Reid himself was politically active from a young age and got involved in the student protest movement of 1968, organising student occupations and demos with his friend Malcolm McLaren, who later worked with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. They were motivated by opposition to right-wing politics, socio-political reform and emotionally charged by rock music.
Reid founded the ‘Suburban Press’ in 1970 which began as a community news sheet but soon developed into a political magazine featuring news of local corruption. In 1976 he got back with Malcolm McLaren to work on promoting the punk rock band The Sex Pistols. Reid produced his most scandalous and famous works around this time, all of his work around this time was fuelled by the political views of both Reid and the band, which helped to start the punk movement.
With his lo-fi approach—years before the existence of Photoshop, or any other digital design tool—Reid effectively captured the chaos of the anarchist spirit by visually attacking existing compositions and elements that he remixed into violent contrasts in shape, colour, and form. If modernism, which represented the establishment with its orderly type and graphics, was at one end of the spectrum, then Reid’s loud and messy post-modern interpretation of the punk aesthetic couldn’t have been more absolutely its opposite.
A lot of what Reid did was very new to a lot of people as art/design wasn't maybe a thing that everyone could do but this styles and methods helped make it more accessible for the masses.
He used methods like: Photocopying, lurid colours, torn up edges, collage, use of lettering cut up or torn out of newspapers (ransom note style), screen printed, recycled or deconstructed imagery.
Safety pins, overprinting, cluttered pages, deliberate “mistakes”, and unpredictable historic references.
Use of subversive, anti-establishment, anti-capitalist slogans created shocking often deliberately offensive juxtaposed images.
This was the birth of the Punk, or D.I.Y aesthetic created both an evolution and a revolution in the world of modern design. This lead to the punk style becoming an important feature of the Post-Modern movement.
Punk after Punk
Punk has continued to influence people in since the late 70's it is still very much part of contemporary culture but it is less about the music and more about the aesthetic. It has created a lot of influences as well, big fashion brands like Supreme that have been going since the late 90s are massively influences by punk music which has helped to keep the punk aesthetic alive in youth culture.
Collage - DR.ME
DR.ME a design studio from Manchester underwent a year long project to produce a collage every day. The reason that I am referencing this is that you can see how collage has change over the years from Punk collage into this more contemporary style of graphic art. The work shows that collage is very much still relevant today and they also showed that collage didn’t have to be images cut out of a magazine – it could be more than that as long as it was placing elements together. This shows the freedom that collage work has and it can be basically done by anyone this is why punk art work was so accessible it was because it could be lots of elements together and as long as it made sense that meant it could be used a gig poster, album art work or a fan zine.
Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80 / Fan zines
Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976–80, presents over 450 items from well-known and obscure bands, designers, venues and political groups. While the Toby Mott's Collection is now carefully archived, documented and looked after, in 1970s London these posters, badges and zines, formed an integral part of Toby’s punk identity.
"Back then this stuff wasn’t made to be preserved and kept"
“You look back to 1976 and 1977 and then jump forward to the New York Book Fair or Cultural Traffic and you see the connection between today’s zine culture and people doing stuff online. The draw is the idea that it’s autonomous and you take control by creating something that doesn’t rely on a major publisher or record company – that’s the link and why it’s still so current"
Sniffing Glue - Fanzine
There was no comfortable position for punk in mainstream culture when it exploded in England in 1976. The mainstream media could not accurately speak for punk, and punk could not represent itself through the mainstream media without radically compromising its own nature. Sniffin Glue, the first punk fanzine, was produced by Mark Perry in July 1976 a few days after seeing US punk band The Ramones for the first time at the Roundhouse in London. He took the title from a Ramones song 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue'
The zine was designed so that it could it put out quickly so there was no real design it was just a case of putting all the information together and getting it out, so there is no real design which gave a lot of freedom to the people producing the work which was also what the punk area stood for.
Unit Editions’ Action Time Vision – an alternative look at the aesthetics of punk.
http://www.itsnicethat.com/features/action-time-vision-unit-editions-publication-04-08-16
Printing Processes used
The punk movement would use anything that they could get their hands on to produce posters, zines and art work as the idea is to be able to do it yourself. So by using new paper cut outs, stencils and photocopying you were easily able to reproduce masses content for flyers for events, this also made it very cheap. As the stock it would have been printed on would usually be bright as a lot of the content would just be black so the paper would be adding the colour helping to catch peoples eyes.
These are all methods that I have looked are methods that can be used to make a punk style poster. Using a combination of these methods will help me achieve a punk style even if it has been reproduced digital.
Label making
Stencils
Ransom note style
Collage style
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