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Turning revolt into style: The process and practice of punk graphic designis a comprehensive analysis of punk aesthetics and the subculture’s key watchwords of do-it-yourself, autonomy, and authenticity in relation to the professional practices and technological conventions of the graphic design and print industries in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
A groundbreaking analysis of the complex relationship between punk visual aesthetics and the graphic design and print professions, from the innovation of punk DIY pioneers to radical changes in the commercial design industry. These changes reflected not just the influence of an emerging cohort of young designers who aligned themselves with the new subculture but also the advent of new technologies, particularly in the printing industry during the early days of photocomposition and digital reproduction.
Drawing on interviews with leading punk and post punk designers including Malcolm Garrett, Bill Smith, Chris Morton, Steve Averill, Mike Coles, Bob Last, Rob O'Connor, Jill Mumford and Neville Bordy along with detailed archival and historical research, this book reveals the implicit tensions between a new creative vanguard and the design establishment, together with the opportunities offered by new technologies and dramatic parallel changes in labour relations and working practices.
Along with a close analysis of punk and post punk record covers, fanzines and other artefacts, Turning revolt into style charts the story of a seismic cultural shift thar was to have a lasting impact for decades to come. The text centres on two key questions: how did a new generation of young, punk inspired graphic designers navigates the music graphics profession the lates 1970s and early 1980s? And how did significant changes in printing technology, labour relations and working practices in the design profession impact their work during that period?
'Russ Bestley is someone who knows more – and has written more – over the last thirty years about punk, graphic design, and popular culture than Monsieur Mangetout has had odd dinners. In his latest book – Turning Revolt Into Style – he addresses two key questions: how did a generation of young, punk-inspired graphic designers navigate the profession; and how did significant changes in printing technology, labour relations and working practices in the design profession impact their work?
His aim, therefore, is to situate punk’s visual aesthetic both within cultural history and the technological, professional, and political contexts that materially shaped it. I’m pleased to say that he achieves this, producing a highly useful punk graphic design historiography in the process.'
Stephen Alexander, International Times
'Russ Bestley’s Turning Revolt into Style is the fruit of the author’s long study of the graphic artefacts and practices of the punk rock era... More than an exercise in nostalgia, Turning Revolt into Style deserves attention for its documentation of some enduring, influential aspects of graphic culture.'
Eye
'An important addition to the library of books about punk, and about punk graphic design. It does for the subject matter what many recent titles do not – it brings something new to the topic and expands what future discussions of it could be. By looking back on a social, cultural and industrial world vastly different from the one we inhabit today, Bestley covers not just the most notable and obvious things that punk changed in society and graphic design, but also the smaller influences it had through its process
and production.'
Punk & Post Punk, Nigel Ball
Introduction
1 Pretty vacant: Punk graphic themes
2 Material interventions: Punk graphic processes
3 Design it yourself: The punk diaspora
4 Your generation: Punk designers and the art departments
5 New sounds, new styles: Design and technology
6 A different kind of tension: Industry and the individual
7 Parallel lines: Into the eighties
8 Retro-spective: Influence and legacy
Bibliography