All Mustard zine and website

Creating the All Mustard zine and website

Firstly, some context. This year is the 50th anniversary of Punk. It’s golden anniversary. 1976 was the year it all began with release of The Damned’s New Rose on 22nd October. Developing in parallel was US Punk but they had very different flavours.

As a movement Punk had a DIY ethos which had come from the garages and community halls that had birthed Punk in the first place. Anyone could pick up a guitar and start playing, and gigs were as makeshift as the music itself. A sound whose thrashing guitars, frenetic drums and angsty lyrics ignited jumping and pogoing, and set itself agains the status quo of slick rock and disco. And whose political edge gave voice to a generation of mainly young working class people who were fed up of being pushed down.

Then it was punk provocateur Malcolm McLaren and manager the Sex Pistols, his partner at the time Vivienne Westwood together and designer Jamie Reid who established some of Punk’s most recognisable aesthetics. As well as aiming its anti-establishmentarianism and anarchic energy at the Monarchy of the time which was representative of society’s inequalities.

In that same spirit, DIY printing and art took off, and with it the ‘Zines that could seed and share ideas – artistic and otherwise – in a quick, cheap and highly replicable ways. If there was ever a movement that harnessed creativity and resourcefulness, it was the Punk movement which could get people and ideas moving fast.

I have been so inspired by the Punk movement this year as I’ve discovered more and more of what happened in those early days – galvanising a social justice and political movement: a cultural intervention whose music influenced fashion and art too. And the surprising ways it has infiltrated society from modes of architectural design, to leadership, to creativity and ways of doing.

A conversation with someone who had read my piece Be Better, Be Punk encouraged me to write more about Punk. But I wasn’t sure a book was the answer. In Marshal McLuhan’s word’s, “the medium is the message” and I wanted to write and create something that felt true to the Punk movement. I wanted to make a Zine.

I wrote and designed the first issue of All Mustard in a day. Three complete ideas about the Kingdom of God – something that in my mind shares a lot of the same DNA with Punk and was always meant to be anti-establishment, defined as an ever-multiplying movement not a fixed destination. The next day I made a Google site and Instagram profile so that people could download copies, make their own Zines and get sharing. I’ve now got copies stocked in places including Rough Trade, Next Records and the Royal Society of Arts, with more places on the way. It’s easy to replicate and share both online and as a beautiful physical artefact that is keepable and fits perfectly in your pocket.