Turning revolt into style by Russ Bestley - ISBN: 9781526151322
Hardcover
Punk’s DIY ethos: revolution, style, and the graphic design industry.

Turning revolt into style

The process and practice of punk graphic design

$225.07

  • Hardcover

    288 pages

  • Release Date

    30 September 2025

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Summary

Turning revolt into style: The process and practice of punk graphic design is a comprehensive analysis of punk aesthetics and the subculture’s key watchwords of do-it-yourself, autonomy, and authenticity in relation to the professional practices and technological conventions of the graphic design and print industries in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781526151322
ISBN-10:1526151324
Author:Russ Bestley
Publisher:Manchester University Press
Imprint:Manchester University Press
Format:Hardcover
Number of Pages:288
Release Date:30 September 2025
Weight:814g
Dimensions:240mm x 170mm x 24mm
Series:Studies in Design and Material Culture
What They're Saying

Critics Review

‘Russ Bestley is someone who knows more – and has written more – over the last thirty years about punk, graphic design, and popular culture than Monsieur Mangetout has had odd dinners. In his latest book – Turning Revolt Into Style – he addresses two key questions: how did a generation of young, punk-inspired graphic designers navigate the profession; and how did significant changes in printing technology, labour relations and working practices in the design profession impact their work?
His aim, therefore, is to situate punk’s visual aesthetic both within cultural history and the technological, professional, and political contexts that materially shaped it. I’m pleased to say that he achieves this, producing a highly useful punk graphic design historiography in the process.’
Stephen Alexander, International Times

‘Russ Bestley’s Turning Revolt into Style is the fruit of the author’s long study of the graphic artefacts and practices of the punk rock era… More than an exercise in nostalgia, Turning Revolt into Style deserves attention for its documentation of some enduring, influential aspects of graphic culture.’
Eye

‘An important addition to the library of books about punk, and about punk graphic design. It does for the subject matter what many recent titles do not – it brings something new to the topic and expands what future discussions of it could be. By looking back on a social, cultural and industrial world vastly different from the one we inhabit today, Bestley covers not just the most notable and obvious things that punk changed in society and graphic design, but also the smaller influences it had through its process
and production.’
Punk & Post Punk, Nigel Ball

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About The Author

Russ Bestley

Russ Bestley is Reader in Graphic Design & Subcultures at London College of Communication.

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