David King’s Small Press Publications and Zines Celebrated in New Exhibition

San Francisco Center for the Book is presenting the first-ever survey of artist and graphic designer David King’s small press publications, zines, ephemera, and early design projects in its new exhibition David King Publications 1977–2019. 

David King (1948–2019) was an English artist, graphic designer, and musician best known for designing the Crass symbol. His many varied projects encompassed drawing, photography, sculpture, film, video, and radio plays. King was a core member of the New York no wave band Arsenal, and later the San Francisco post-punk bands Sleeping Dogs and Brain Rust. 

He generated hundreds of flyers for these bands and others during the period of 1977–1988, as well as creating logos, brand identities, and posters for nightclubs like Danceteria, Pravda, and the Peppermint Lounge in New York and the I-Beam in San Francisco. In the 1980s King made dozens of photocopied and offset zines that often accompanied his music projects. 

In the early 2000s he began self-publishing highly idiosyncratic short-run books with subjects ranging from his photographs of J.G. Ballard’s home to rock formations seen in early Western films. In the later 2000s several books on his graphic design and photography were released through Colpa Press, &Pens, and Gingko Press.

On view through December 22.