Essay notes - Book - Punk The Whole Story

When it comes to punk; in the graphic design sector, without any doubt Jamie Reid comes up to mind, a true pioneer I must say. Although he was lucky or to say accidentally get to his job, I must say that Reid is a true pioneer whom designed the Sex Pistols’ sleeves (singles/ album covers).

Talking about being lucky, Reid whom loved football could have obviously played it professionally but he was rejected and there was when this have pushed him towards attending to an art school, just like almost every one of us.

Back then, when he was in school (London), Reid heard about the riots that were taking place in Paris (1968) which such protests whom started by students all the way consumerism, capitalism and order have finally spread within people working in factories until it reached almost around quarter of the population, and this is where Reid have had energized his anarchist beliefs more than they already were, due to all the slogans he kept in mind that the students in the French riots have built up.

Reid, later on in the beginning of the 70s, he has found a job in an anarchist printing press as where  he established himself there as such company printed a lot of media for different local groups, which includes the black movement and the women’s movement. Reid states that back then he was messing around with design, but as because they had no money, he was cutting up newspapers and doing collages, and that’s where punk got its looks from.
Such press that Reid was working in have been creating an absolute shock wave, and this is where a former class mate of his; Malcolm McLaren have contacted Jamie as he wanted Reid to work on a project that McLaren was on, which then eventually Malcolm have established the Sex Pistols and that is where the Sex Pistols’ materials got their visuals from, and let’s be honest; without any doubt, the music and the style are fit for each other in every single way.

Research -

Deborah (2008). Punk The Whole Story. London: Penguin Company. 162-163.

May 1968 events in France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_events_in_France.

Essay notes - Documentary Film - The Filth and The Fury.

During the seventies there was a lot of social problems going on around in different countries especially in England, as from the political sector before the elections, politicians promised a lot and done so few especially for the working class that the working class was becoming a higher rate of a poor class and a lot of identity loss was emerging among the people.

Since there was all the mentioned above going around, people were left with very few jobs or even worse, with no jobs at all and due to this people started to realize that if one wasn’t born in a rich family then he/she might as well give up on their lives as there was no one from the political sector that came up with a solution for such crisis.

All the scandals that were going on were creating a huge social chaos ending up with a lot of riots all over the place which were based on almost every subject you can think of. This naturally became hard times to live in England, and was clear enough that the old ways were not working at all, there was too much of social strive which made people feel powerless due to political incorrectness; so they had to create their own power, whatever power it was, people laid their hands on and there is where crime and hate emerged all over the country. People were not happy at all within all the decisions the government was taking right after enforcing multiculturalism which made English people feel less at home as immigrants were getting social benefits that English people paid for as if they were English and once again another social problem emerged within racism.

Problems being occurred in England, a very hard time English people were living during the seventies’ and as I mentioned above; people started to rebel and this is where Punk all started. Johnny Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, Sex Pistols singer) stated that he was never good with violence hence his weapon was words and as one may know such lyrics the Sex Pistols created were very anarchist, he also believes that sometimes things have to happen and other times they should, just like the Sex Pistols, they have had to happen and they did.

Rotten also explained how things were getting all together, one complimenting the other, just like his clothing style, he didn’t just wear torn clothes; yet during all the hard times there was even a garbage strike that took years and naturally a huge pile of bags full of trash was getting bigger by the minute, people started to get used to it or try not to concentrate on such thing like it’s not really happening, so instead of ignoring it Johnny made use of it and started to wrap himself in clothes that he used to find. 

http://waaw.tv/watch_video.php?v=N22HHW1XG7RM#iss=NzguMTMzLjExLjIzNA==

Essay notes - Documentary -Art of punk – Dead Kennedys – The Art Of Wilson Smith – Art + Music.

Going to the States, we find other great punk bands that emerged as well during the seventies as I have mentioned earlier that crisis weren’t only just taking place in England. USA was as well in a social chaos and as Wilson Smith (designer for Dead Kennedys) states that when he returned back from Italy, he was quite shocked with what was happening in society as for the same reason that English people had, people emerged against the government cause of scandals that were going around.

He wasn’t just surprised because people were standing up for their rights, but as from how the people’s attitude have turned upside down from being all vain and pompous to rebelling and this had to happen just in time when punk rock was growing excessively.

As punk was as well growing excessively in the States, designers were producing art works as well, yet as Jell Biafra; another Designer for Dead Kennedys who worked with Wilson Smith on artworks, explains how he used to design.

He basically had the same base as the English designers did, Do It Yourself. As an artist he stated that they didn’t really need sophisticated things just like any psychedelic poster but just like the Dada movement, where one just cuts out some few things from different mediums they used to find around and then glue them pieces together to create a composition.

But one must say that as rebels as the punk artists were (both musicians and designers) had just a little bit of a different idea about their composition; whereas Jell Biafra explains that to create something that looked good, all it took was someone who pops up with one amazing idea; and the best one idea that they base their composition on is the one that offends almost everyone who sees it.

Essay notes - Documentary - Art of punk – Black Flag – Art + Music

Keith Morris: Art, creativity, music, noise, flyers, posters, tshirts, tattoos. 4 bars – black flag.

Henry Rollins: When I saw the black flag logo, it did something to me but we had the same gut punch like reaction like wow, that’s, that’s heavy man, we saw the logo before we saw the band, it was the logo that affected me first, and it was quite impactful.

Flea: when you have the feeling of danger and this sense of commitment to art, like art and action coming together, and very rarely has to happen, it’s like a thing of a moment that’s very powerful, a sincere expression that can never happen again. People can pay homage to it, but it can never happen again, not that.
And they were such and artistically deep band, there were so much love and art in it you know? You can feel the work and the effort and intensity in the character and poetry.

Henry Rollins: One thing was that we were getting watered with whatever mediocre, whatever Eagles Hotel California, it was belated for us that you know when the Ramones came out, and the damned came out, we started hearing by the sex pistols, that’s what we wanted to do. 

Henry Rollins: the black flag had this amazing luck, they’ve got this great music, but they’ve got the guitar player’s brother Raymond who is this astonishingly, talented artist.

Keith Morris: you have this person, making the suggestion, that this is what we should call our band. And then all of a sudden, somebody else steps up, and that person standing up would be Raymond Pattibon presenting the logo with the name

Rapmond Patibone: *introduces himself* Hi, My name is Raymond Pattibone and I designed this thing

Blacks flag logo originated by one Raymond Pattibone, the amazing artist that became synonymous with unrest, chaos, rebellion and those pushing against anything you got.

Henry Rollins: And so many years ago, *wonders*’I’m so stupid*, I asked him (Raymond Pattibone) I used to live on his mother’s floor, so I used to see Ray all the time. We’re sitting in his mother’s sitting room, he’s drawing away and I’m like waiting for band practice to start or something, and I said um’ ‘what’s the black flag logo, what is it’ ‘It’s a flag’ *waving his hand*. Ray said: it’s like waving. And I’m like ‘ah yes, okay thanks’.

Flea: Black flag was an art band, they’re like a hard deep heavy art band, they didn’t play by any rules, and they did whatever they wanted, they played fast they played slow, they did everything, they moved they changed the whole entire time.

We used to collect black flag’s flyers on the east coast, a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox (photocopier) you know these distorted, smudgy, copy of a copy, these horrible looking but you’re like .. mannn *looks astonished and points at a poster*.

Henry Rollins: this band had a real edge, with this amazing logo, every cop in LA remembers that logo when Darryl Gates was a chief police and this artwork, he was such a manipulator, he knows what’s going to cause a ripple and cause unrest so he puts those Manson images up there. You can’t just put a portrait of Charles Manson especially on the way that he’s depicting him like as Jesus Christ, nailed to a cross. Do you know how much ? just ? How much grief you’re going to get from everyone on how much it’s “offensive”. And so Ray knew what he was doing to put Charles Manson on a punk rock flyer in Southern California, it has a lot of contextual tendrils that go out and legitimately upset people cause health infectors there’s nothing to laugh about. But here’s Ray kind of going like *have it*

Of course we wrote that, and multiple Manson flyer, it’s like we became a thing, and we used to use some of Manson’s terminology on the flyers, and it was a heavy thing that black flag was courting. But you’d get in a world of trouble for the flyer. I’ll be it Ray would give you 3 images to choose from and we’d go out put that on the flyer so it’s our choice what to put on our flyer, he didn’t make the flyer, he’d make the imagery, we’d make the layout. But the artwork you’d be like, wow, this is breath taking. You know this is not just going make people bring come to the show, it’s going to get us beat up if we put this up. And if you look at the punk rock flyer history at least in LA people were quickly trying to clone Ray’s Artwork. We’d be like aa there’s a Ray’s clone, oh another one, there’s a bunch of them.

Flea: I remember like black flag’s poster with the devil’s face on it and seen it all over Hollywood, just looking at it and be like ‘something’s going on here’ and its really intense and those flyers got me like something’s going on here that I don’t know anything about and its romantic, and its mysterious and heavy, I don’t know what it is but I want to know.

Keith morris: There used to be these piles of artworks, black and white, black and blue and white, and we’d be able to look like wow, you know just a zero win on an image, there was a lot of grind, a lot of sweat, there was a lot of darkness there was a lot of like twisted ideas

Flea: It was revolutionary, people were freaking out. Dedicating their lives to this art.

Henry Rollins: we were changing things, and we saw it from the church groups that protested us, the cops that used to come up to our shows and camp out outside our sst, we knew we were making a difference, and while I don’t think we were important, I knew we were up to something, and nothing made us think that we were a big deal at all, but we knew we making ripples on this calm water pool.

PowerPoint Presentation

Task 1 - Proposal

Shawn Aquilina Case

Mcast Art & Design – Mosta
Unit 6 - Critical Studies - Task 1_Proposal

The transition of music ganres from underground music to popular culture design.

1.       What do you intend to investigate? 

I am intended to investigate as how from music, a style in graphic design evolved. My study will be based on how punk/grunge design became a thing after the explosion of pop culture in the 70s, and from the style that the music adopted, fashion have followed and the style evolved as well in the graphic design industry both during the 70s and followed till the day of today.

2.       Why is the problem that you are investigating interesting in terms of practical/political evidence? Why do you considerate non-trivial?

The subject that I’ll be investigating will be relevant, as such style evolved somehow differently from how other styles have evolved, such as neat designs just like the grids evolved as from the beginning of writing/printing have always been based on how general people write such as from left to right; top to bottom which includes most of the world, excluding Asians which such writing can be read on every way possible and African/Arabic which one reads bottom to top; right to left and obviously publishing have always been placed on the paper’s spread and then evolved to be sectioned in different grids yet still in a formal way. My study will be significant to explain that in a lot of things, the un-traditional ways works as good as the traditional.

3.       What have other researchers/authors came up with that relates to your problem? 

As a subject that I’ll be investigating on, in my opinion has/had a lot of controversy around it as it was almost a now and then change which shook everyone, this reason was that the traditional ways were destroyed at a sudden moment and we all know that although change is good, it’s sometimes hard to accept something that you’re not used to.

4.       Work done so far (mention any important limitations in your work that you wish to overcome in the future)

I           must say that in the past years that I’ve spent in the institute; there was always a part in every scholastic year‘s work which I’ve done myself as such research was based on punk designs. This is obviously because I love such music and the style itself, which makes me work in my comfort zone. I have found some obstacles because of this, where I got to re-do my work in a formal way as it was thought to be careless, yet I had to understand that everyone has his own style and sometimes you’ve got to go with the flow just to at least learn the basics and the style we’re in these contemporary days.

5.       Work plan:

-  research for links & books that might be helpful in further studies

-  Go through links & books, read and save the most relevant information

-  See how many relevant work collected, search for more for future reference if needed

-  Read carefully relevant research and start documenting and rephrase accordingly in own words.