PUNK MOVEMENT by vaijayanthi

PUNK

M O V E M E N T

PUNK

THE TEEN SUB-CULTURE

Vaijayanthi Priya

In today’s digital world, most

words we read reach us via computer, television or smartphone. Even hardcover books are designed with the help of digital technology. Typographers have meticulously sculpted each individual letter, whether on the page or the computer screen, all with the help of copious mouse clicking. It wasn’t always this way. Through the early 1960s, before the advent of digital technology, typographers used metal type, often hand drawing on graph paper and using photocopiers or ink transfer to create typefonts. From the end of World War I until the 1960s, “Sans serif” fonts, distinguished by their lack of feet, or “serifs” on the ends

of each letter, ruled typography’s proverbial roost. Sans serif fonts had existed as early as William Caslon’s 1816 “English Egyptian” type, a round, simple lettering that faded into obscurity almost as soon as it was invented. In the wake of World War I, typographers connected to the German-based Bauhaus design school found aesthetic value in utilitarianism over artifice and adornment. “The prevailing philosophy of typography at the time was to show letters in their most pure form,” says Gail Davidson, curator of an installation on digital type currently on display at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City.

Sans serifs epitomized the “form follows function” approach that characterized modernism. Clean, crisp and to the point, they let the information do all the talking. But by the mid-1960s, a small group of typographers, who felt more stifled than liberated by the entrenched modernist ideology, started a new movement in which the designer’s hand figured prominently in each and every letter. “Revolution might be too strong,” says Davidson, “but they certainly reacted against the hard and fast rules of modernism, respecting designers’ creative abilities.” Postmodernism is a term, used within the graphics design world since around the 1980s. When it comes to postmodernism there are several opinions on what it actually means as many people didn’t have a clue, even the most knowledgeable people with the graphic design world had doubts about it, i.e. Judith Williamson author of Decoding advertisements, interviewed in a design journal “the term is too vague to be useful in anything other than a stylistic sense”, Richard Kostelanetz author of a dictionary of the AvantGrades, he is even blunter and says “My personal opinion holds that anything characterised as postmodern, weather by its author or it’s advocates, is beneath critical consideration, no matter how immediately

popular or capable it might be”. In my opinion I must say, although I do not entirely agree with they way the terms postmodernism and modernism was used back in them days, I prefer Modernism when it come to my graphic design work. Postmodernism is in some way against the principles of modernism, made possibly by the rapidly changing technology. Designers had the opportunity to do things with type that would have been too difficult to experiment with in the past. An example of a popular postmodern designer that have played a significant role in the development of the thinking in this period, would be David Carson, an “American graphic designer, whose unconventional style revolutionized visual communication in the 1990s”. “No more rules” (2003).David Carson argues that it was his ignorance of rules, that allowed him to produce designs that seemed to resemble nothing ever encountered before in commercial print media.

“I never learned all the things you’re not supposed to do, I just do what makes the most sense…There is no grid, no format. I think it ends up in a more interesting place than if I just applied formal design rules.” -D.Carson 5

Sometime in the 70s, the youth started

getting dissatisfied. Tired of what they were being spoon-fed by a mainstream media who no longer seemed to care for them, there began a small — but quickly growing — uprising of bands. They took 1950s style rock ‘n roll, turned up the volume, and increased the speed.And punk rock was born. When Punk first exploded in the 1970s it looked like youthful rebellion. In actuality it was part of the Postmodernist movement which began as a reaction to the rigid restrictions of Modernism With New York and London were at the epicenter of this invention of a subculture, and bands like New York’s The Ramones and London’s The Sex Pistols led the punk uprising from a small sect to a phenomenon. With these newly formed identities and values came new forms of graphical expression to match their means and their ideals. Punk expounds an aesthetic and a mood that is aggressive and contemporary, urban and raw, ephemeral and instantaneous, regressive and regurgitated. It’s about a group of people calling for change through joyful havoc. Due to punk’s nature as a movement outside of the mainstream, and particularly outside of general capitalist and consumerist media, lots of punk imagery was created by the innate needs of the culture and the access of its’ members to the requisite technologies. In their creation of their own graphical style for album sleeves, concert flyers and self-published zines, a general Do It Yourself

Postmodernism: Punk Typography

PUNK TYPOGRAPHY

(DIY) ethos was adopted out of practicality and to show autonomy from what was going on in the industry at large. Typesetters, aside from being expensive in a poor economy, also situated text on a rigid grid. In order to get around these limitations and restrictions, punk imagery took to a variety of methods to showcase their simple, dirty and aggressive messages. This collage style suggested a ripping up and starting again. The style takes a commercial image and repurposes it for revolutionary purposes. With punk’s general disdain for all things conventional the freedom this hand created format allowed punk style to break out of the typographic grid that was limiting to most designers at the time when text was regularly formatted in this standardized method. Made famous most originally with this album artwork for The Sex Pistol’s first major album release, God Save the Queen, the Pistols both subverted status quo opinions on the British monarchy and standard methods of typesetting. Although Reid’s use of borrowed and mish-mashed lettering could be seen as an inexpensive shortcut, it was also an imagery ‘borrowed’ from the graphic language of anger and protest. A ransom note seems to scream GIVE US WHAT WE WANT! Punk music screams that with a fast drum beat.

cover art of the Sex Pistols’ 1977 single “God Save the Queen”, designed by Jamie Reidt

Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks

Graffiti became a new American art form created by Black and Latino teens. A Puerto Rican sociology student, Hugo Martinez, established the United Graffiti Artists (UGA)

in 1972. Prior to the creation of the UGA, graffiti was considered only as vandalism. The following summer, graffiti art, formerly found only in the streets, was introduced to

upscale galleries in Soho, New York. This created a new respect for graffiti in the art world. Graffiti art is one way to introduce multicultural art to students in the classroom.

Wave design was influenced by Punk NEW WAVE OR New sizes and colours of fonts. Although punk and and postmodern language theory. But there is SWISS PUNK TYPOG- a debate as to whether New Wave is a break psychedelia embody the anti-corporate nature RAPHY REFERS TO or a natural progression of the Swiss Style.of their respective groups, the similarity between AN APPROACH TO Sans-serif font still predominates, but theNew Wave and the International Style has led New TYPOGRAPHY THAT Wave differs from its predecessor by stretchsome to label New Wave as “softer, commercialACTIVELY DEFIES ing the limits of legibility. The break fromized punk culture. the STRICT GRID-BASED grid structure meant that type could be set ARRANGEMENT CON- center, ragged left, ragged right, or chaotic. The adoption of New Wave Typography in the VENTIONS. CHARACUnited States came through multiple channels. TERISTICS INCLUDE The artistic freedom produced common Wolfgang Weingart gave a lecture tour on the forms INCONSISTANT LET- such as the bold stairstep. The text hierarchy topic in the early 1970s which increased the TERSPACING, VARING also strayed from the top down approachnumber of American graphic designers who of TYPE WEIGHTS WITH- the International Style. Text became textured traveled to the Basel School for postgraduate IN SINGLE WORDS with the development of transparent filmtraining which they brought back to the States. and AND TYPE SET AT the increase in collage in graphic design.Some of the prominent students from Weingart’s NON-RIGHT ANGLES. Further breakdown of minimalist aestheticclasses include April Greiman, Dan Friedman, is and Willi Kunz (b.1943). seen in the increase of the number of type

Weingart’s pupils further developed the style, for example Dan Friedman rejected the term legibility for the broader term readability. The increase in ornamentation was further developed by William Longhauser and can be seen through the playful lettering used to display an architectural motif in an exhibition poster for Michael Graves. Another strong contributor to the New Wave movement was the Cranbrook Academy of Art and their cochair of graphic design, Katherine McCoy. McCoy asserted that “reading and viewing The complexity of composition increased with the New Wave which transitioned well into computer developed graphic design. Complexity came to define the new digital aesthetic in graphic design. April Greiman was one of the first graphic designers to embrace computers and the New Wave aesthetic is still visible in her digital works.

overlap and interact synergistically in order to create a holistic effect that features both modes of interpretation.”

PUNK

Swiss New wave (or) Swiss Typography

Wolfgang Weingart’s work on Swiss Typography

olfgang eingart Wolfgang Weingart

is an internationally known graphic designer and typographer. He was born in 1941 in Constance at the northern foot of the Alps in southern Germany. In the late 1960s he instilled creativity and a desire for experimentation into the ossified swiss typographical industry and reflected this renewal in his own work. Countless designers have been inspired by his teaching at the basle school of design and by his lectures. The Museum of Design in Zurich is presenting a retrospective of Weingart’s work from May 7 to September 28, 2014. Weingart: Typography is the first exhibition in Switzerland which features his personal work as well as results from his teaching. Weingart wrote a retrospective book on typography, which Lars Müller Publishers compiled in a volume in ten sections, Weingart: Typography –– My Way to Typography, in 2000. Furthermore, several designers, Knapp, Susan, Hofmann, Dorothea, Michael,

collaborated on Weingart: The Man and the Machine. The book, published by Karo Publishing in 2014, is comprised of statements by 77 of Weingart’s students at the Basel School of Design during the period 1968–2004. From 1978 to 1999, Wolfgang Weingart served as the member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). Also he offered his services on the editorial board of the magazine, Typographische Monatsblätter, for eighteen long years. The honorary title of Doctor of Fine Arts was conferred upon him by MassArt in 2005. The American Institute of Graphic Arts recognized his creative genius and for his typographic explorations and teaching, awarded him the highest honor of the design profession, AIGA Medal, in 2013. The following year the Federal Office of Culture presented him the Swiss Grand Prix of Design award. He was nominated for the award for his life-long merits as a designer.

“

WHAT’S THE USE

of being LEGIBLE when nothing

INSPIRES you to take NOTICE of it?

12 Weingart Punk Typography

Wolfgang Weingart is credited with developing New Wave

typography in the early 1970s at the Basel School of Design, Switzerland. New Wave along with other postmodern typographical styles, such as Punk and Psychedelia, arose as reactions to International Typographic Style or Swiss Style which was very popular with corporate culture. International Typographic Style embodied the modernist aesthetic of minimalism, functionality, and logical universal standards. Postmodernist aesthetic rebuked the less is more philosophy, by ascribing that typography can play a more expressive role and can include ornamentation to achieve this. The increase in expression aimed to improve communication. Therefore, New Wave designers such as Weingart felt intuition was just as valuable as analytical skill in composition. The outcome is an increased kinetic energy in designs.

“I took ‘Swiss Typography’ as my starting point, but then I blew it apart, never forcing any style upon my students. I never intended to create a “style.” It just happened that the students picked up—and misinterpreted—a so called ‘Weingart style’ and spread it around.” Feminist movement in 1970s. The August 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality, a nationwide wave of protests, marches, and sit-ins, captured this spirit of optimism. However, it soon gave way to a backlash exemplified by the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed constitutional amendment that would protect women’s rights. It swiftly passed Congress in 1972 and was ratified by 30 states by the end of the following year. Still, it was unable to gain the 8 additional ratifications necessary by the 1982 deadline. At first there was widespread public support for the ERA by a margin of at least two to one — in theory, at least. In practice, the public was still very conservative when it came to men’s and women’s roles, and a growing backlash against the changes feminism represented coincided with a backlash against gay rights and abortion rights, as led by the newly ascendant conservative movement, particularly the Christian right women fighting for equal rights during the wing. feminist movement

Neville BRODY

“It happened at the same time as punk, which was probably the most influential thing to happen to me in London. The punk explosion pushed all of that out the window.” Neville Brody, born 23 April 1957, is

an English graphic designer, typographer and art director. Neville Brody is an alumnus of the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art, and is known for his work on The Face-magazine (1981–1986) and Arena magazine (1987–1990), as well as for designing record covers for artists such as Cabaret Voltaire and Depeche Mode. He created the company Research Studios in 1994 and is a founding member of Fontworks. He is the new Head of the Communication Art & Design department at the Royal College of Art. The Macintosh, or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers, manufactured by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984, by Steve Jobs and it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature two old known then, but still unpopular features—the mouse and the graphical user interface, rather than the command-line interface of its predecessors.

Neville Brody concentrated most on digital type of punk typography. During his studies, Brody moved into a central London squat, and found himself living next to trendsetting nightclubs and gig venues, as well as the singer from experimental post-punk band 23 Skidoo, whom he’d later create artwork for. He discussed the impact of London’s punk movement in his work for an interview.

When the Mac shipped in 1984 with built-in proportional fonts that you could see on screen with printers that printed the same fonts you saw on screen, it was an immediate impact on typography for everyday computer users. With the emergence of the Apple Macintosh in the mid-1980s, the first computer design software—Fontographer (1986), QuarkXPresss (1986) and Adobe Illustrator (1986-87)entered the picture. The avant-gar-

de, San Francisco-based Emigre magazine published by Dutch born Rudy Vanderlans and his wife, Czechoslovakian-born art director Zuzana Licko, was one of the first journals created on Macintosh computers. The Cooper-Hewitt has a 1994 cover of the magazine designed by Ian Anderson for the Designers Republic (or tDR), a firm Davidson calls “deliberately contrarian,” that was primarily interested in breaking with modern type.

As Postmodernism has been spread, the designer/typographer has changed radically his role from being a mere conveyer of meaning to an active participant in the communication process with the reader (Wild, 1992). New typography has understood that in order to be successful, it has to engage, involve and entertain readers. It has to leave them free to explore the opened meaning in the playful and dynamic pr-

ocess of constructing interpretation. Form has not longer been considered as subordinated to the function, but it contributes to activate the other side of reality: the readerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s emotionality. As a result, both brain and emotion of the reader are successfully engaged in the process which is very different from the authoritative and feedback-less Modernist way of communication.

Bibliography -http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/a-brief-history-of-the-postmodern-revolution-in-typography/68558/ -http://typetastingnews.com/2013/10/24/how-punk-changed-graphic-design/ -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Weingart -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Brody -https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women -http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac/1984-birth-of-macintosh-3498364/ -http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Personal/Macintosh.html -https://www.google.co.in/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&ei=nAwSVpDRCouruQTRsp2ACA&ved=0CBIQqi4oAQ