Russell Bestley
Alex Ogg
Voyageur Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2012, English
Nonfiction, Graphic Design
10 x 11.25 inches, hardcover, 224 pages, 900 color photographs
ISBN: 9780760344101
Suggested Retail Price: $40.00

From the Publisher. Punk rock gave birth to an art movement that was little appreciated at the time but soon became influential around the globe. This is the first book to chronicle the art of punk style, from concert posters and flyers to fanzines and record sleeves, T-shirts, buttons, comic books, and much more. The story begins with the godfathers of punk—the Velvet Undergound, MC5, the Ramones, New York Dolls, and Patti Smith—and the distinctive aesthetic these bands launched thanks to impresarios like Andy Warhol. Punk broke big in 1976 and 1977 with American and British groups such as the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Clash, the Germs, and more, and continues today with bands like Green Day and Rancid. The bands created a reactionary, do-it-yourself art designed to shock, amaze, and stand out from the blandness of the 1970s. This groundbreaking style continues to impact design, music, and fashion today.

On 1 book list
Rick Poynor

You probably had to be there to gain maximum reward from this intensive immersion in British, American, and international punk graphics from the mid-1970s to the present—the most complete visual survey of its kind. Russ Bestley and Alex Ogg were fans and Bestley is now a design educator with a Ph.D. devoted to punk graphics. Their almost dispassionately scholarly text is spliced with eye-witness accounts by other punk participants, and the pages of the book vibrate with enough record sleeves, posters, flyers, and fanzines to make your eyes hurt.

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