Political statements and punk rock: a David King retrospective highlights the colour of post-war culture

A cross, a serpent, a Union Jack, a cross-backslash – each of these symbols has its own loaded history, but in 1977 the graphic designer David King transformed them into the new, unified emblem for an alternative future, one built on the precepts of anarchism, pacifism and community-living. King made this symbol for Crass, an English band that created some of the most vitriolic and uncompromisingly radical music of the punk movement with songs about animal rights, anti-facism, feminism, and environmentalism delivered in ferocious English accents.

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If one marker of genius is an ability to make complicated things simple, then King’s design is just that. With a few lines he was able to reconstitute thousands of years of history into a powerful new emblem, one that was simple enough to scrawl on walls, flyers, leather jackets as it was throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. A powerful and instantly legible marker that you not only supported the band, but the hard-line politics they promoted.

The Crass symbol was King’s best-known creation, and as it has become less well-known today, so too has King’s wider work. That, however, is something the San Francisco Center for the Book is hoping to change with its new exhibition, 'David King Publications 1977–2019', a retrospective of small press publishing projects, zines, and graphic design work that King produced throughout his lifetime. It is a showcase for the work of an underrated artist, as well as a visual history of alternative print media and a documentation of the bands and nightclubs that made up New York and San Francisco’s subculture in the later half of the 20th century, and a blueprint for how to live a creative life.

‘David King Publications 1977–2019’

King was born in Essex, UK, in 1948 and at 16 enrolled in art school in Dagenham to study graphic design. There he met Jeremy Ratter (aka Penny Rimbaud) and Gee Vaucher, who later went on to form Crass. After graduation, King spent ten years working for a succession of London advertising agencies, before abandoning the corporate world for Dial House, ‘a self-sustaining anarcho-pacifist open house’ founded by Rimbaud and Vaucher.

As Matt Borruso, the curator of the show writes of King’s radical reconstruction of his life, ‘it is not a stretch to compare King’s journey from advertising to punk, to that of the fictional character Don Draper from Mad Men – exiting Madison Avenue for the West Coast and Big Sur’s Esalen Institute.’ His suit in the garbage, King moved to New York in 1977, where he joined the punk band Arsenal and started making flyers for clubs like Danceteria, Pravda, and the Peppermint Lounge.

He also met his wife and future bandmate Dione King, who describes the creative ferment of the time as ‘a real downtown community – everyone lived within walking distance of each other and all of the shows were in the neighbourhood. The rent was super cheap (my loft was only $125 a month) and there was a lot of artists and musicians living there. It was a real boom time creatively – Philip Glass was performing in the streets, there were dance performances in empty lots – there was just a lot going on and it was before there were art galleries or much else commercially happening in SoHo.’

In 1980, King, his wife and the rest of the band moved to San Francisco, where he continued to live and work until the end of his life. There, he created collages and dozens of photocopied zines like Suburbs of Hell and Too Many Zombies. By the early 2000s, he started experimenting with new forms of desktop self-publishing and print-on-demand books through companies like Shutterfly, Blurb, and Apple.

Even though King continually changed the formats he worked in, the style of his work remained the same with its collages of advertisements, bold graphics and colourful drawings. Speaking about King’s influences, Dione says, ‘he grew up in England after the Second World War, playing in very grey and bleak bomb sites. He found inspiration in the colour of post-war culture, such as Carnaby Street, advertising, comics, serial films, and later in TV and movies. He loved shadows and I think it was reflective of the darkness of the time in England after the war and the idea of transformation or magic – of bringing colour and joy into that bleakness.’

Finding joy among bleakness and passion among adversity seem to be the defining themes of King’s oeuvre, and what make it so inspiring. ‘Dave had a playful approach to life that I think you can sense in his work,’ says Dione. ‘He was very politically motivated and believed in ethics and the importance of political change and activism but always sought to express that playfully instead of making speeches. He was very impassioned but not angry, which I think is pretty rare. I think you can really sense that passion in the show.’

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‘David King Publications 1977–2019’ is at the San Francisco Center for the Book, sfcb.org, until 22 December 2024