Graphics Incognito

45 amateur, trendy, and of-the-moment. The irony, What We Do Is Secret the subject of spirited disagreement and post-hoc of course, being that over the subsequent two speculation both by budding hardcore punks decades punk and graffiti (or, more precisely, One place to begin to consider the kind of and veteran scenesters over the past twenty-five GRAPHICS hip-hop) have proven to be two of the most crossing I am talking about is with the debut years. According to most accounts, ‘GI’ stands productive domains not only for graphic design, (and only) album by the legendary Los Angeles for ‘Germs Incognito’ and was not originally INCOGNITO but for popular culture at large. Meanwhile, punk band the Germs, titled simply ��.5 intended to be the title of the album. By the time Rand’s example remains a source of inspiration The Germs had formed in 1977 when teenage the songs were recorded the Germs had been by Mark Owens to scores of art directors and graphic designers friends Paul Beahm and George Ruthen began banned from most LA clubsclubs aandnd hadhad resortedresorted to weaned on breakbeats and powerchords. writing songs in the style of their idols David booking shows under the initials GI. Presumably And while I suppose it might be possible to see Bowie and Iggy Pop. After the broadcast of a in order to avoid confusion, the band had wanted My interest has always been in restating Rand’s use of techniques like handwriting, ripped London performance by The Clash and The Sex the self-titled LP to read ‘GERMS (GI)’, as if it the validity of those ideas which, by and paper, and collage as sharing certain formal Pistols on local television a handful of Los Angeles were one word. Due to some miscommunication large, have guided artists since the time of Polyclitus. I believe that it is only in the qualities with punk and street-art aesthetics, it teenagers became punks practically overnight. either with the label or the printer the ‘(GI)’ was application of those timeless principles that seems to me more interesting to allow the ironies Beahm and Ruthen renamed themselves Bobby placed away from the band name to read as the one can even begin to achieve a semblance in this passage to remain in place. For, what Rand Pyn andand Pat Smear, and soon found two other title of the album. of quality in one’s work. It is the continuing means here by a ‘timeless principles’ of ‘quality’ punks, Lorna Doom and Donna Rhia (later Belinda As for the cover itself, the original idea relevance of these ideas that I mean to design is, of course, modernism or, to be more Carlisle of the Go-Gos), to play bass and drums. to use the circle was thanks to Nicole Panter, emphasize, especially to those who have grown up in a world of punk and graffiti.1 specific, that form of graphic modernism first With Pyn on vocalsvocals andand Smear on guitar, early the band’s friend and manager, who had been (Paul Rand) exported to America with the diffusion of Bauhaus Germs shows were largely comprised of Iggy- inspired by the geometric designs of Pablo jazz pedagogy in the wake of WWII and subsequently inspired stage antics and improvised noise, but by records of the 1970s. Bob Biggs, the owner of popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s as the 1978 the band had added drummer Don Bowles, Slash Records, had originally wanted to render 2 so-called Swiss ‘International Style’. For vanguard recorded two singles, and refined their sound into the band’s name in rotting meat and jellybeans in American designers working in the mid-1980s a tight, proto-hardcore snarl. the manner of a Frank Zappa record. Thankfully, such work was largely felt to be exhausted and out At this time Pyn re-christenedre-christened hihimselfmself DarbyDarby he was overruled. Who was responsible for the of favour, associated with the bankrupt corporate Crash and the band signed to Slash Records, finer points of the �� cover design is less clear. establishment of the Vietnam era and a vision a local label that had emerged from the punk One can only speculate that the use of rules and of the designer soon to be supplanted with the fanzine of the same name. In 1979 the Germs the spatial tension created by the off-center arrival of the Apple Macintosh. Thus, in arguing enlisted their friend and Runaways guitarist placement of the circle are the results of design for the ‘continued relevance’ of modernist design Joan Jett to produce an album whose fifteen songs decisions made when the actual photo-ready principles in �� Rand was clearly (and one live track) would become the �� LP, artwork for the cover was created, perhaps by registering a certain degree of professional and one of the most iconic records in the history someone trained in the trickle-down International artistic anxiety.3 of punk rock and the crucible for American Style of the late 1970s paste-up artist. The con- Indeed, by 1984 the mainstreaming of hip-hop hardcore. This iconic status is due in no small part fusion regarding the placement of the ‘(GI)’ was itself already well under way, and first-phase to the suicide of enigmatic frontman Crash in late would also support this possibility, suggesting a punk, particularly in America, had long since 1980 via a heroin overdose. Equally important— purely formal decision made without consulting given rise to the kinetic, complex graphic forms and perhaps inextricable at this point—is the the band. and more radio-friendly sounds of new wave striking cover for the album, which features a In any case, by the time of the album’s then dominating the airwaves. Written from this stark black background with a large process-cyan recording the blue circle was already inextricably moment of simultaneous emergence and decline, blue circle in the lower right corner flanked on top associated with the Germs and its charismatic Rand’s remarks open up an interesting cross- and bottom by two white rules and simple all-caps lead singer. Darby Crash had taken up the dialectic or gap in graphic design history.4 Helvetica reading ‘GERMS (GI)’ along the top. blue ‘circle one’ as a potently ambiguous symbol, Welcome to 1984 One point of crossing, I want to argue, occurs in Alongside the bright flourescents, ransom note frequently reproduced on flyers and armbands the adoption of certain modernist design tactics typography, and familiar collage techniques of worn by the band members. As a point of pride When I graduated with my MFA, everyone in my from within the American musical underground Jamie Reid’s graphics for the Sex Pistols, the �� fans and friends might also be given a ‘Germs class was given a copy of Paul Rand’s �� of the early 1980s, particularly post-punk and cover represented a watershed moment for punk burn’, a round cigarette burn on the left wrist �� asas a partingparting gift,gift, andand everever sincesince I have found hardcore, a more aggressive, Reagan-era breed of aesthetics.6 administered by a band member or someone who the above quote from the introduction to be punk then emerging from the nation’s suburbs. Contributing to the overall mystique of already had a burn. In a sense, then, by the time troubled by a number of implicit ironies. Writing For designers working in these ‘primitive’, non- the record were the cryptic, parenthetical the �� album cover was created the blue circle in 1984, seven years after �� mainstream, non-professional idioms a whole album title and the fact that the cover carries had already been ‘designed’ and disseminated and at a moment when established New York range of visual strategies were up for grabs, and no designer credit, although the producer, throughout the local LA scenescene asas anan abstractabstract art galleries were aggressively collecting the certain ostensibly modernist moves, particularly photographer, and engineer are listed on the back representation of the band and its network of fans likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, graphic abstraction, were pressed into service along with photographs of the band members. and devotees. Which is just to say that the lack of Rand points to punk and graffiti as two of the in shaping the collective visual language of What does �� mean? Who was responsible for a designer credit on the �� album is in perfect most debased examples of graphic form-giving: underground music and culture. the �� cover? Both of these questions have been keeping with the larger, collective mythos of the

* Notes to this piece are on p. 95 46 47 Germs, a sense of secrecy and occulted know- Get In The ‘Van’ stencils, silkscreens, and the like. The graphic ledge that only increased after Darby’s death, equivalent of a powerchord, it is this blunt, when a white version of the original �� cover The logic of what I am calling Graphics Incognito immediate quality that made possible the rapid design appeared on a 12" EP of singles tracks is perhaps nowhere more clearly evident than in dissemination of the Black Flag bars as a kind released in 1980 under the title �� the career of Los Angeles’s other legendary punk of shibboleth for hardcore punk. In suburban ��. pioneers, Black Flag. Originally formed in 1977 American high schools of the early 1980s a This sense of mystified origins embodied in by guitarist Greg Ginn and a shifting lineup of hand-scrawled t-shirt bearing the Black Flag the unnamed designer and the use of primary singers, Black Flag was the first of the American bars could serve as a passport to an entire colors and abstract forms is, of course, also hardcore bands to tour extensively. Beginning in underground subculture. a hallmark of modernist graphic abstraction, 1981 with the addition of 19-year-old Washington extending back, at least, to the Bauhaus. DC transplant Henry Rollins on vocals and the Indeed, it is tempting—for me, anyway—to think release of the classic �� LP, the band of the blue circle of the �� cover as one in a embarked on a rigorous touring schedule, criss- ‘lost’ series of three that would include versions crossing the States and Europe repeatedly over with a yellow triangle and a red square to the next five years. Living in near poverty and complete the famous Bauhaus sequence. known for their Calvinist, DIY work ethic, the The parallel that such a series would suggest is band streamlined their life on the road to a strict not, I want to stress, merely incidental. In an essay calculus of load-in, performance, and travel. on the nineteenth-century precedents for the So doing, Black Flag paved the way for the Bauhaus grammar of primary colors and shapes, American underground, mapping out both the J. Abbot MMilleriller hahass explainedexplained the waysways inin whichwhich physical routes and touring protocols still used the Bauhaus’ reduced formal vocabulary has by independent bands today.8 itself become mystified as ‘the childhood graphic In retrospect, Black Flag’s deterritorializing design.’7 So too, the Germs ��, has come to approach seems only natural. For, Greg Ginn, be understood as an originary moment or primal the driving force behind Black Flag, released scene for American punks. Like the Bauhaus the band’s albums on his own label, SST, which In this way, the Black Flag bars and, by triangle-square-circle, the blue circle from he had started shortly after high school as Solid extension, the nomad ideology of early American the �� cover has become a kind of shorthand State Transformers, a company specializing in hardcore, draws on many of the energies of for American hardcore, known to every fan and custom-designed ham radio components. Already graphic modernism of the early avant-garde, reproduced in the form of countless variations intimately familiar with the globalized, hands- particularly De Stijl.9 Like Black Flag, Theo van to this day. on, democratic communications technology of Doesburg took his message on the road, making While for Abbot MMilleriller the modemode ooff graphicgraphic ham radio, Ginn was able to take its networked his way to the Bauhaus, lecturing extensively, abstraction represented by the Bauhaus’ logic and apply it to the mechanics of punk rock. and, in 1923, staging an outrageous ‘Dutch triangle-square-circle was, regrettably, adopted Graphically, the prime vehicle for this enterprise Dada’ tour of poetry and performance with by corporations and removed from its original was the Black Flag bars, which were spraypainted Kurt Schwitters, Vilmos Huszar, and his wife, utopian aims and social and political context, by the band throughout LA andand reproducedreproduced oonn Nelly, on piano. In a way similar to early punk I want to suggest that in the early 1980s countless show flyers, t-shirts, records, and fanzines, van Doesburg published the �� something of this initial promise (as well as its every other artifact having to do with the band. journal and, later, the Dadaist review �� implied anti-fascist politics) is reanimated in Like the Germs burn, the Black Flag bars were in runs of only a few hundred copies, relying the Cold War context of early American also adopted as a popular tattoo by friends on word-of-mouth, letter-writing, and personal hardcore. For both groups—early modernists, and legions of fans. contacts for distribution. Van Doesburg even and hardcore punks—the disseminative logic Designed by Ginn’s brother, the artist published under a variety of pseudonyms, of abstraction served an important, grassroots Raymond Pettibon, the Black Flag bars are an including I. K. Bonset (loosely ‘I am mad’ in function as a blunt instrument for culture example of hardcore abstraction par excellence. frenchified Dutch) and Aldo Camini (something formation. As ‘Graphics Incognito’ the �� As if fetched from the coarse geometric forms like ‘out with the old’ in Italian). In fact, ‘Theo cover exemplifies this form of hardcore of De Stijl and early modernism, the four black van Doesburg,’ like ‘Henry Rollins’ and ‘Darby abstraction and suggests an alternative to rectangles were originally meant to be a stylized Crash’ (or ‘Paul Rand’, for that matter), was itself traditional modes of design authorship, pointing representation of a waving flag. Once placed a made-up name. to the open-secret of the collective, collaborative alongside Pettibon’s unmistakable drawings This kind of radical, schizoid self-fashioning nature of all graphic design and the productive for the band’s flyers and record covers the bars is a crucial component of Graphics Incognito. reserves that remain to be tapped in design quickly shed any referential quality. As a signifier Famously, in 1982 Black Flag encountered legal history. It is, in effect, the logic of the logo, for the band, however, the bars were instantly troubles with one of their distributors and were, but in a context that is resolutely anti-corporate, recognizable and, most importantly, easy to for a time, prevented from recording under their anti-capitalist, and politically radical. reproduce using techniques like homemade own name. Undeterred, SST released �� 48 49 Raymond Pettibon, Black Flag bars (c. 1978)

Theo van Doesburg (logotype) & Vilmos Huszar (device) for �� magazinemagazine (1917)(1917) Muriel Cooper, logo for MIT Press (1963) ��, a double LP compilation of early Flex Your Head Bauhaus (including its often overlooked early think of the incredibly varied and massively material with the various musicians credited, bohemian, mystical, utopian phase) not simply influential musical output of the band and the but with the band name blacked out on the cover. By way of clarification, and perhaps as a way to available, but tangible to an entire generation of myriad ways that the terrains initially opened up Less a group of individuals than a constantly further complicate this non-linear, recursive designers educated in the wake of May 1968. by hardcore have enabled underground music revolving cast of characters, Black Flag saw historical model, I want, briefly, to offer a formal in America, from Riot Grrrl to the recent crop of numerous lineup changes, and at any given time comparison. Like certain strands of modernism, underground bands that have turned to lo-tech releases circulated with present and former later forms of American hardcore have received electronics and folk instruments.11 In this way, members listed side-by-side. Prior to Kira a considerable amount of justified criticism for the Bauhaus’ vocabulary of primary shapes and Roessler joining the lineup Greg Ginn even played their masculinist bias, and I think it is crucial to colors can be seen to have spawned not only to bass on 1984’s �� LP under the assumed acknowledege the central roles that women have a certain type of corporate modernism, but to any name Dale Nixon. Ginn has since recorded with a played in the story I have been telling thus far.10 number of ‘bastard’ or ‘soft’ varieties.12 number of post-Black Flag bands using the name, For, as Abbotbbot MMilleriller rremindseminds uus,s, the sstorytory ooff and in more recent years a number of hardcore- early modernist abstraction is also a story of bred musicians like Brian Baker and Dave Grohl graphic design’s origins, that, through De Stijl, Muriel Cooper’s other great contribution to Walk Among Us have freely adopted the Dale Nixon pseudonym inevitably takes us back to the Bauhaus and graphic design is the MIT Press logo, and it is to get around contractual obligations with major its pedagogy of primary colors and abstract here that I want to offer a kind of argument by To acknowledge the function of abstraction in labels. A searchsearch on the websitewebsite www.allmusic.www.allmusic. shapes. Rather than see this origin myth as juxtaposition. Set side-by-side, the MIT Press logo American hardcore of the early 1980s not simply com reveals an extensive, 20-year career for the something simply to be abandoned, sidestepped, and the Black Flag bars bear a formal resemblance as some vague parallel to or self-conscious phantom bassist. or embarrassed about, we might instead start by that, I like to think, is not simply coincidental. quotation of early graphic modernism, but rather considering the more material ways it has made Or, rather, I want to suggest that the homology as a return or reanimation of those initial, radical its way into the larger discourse of graphic design between the two sets up a kind of vibration that impulses requires not only a different model of and in so doing begin to rethink the various ways can begin to point us in a number of directions design history, but also a rethinking of the very it has been constructed and put to use. simultaneously. Cooper designed the MIT Press notion of abstraction and its construction as an logo in 1963 while running her own studio in origin myth for graphic design. For this, I want to Boston, and, in 1967, joined the Press as its first briefly turn to the critical theorist John Rajchman, art director, pioneering new directions in book whose discussion in his book �� design, including��and rereads the idea of abstraction through the the Bauhaus book. While at MIT Press Cooper writings of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze: also founded a special experimental initiative to explore computer typesetting, book arts, and Deleuze’s view of the ‘space’ of abstraction is, in short, not based on the great ‘not’ modes of self-publishing inspired by the example —on the absense of figure, image, or story … of ��. In 1973 Cooper he identifies an abstraction quite different went on to co-found the MIT Media Lab’s Visible from the self-purifying kind—that of those Like the unnamed designer of ��, Language Workshop, and over a 20-year career ‘abstract machines’ that push art forms beyond and beside themselves, causing their ‘Dale Nixon’ can be understood to stand as a conducted groundbreaking research into the very languages, as though possessed with cypher for a set of larger, mobile, collaborative use of typography and graphics in the dynamic the force of other things, to start stuttering arrangements that cut across time and elude representation of information in interactive ‘and … and … and’. He connects this more traditional notions of direct authorship. media and interface design. stuttering abstract ‘and’ not with dying or Both Theo van Doesburg and Black Flag were As a potentially feminist point of origin, If we allow, for a moment, the proximity of heroic self-extinction but with a strange anorganic vitality that is able to see in ‘dead’ committed to rupturing the surface of bourgeois then, I would point to Muriel Cooper’s landmark the Black Flag bars and MIT Press logo to lead moments other new ways of proceeding. normality, and the tactics I have been describing English-language edition of �� us simultaneously backward to the Bauhaus and And this sort of vitality, this sort of —strategic anonymity, pseudonym, and graphic �� by Hans M. forward, toward the complex, networked terrains abstraction, he thinks, is something of abstraction—were used as a way of disseminating Wingler, first published by MIT Press in 1969 explored by Cooper at the Visible Language which we may still be capable, something still with us and before us.1313 their radical message at all costs and on and in a smaller, expanded paperback edition Workshop, the connections I have been making multiple fronts simultaneously. This rhizomatic, in 1978. By any measure the book is a tour de between the DIY tactics of early American As Rachjman explains, this conception of networked logic, I want to argue, is the signature force of graphic design. Set entirely in Helvetica hardcore and early modernist abstraction will, abstraction is not grounded in the Platonism lesson that the graphic abstraction of early with the tight margins and rigorous grid system hopefully, become more clear. For Cooper, of a taxonomic tree that moves clearly from American hardcore learns from early modernism of the International Style, it is a mammoth, as well as the avant-garde of the early 1920s founding principles to particular instances, without even knowing it. To acknowledge this comprehensive collection of primary sources and American hardcore of the early 1980s, the rather, for Deleuze abstract space is rhizomatic, ‘return of the repressed’ requires a model of and photographs bound in a black slipcase with rhizomatic or networked logic of abstraction ‘a space that includes a force or potential that design history that would allow for crossings, ‘BAUHAUS’ set in all-caps vertically along the makes possible a set of mobile relationships, constantly submits its branches to unpredictable, multiplicities, and correspondences that escape left hand side. Often referred to as ‘the Bauhaus temporary alliances, and hybrid forms that even monstrous variations.’14 As a description the generally-accepted periodicity and lines Bible,’ the book—as a totemic object, as much continue to be vital and productive. In the case of Graphics Incognito this notion of a strange, of influence. as anything else—made the radical ideas of the of the Germs and Black Flag one need only vital abstraction that ‘sees in “dead” moments 52 53 other new ways of proceeding’ and generates NOTES of American punk and hardcore is still very much ‘monstrous variations’ conjures an image from 1. Paul Rand,�� (Yale(Yale UniversityUniversity in the process of being written. See especially: Press, New Haven, 1985), p. xi. Maria Raha, �� the critical discourse around graphic design in 2. Olympia, WA punkpunk bandband The Gossip wearing �� (Seal Press, 2004); the 1990s that I think deserves some revisiting custom Germs-meets-Missy Elliot t-shirts, 2006 Steven Bush, �� —that of the zombie. (Photo: Associated Press). (Feral House, Los Angeles, 2001); and Michael 3. For further evidence of Rand’s persistent Azzerad,zzerad, �� In a 1995 essay Jeffrey Keedy coined the crankiness tempered—it should be noted—by an �� term ‘Zombie Modernism’ to describe figures expansive grasp of the rich and varied history (Back Bay Books, New York 2002). like Paul Rand who—as in the passage with which of graphic design practice, see also Paul Rand, 11. See Ian Svenonius’s article in this issue. 12. Despite Rand’s arguments for timelessness, I began—maintained the continued relevance �� (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1993). A glimpseglimpse atat the shelvesshelves ofof the the recent wholesale redesign of his UPS logo of modernist design principles in the face of a graphic design section of Hennessey & Ingalls, and Saul Bass’s AT&T logo in favour of a more postmodernist formalism then dominant in the Los Angeles’s premier art, architecture, and design homogenous, three-dimensional, ‘desktop icon’ field of graphic design.15 In reclaiming Zombie bookstore, reveals that Rand’s anxieties weren’t type aesthetic suggests that the corporate entirely unfounded. Adjacent to the Graphic investment in the graphic modernism of an earlier Modernism as a positive term I want not simply to Design and Typographyypography sshelveshelves iiss a new,new, equallyequally generation is coming to an end. In a final irony, counter Keedy and endorse Rand, but to rethink large neo-graffiti section titled ‘Urban Trends’. Rand’s last logo design was for Enron, whose the originary reading of abstraction on which 4. For a discussion of this transition, see spectacular financial collapse in 2001 unravelled it’s image of benign corporate paternalism, revealing both of their positions rely. Rather than see a Rick Poynor, �� (Laurence King, London, 2003), the company to be what all corporations are: single timeless, universalist, rationalist set of especially Chapters 1 and 2. For the notion of fragile human constructions. principles (whether good or bad), I would want to cross-dialectics I am indebted to Experimental 13. John Rajchman, �� (MIT Press, argue, following Deleuze, for an understanding of Jetset, whose exploration of the unexpected Boston, 1998), pp. 60–61. correspondences and perverse legacies of modernist 14. Rajchman, p. 62. abstraction that is generative, multiple, hybrid, graphic design parallel my discussion here. 15. Jeffrey Keedy, ‘Zombie Modernism’ in and ‘monstrous’ from the start. This version of 5. In the following discussion of the turbulent ��34, Spring 1995. Reprinted in Steven Heller Zombie Modernism (call it version 2.0) is always career of the Germs I am relying on the admittedly and Philip B. Meggs (eds.), �� sometimes unreliable oral history provided via the �� (Allworth Press, New York, already historically embedded, corrupted, and first-person testimony collected in Brendan Mullen, 2001), pp.159–167. In the early 1990s Heller was impure, drawing on the energies of the past and �� reacting against the popularity of the kind of dense, taking surprising new forms that aren’t reducible �� (Feral House, Los layered, ‘postmodern’ design work then being published in unfortunately-titled books like to simple postmodern quotation, parody, or Angeles, 2002). See also Marc Spitz & Brendan Mullen, �� Rick Poynor, �� pastiche. �� (Rivers Press, New York, 2001), (Booth-Clibborn, London, 1991). The Graphics Incognito of early hardcore pp. 204–210. My thanks also to Nicole Panter and abstraction exemplifies this generative, zombie Glen E. Friedman for answering my questions regarding the �� and �� covercover logic, and, at least for this designer, functions designs. as an alternate, very personal point of origin. 6. The situation in Europe is a bit more complex To say that I first learned about a certain kind of and, it seems to me, more self-aware, particularly modernist abstraction and the culture-forming in British post-punk’s various borrowings from the early avant garde. I am thinking, in particular, power of graphic design from the Germs and of Peter Saville’s Futurist-derived design for New Black Flag admits the possibility of a graphic Order’s 1981 �� LP, as well as the ‘generic’ design history that has both many beginnings Helvetica of PIL’s later 1986 �� and many possible futures, not just those outlined �� releases. These references are more properly in the growing catalog of graphic design history ‘postmodern’ in the sense of being self-consciously books aimed at solidifying a canon of key figures ironic or parodic. In the case of early American hardcore the connections to early modernism are, and a timeline of important dates. At a moment I think, much more blind, spectral, and unknowing. when anxiety about the professional status of 7. J. Abbot MMiller,iller, ‘‘ElementaryElementary School’ in graphic design seems to be driving a fair amount �� of critical debate and pedagogic decision- �� (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000), pp. 4–21. making, I want to make a case for the value of 8. For a brief discussion of the importance the pseudonymous tactics, collaborative modes, of Black Flag to American underground music and productive energies of Graphics Incognito as that supplements the argument I am making here, see Clay Jarvis, ‘On Second Thought: Black Flag an alternate model. Rather than shoring up the —My War’ in �� magazine, 2003 (http://www. boundaries of the porous discipline of graphic stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=344). design with appeals to a renewed professionalism 9. For my discussion of the more radical, or the market value of ‘the designer as author,’ transgressive aspects of Theo van Doesburg and De Stijl I am drawing on Michael White, �� Graphics Incognito might, instead, offer us �� new, undisciplined, and as-yet-imagined ways �� (Manchester University Press, forward. Manchester, 2003). 10. No less than graphic design, the history