Stylogenyin the style of Punk & DIY Zine

Counterculture · 1976–1986 · Western Europe, North America

Punk & DIY Zine

Also known as Punk graphics, Fanzine aesthetic, Cut-and-paste

The graphic voice of punk rock in fanzines, record sleeves and gig flyers: images and words cut from newspapers, typed or scrawled, pasted down and run off on a photocopier. Deliberate crudeness, ransom-note lettering and hijacked mass-media imagery turned cheap reproduction into an anti-professional statement of autonomy and dissent.

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A sample layout drawn from the style’s design choices, until its AI image is made.

01

How it works

  • Cut letters and words from newspapers and magazines and paste them into ransom-note headlines.
  • Hijack official and commercial imagery (the monarch, flags, adverts) and deface it with collage and slogans.
  • Reproduce on a photocopier and let toner speckle, dropout and torn paper edges show.
  • Mix typewriter text, marker scrawl and stencilled letters on the same page without a grid.
  • Default to black and white, adding at most one or two clashing fluorescent spot inks.

London and Manchester; New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Modular grid, Generous white space, Gloss & highlights, Chrome & 3D render, Floral & vegetal, Luxurious & glamorous, Calm & contemplative

Palette

  • #0d0d0d
  • #f2efe6
  • #ff2fa0
  • #f7e400
  • #d7191c
  • #8c8c8c

Typefaces

  • Ransom-note cut-out lettering

  • Typewriter faces

    Courier, IBM Selectric

  • Marker and stencil hand-lettering

  • Letraset dry-transfer type

Known for

  • Jamie Reid

    Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen and Never Mind the Bollocks, 1977

  • Mark Perry

    Sniffin' Glue fanzine, 1976–77

  • Linder Sterling & Malcolm Garrett

    Buzzcocks, Orgasm Addict sleeve, 1977

  • Gee Vaucher

    Crass Records

  • Raymond Pettibon

    Black Flag and SST Records

  • Winston Smith

    Dead Kennedys collages

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Punk & DIY Zine’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This stylePunk & DIY Zine1976–1986 · Western Europe, North America

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Teal Triggs, Fanzines (Thames & Hudson, 2010)
  2. Russ Bestley & Alex Ogg, The Art of Punk (2012)
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.