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Chicago- based 'zine Punk Planet. (Courtesy Punk Planet) |
| Punk is more than dirty type and distressed xerography, though;
it's an ethos that has kept a counterculture alive for two decades.
by David E. Brown "Punk isn't just about music," says Daniel Sinker, the editor of the Chicago-based zine Punk Planet. "Punks are painters and photographers and video artists and designers and tattooists..." Superficially, at least, its influence is visible everywhere, from the improvised collage on the Sex Pistols' first record cover in the Seventies to David Carson's deliberately chaotic design for Ray Gun. Punk is more than dirty type and distressed xerography, though; it's an ethos that has kept a counterculture alive for two decades. Its spiritual core--a staunch do-it-yourself attitude and radical politics--informs not only the loud, fast music, but an incredible breadth of creative expression as well. The April issue of Sinker's zine, a thick, well-designed bimonthly usually full of interviews and stories about music, is devoted to the art and design that have come out of punk rock, as well as the punk that has gone into art and design. There are interviews with some of the heroes of the subculture--Winston Smith, the San Francisco collagist whose logo for the Dead Kennedys is still a kind of secret graphic handshake; record-cover and poster designer Art Chantry; and Seth Tobocman, comic artist and cofounder of the influential zine World War 3. On the design-world side of things, there's a long conversation with House Industries, the type foundry best known for turning punk graphics into type, and a profile of Frank Kozik, whose Day-Glo posters helped define the look of alternative music. Amid this diversity of media and voices is a common thread--the pursuit of independence, where success means evading the mainstream of culture and business. "So many people want us to peddle their fonts for them," House Industries' Ken Barber says. "It's not that we don't want to help other people, but we just try to give them the same advice that we follow ourselves. Do it for yourself. That's where you're going to find the satisfaction." |
Keywords:
'zine, punk
