Lately we keep coming across these old issues of
Anarchy: A Journal of Anarchist Ideas... they are fucking rad!
Below is a nice description of how the journal came to be. Unfortunately, background information on Rufus Segar, the graphic designer/illustrator for the publication, is hard to find... anyone out there know of anything we don't know about? Hit us up if you do!
"In the early 1960s, the editors of Freedom Press, those stalwart protectors of the anarchist tradition in Great Britain, scented change on the wind. Young people, many of them students, were looking to the libertarian left to make sense of vast social upheavals in post-war London and other urban centers. The anarchist movement’s anti-authoritarian principles and clearly articulated positions on affordable housing, social justice, and inviolate personal freedom carried a strong resonance. Suddenly, the imprint’s brand of politically-engaged anarchism was no longer the métier solely of bearded Kropotkin scholars.
At the time, however, British anarchism’s most visible organ, The Freedom Newspaper, was anything but youthful. Founded in 1886 (by Kropotkin himself, no less) Freedom was decidedly stodgy in format despite its radical message. In 1961, one of the paper’s younger editors, Colin Ward, proposed a separate magazine designed to spark dialogue with new readers. The legendary serial Anarchy: A Journal of Anarchist Ideas was born. Ward encountered illustrator Rufus Segar at Malatesta Pub that same year, and the two cemented a working relationship that established a new voice and graphic identity for the UK anarchist movement. Segar lent his considerable talents to the magazine’s production team for the duration of its entire first series, creating all but a few of its 118 covers. His eye-catching designs telegraphed each issue’s core themes with bold directness and a healthy dose of graphic experimentation."
(text:
rectoversoblog.com) (images: some from
s1gnal.org... some from
rectoversoblog.com)
