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 andand 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 himselfhimself 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.

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