hostility on ich was of energy wh felt a sense ’. expression aggressive in
Out of this connection emerged a language of graphic resistance steeped in the first instance in the ideology of punk and its anarchical spirit and in the second instance, that which emerged from their position in a continuous timeline of self-conscious Dadaist and Situationist International ‘art’ practices.
Battalion of
Saints
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According to Guy Debord, Situationist International promoted the notion that contemporary society had become the ‘society of the spectacle’, opposing this by employing strategies such as that defined by détournement (diversion) and of ‘recuperation’
man(recovery) including com y and ger ima ip str icdeered com ms. for e tur cul r ula other pop zine fan by d ifie mpl exe This is an ntm fro ’ ues Pog and producer in its adm who an, Gow Shane Mac sue (Is e dag Bon on ati his public was ng thi le who is ‘th 1,1976), p of hel the h wit .. er. put togeth the All s. pin ety saf a box of photos are ripped out of other mags’.
(Right) Neville Brody, Close up of design (Left) Poster for Suicide Live
The Sex Pist ols’ art dire ctor Jamie Re id had an in te rest in Situationi st Internatio na l and its ante cedents incl ud in g Dada and Futu rism. Along with self-proclai med punk hist or ian Malcolm McLa ren, Reid wa s a member of th e English Si tuationist group Ki ng Mob while an art student at Cr oydon Colleg e of Art in the la te 1960s. Hi s ea rly affiliation wi th Situationi st In ternational writings was
, Reid and, in 1974 established blish helped to pu and McLaren ogy Gray’s anthol Christopher Reid’s 20th Century. Leaving the ed uc ion (co-prod own publicat l ge Brook and Ni with Jeremy ess Pr ed Suburban Edwards) titl ute ib tr 70) played (Issue 1, 19 yle st erop collag to the agit-p DIY d an s, cartoons illustration d ha chniques he production te
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been exposed to in the flyers, handbills and early Situationist works. Such techniques had become synonymous with the radical politics of student protests of 1968. Reid’s approach, and those of subsequent punk fanzine producers drew upon these techniques in order to establish a specific visual immediacy to their message.
Ultimately this process provided an identifiable DIY aesthetic unapologetic for its raw and amateur production quality. Many producers, whether knowingly or not, often combined a graphic language of ‘resistance’ instigated as a result of Situationists’ King Mob Echo (c.1968), Jamie Reid’s Suburban Press (1970) and Mark P.’s
(Left) Nevill e Brody design (Bottom) Circ le Jerks Poster
“Design should not be precious. We don’t want to make things to put in museums. If you use it too much, you should wear it out.” Brody points to New Deal, the typeface he designed for Michael Mann’s film “Public Enemy” (starring Johnny Depp as John Dillinger). The typeface was purposefully designed to have no shelf life, to never be reused or desired for reuse (contrast this with most film fonts that are bought, rather than created).
Sniffin’ Glue’s seemingly fresh punk attitude. Richard Reynolds, for example, in his ‘post punk poetry’ fanzine Scumbag (1980– 1981, 1988) drew on Sniffin’ Glue as well as Wyndham Lewis’ BLAST! and the language of concrete poetry.
The way we arrive at these ideas—of sameness and permanence and thinking outside the box but inside a slightly bigger box—Brody partly attributes to the culture of design schools. He points to the Royal College of Art, where he teaches: students were telling him they hate graphic design, calling it “a manipulative thing to make people buy stuff.”
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Jelio of of the Jelio The De ad Kennedys Kennedys Dead
They see it as a political thing that they don’t want to be fed, but have more control. ”I think art schools should be where new things happen…where new brains are formed.” Brody encourages students to create the courses themselves, to treat the school as a laboratory for new ideas that help fend off the trend of sameness. With that in mind, Brody turns to the history of design, and typography in particular, as a method of building corporate. Traditionally, typography is seen as a way of manipulating thought without you even realizing it. Brody likes the idea of bucking that trend by designing things that force consciousness of design upon the viewer: “Make trouble, make think.”
Brody decided to make a little of both with the Anti-Design Festival, reflecting on 25 years of London’s design culture, where a lot of things “didn’t get made.” ”If an idea didn’t look like it would make money,” Neville sighs, “it wasn’t pursued.” So he invited the public to contribute to the “organized chaos.” People would bring stuff in and take stuff home. There were no rules. It was constantly changing, had no order, and was pure joy. Brody continues on this point with the example of FUSE, the quarterly design magazine last published in 1997 after an impressive 20 year run. It became a laboratory for explorations of design and type. Brody showcases examples of explorations in typography that threw off the shackles of legibility and language. The results could be compared to the familiar Wingdings, but that would be like juxtaposing a Debussy etude with the Alka-Seltzer jingle.
k (Bottom) New Yor Dolls, Dancing Backwards in High Heels Cover (Right) Brody,
cover of Fuse 10
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On the other hand , it would be misleading to su ggest that all fanzine producer s were aware of these specific tr aditions. Panache (London 19 76–1991) producer Mick Mercer comments, ‘I started in ‘76. There was only Sniffing [sic] Gl ue and Ripped and Torn, and I hadn’t seen either. I just kept it simple and did what I liked’ .
Designs for the President’s Lecture, Neville Brody: Wanker or Genius?
Whether fanzine producers were recounting their experiences inside or outside London, the notion of resistance remains a key element in the construction of a punk identity. Fanzines are democratic in that they provide accessible forums for writing through their ‘anyone can do it’ production strategies. They also encourage participation (e.g. readers’ letters) and suggest reflexivity (or reflectivity in
this case) in te rms of their autobiographical manner of communication. The art critic Mi chael Bracewell writes ‘In terms of contemporary culture, therefor e, punk has become the card which cannot be trumped; and the reason for this enduring reputati on must lie in punk’s unrivalled ability to
The experiments are closer to art than design, in the sense that “design” has been co-opted by commercialism and art is the last bastion of creative exploration. Indeed, Brody contends that digital space closes the income gap: “Connect is what we should be doing, with society and other skill sets and disciplines.” A design community that is less insular, and more open to non-commercial pursuits, will elevate the craft beyond a mere profession so that designers can dictate the course of commerce, not the other way around.
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“Bringing design back into a living space, that’s what I’m about,” he says. “That’s why I’m at the Royal College,” inspiring young designers to make trouble, and make think. confront the processes of cultural commodification; or rather, to play cultural materialism at its own game, by creating a culture which was capable of pronouncing its host environment exhausted and redundant’. Like the music and fashion of the
nzines conof punk, fa first wave y many of y to displa tinue toda aracterisgraphic ch the early oric asessive rhet gr ag d an tics ations. punk public th wi ed at soci resistes how such at tr ns mo It de e graphic fined by th t ance was de emerged no which had rlanguage, ou -y it a punk ‘doonly from from the so al t bu s, self’ etho raphic ols, photog in use of symb d the way pefaces an images, ty t. ou were laid which they
ins of Henry Roll Black Flag
THE END
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AFTERWORD
The originating premise and idea for this book sprang from the passionate dedication and love my dearest and closest friend, Nathan, has demonstrated for punk rock all his life, and the motivation and inspiration I myself draw from Neville Brody, the (in)famous punk designer.
ter Thank you to Nathan Lancas t and por for being a constant sup hout oug fountain of knowledge thr n Joh to the process; thank you g din gui Kane for advising me and ign des to me in my first endeavor Neville a book; and thank you to ation, Brody for being an inspir ly for ant always, but most import exh humoring me and my geekis . citement upon meeting him
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