Punk zine look
Kragen Javier Sitaker, 02020-11-28
(6 minutes)
In seeking an aesthetic alternative to the shrink-wrapped Apple Store
look so popular in modern UIs, I thought it would be inspiring to look
at old punk zines.
Reviewing old material
Chainsaw
Looking at the aesthetic of
Chainsaw I
see:
- lots of black
- text placed at random angles within irregular cutout shapes
overlapping backgrounds
- Xerox halftoning (or Gestetner duplicating) blacking out or whiting
out much of the photos
- hand-lettered text with amphetamine style
- photos also at random angles
- shagging pigs on the front
cover
- typewriter text because that’s what was available
- redrawn title every issue
- use of image as stencil over psychedelic color gradient like from
cheap posters
- budget constraints forcing B&W
- cartoon covers
- fluorescent color clash
- interspersed photos of fistulas and rectal examinations from a 1920s
medical book
Koleksi
Someone uploaded
Koleksi
to the Archive. Seems to be a punk zine from Malaysia from 1997 or
so. I see:
- pages of typewritten text with frames around them, sometimes broken
by pasted-over titles in slightly different font size
- a few different font sizes
- Xerox-saturated B&W photos
- typewriter-overstruck chars
- all caps, ????, !!!!
- sideways text
- typewritten text flowed around images
- letters maybe intentionally vertically displaced using the shift key
- everything in English, nothing in Bahasa
In a 2011 issue of
Keeema,
a comic about politics in the same collection, I see:
- photos as comic-strip panels with speech balloons
- all Bahasa, almost no English
- imitation logos to make fun of brands and politicians
- lesbians in hijab kissing
- orangutans on a motorcycle
- posterized photos
In
Dogged,
another zine from the same collection:
- walls of text in sans serif proportional font
- all Bahasa
- handwritten captions superimposed on a xeroxed photo
- line-art comix
Maximum Rocknroll
In an issue from
1992
I see:
- lots and lots of ads
- standard 3-column DTP kind of layout and formatting
- newspaper-like halftoned images
- Xerox halftoned images
- extensive discussion of gender dynamics and rape
- contrasty photos and drawings of naked women (the drawing, repeated
many times, seems to be the logo of the band Spitboy)
- columns of text pasted over backgrounds and xeroxed
- pullquotes with poetry
Homocore
Homocore was
founded by Tom Jennings of FidoNet and Deke Nihilson, and published
1988–91. The Internet Archive has preserved
some
even though Tom got sick of the internet’s shit and/or sold out.
I see:
Kill Your Pet Puppy
KYPP
is totally online. In the first issue I see:
- angled text blocks cut from other publications and pasted in (a
screenshot of sorts)
- running text in hand-lettered thought bubbles
- xeroxed photos of topless women apparently sucking something
- !!!!! (hand-lettered)
- collaged typewriter text at various angles
- Xerox-saturated photos of contributors, all using pseudonyms
- typewritten text on monochrome blue background photo
- photo with hand-drawn speech bubbles stenciling over a psychedelic
gradient
- watermarked album names behind typewritten text
- quoted cliché comics with replaced speech bubble text
- bright primary colors mostly on white
- an article about a problematic “new” recreational drug called Tuinal
(which turns out to be a brand name for a barbiturate cocktail sold
as a sleeping pill from the 1940s)
- a Xeroxed page from an anarcho-situationist leaflet from 1974 with
Stalin imploring you to support the British government
- doublespaced typewritten: ‘I’m positive the 70s will be given a real
shakedown in years to come, every moment dissected by people intent
on rediscovering its secrets. Where will they look? No doubt “punk
rock” will be celebrated and chronicled. But what of the lost years
of this decade, the first five. Will schoolchildren tronble at the
names of Gary Glitter or Slik.’
Generalizing
An overriding theme here is use of whatever is expedient for
communication: vanilla DTP layouts, typewriters, handwriting, Xerox
machines, Gestetner duplicators, collage, etc. Other common themes
include intentionally transgressing taboos, whether small or large;
deliberate scruffiness; social criticism; and maximizing intensity
rather than seeking or even accepting the sort of “tasteful restraint”
that connotes prestige in the cultures these zines were criticizing.
Modern zines commonly use the same design elements, which you can
interpret as an homage to the old punk zines, a clichéd imitation of
the form which by virtue of being imitative runs counter to the spirit
of rebellion and innovation that animated the original, as an attempt
to appropriate the credibility and cachet of the original, or just a
result of the authors having the same tools at their disposal.
What would we get if we were to apply the maxims of traditional punk
zines, as I’ve described them above, in the current historical
context? Typewriters and Xerox machines are, to say the least, not
expedient for communication today! Using the internet is expedient,
and so is taking photos and screenshots. And they can be in color
with very nearly the same ease as black and white. Handwriting and
scruffy hand-drawing is still expedient.
Of course when it comes to documents we have a Web-native vernacular
for such things, or really several now: plain-text mailing lists and
their archives; the GeoCities epoch of garish backgrounds, animated
GIFs, “under construction” signs, and <blink> and <marquee> tags;
README.md on GitHub; Yahoo Groups; Facebook groups; and so on. But
what I’m interested in here is user interfaces.
User interfaces are not documents. Their appearance changes over
time, and not in a predetermined way — rather, in a way that arises
from interaction with the user, who is in a significant sense the
coauthor of what they are seeing.
What’s the equivalent of the typewriter and xerox for user interface
design? Hypercard?
