This Is Hardcore—The Huge Impact of a Niche Movement on Graphic Designers Today
You might not know the music, but designers have certainly taken notice of this small but visceral movement from the late ’80s
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By Emily Gosling
For the uninitiated, hardcore was a subgenre of punk that has since become most famed for its more political movements (that’s political with a small “p”), including many fans’ adoption of a lifestyle that embraced gender equality (to an extent), veganism, and a tee-total “straight edge” policy that meant no booze, no drugs, and sometimes even no sex.
Many posit that said tee-totalism was born of the “x” marked on the hands of many young fans who wanted to go to shows but were too young to drink, so staff knew not to serve them. But that didn’t stop them from a joyfully outlandish embrace of the music, and often some very, very wild moshpits, bruises, and general lunacy.
The hardcore movement and the bands that exemplified it has been documented in many a zine, and a new book celebrates one in particular, Good and Plenty, published as a “labor of love and fandom” by Zion, Illinois’ Gabe Rodriguez. Zooming in on its seven issues produced between 1989 and 1992, Hardcore Fanzine: Good and Plenty is a beautiful and fascinating little tome produced with contributions from graphic designers and design educators Ian Lynam, Nate Pyper, Briar Levit, Ali Qadeer, Gabriel Melcher, and Kristian Henson.
Published by Draw Down Books, the book examines the zine with a focus on its graphic design and typography…
