This practice-led investigation evaluates three generative design tools for active and tacit student engagement with postgraduate Service Design students, and their impact on the students' approach to complex design projects. In Service Design education generative design tools have a robust pedagogical role for efficient knowledge creation and student engagement, yet are still under-explored academically. The Learn 'n' link method delineates learning as an interactive dialogic practice for creative idea conceptualisation. The Zine Method is a visual ethnography approach that can be applied holistically to frame the problem area, propose a way forward, and prototype the solution. The Narrative Toolkit enables students to discuss and critique the narrative properties of existing designs and envision design outcomes. The students then use the Zine Method to qualitatively evaluate the methods' contribution to their understanding of complex design problems and service user experience, and their function in bridging the gap between user research and generative design processes.

Organised by the Punk Scholars Network, the First International Postgraduate Symposium was an attempt to consolidate the research that continues within this area of punk. Formed in 2011, the Punk Scholars Network (PSN) is an international Network that draws together interdisciplinary scholarly activity around the subject-matter of punk rock, and has been integral towards a number of recent academic conferences, including ‘Punk in Other Places: Transmission and Transmutation Symposium’ at Reading University, ‘No Sir, I Won’t: Reconsidering the Legacy of Crass and Anarcho-Punk Symposium’ and Oxford Brookes University and the forthcoming ‘Punk and Transgression Symposium’ at De Montfort University in 2015. The Network also has a panel on the 2015 ‘Keep is Simple, Make it Fast! Crossing Borders of Underground Music Scenes Conference,’ perhaps one of the largest punk/underground academic events in the world. 

Although the PSN is aware of the academic reputation of publishing post-doctoral work, it also recognises the importance that postgraduate research has in keeping research in this area relevant. Therefore, the First International Postgraduate Symposium was a means of bringing together an international array of scholars who are currently researching and writing in this area. The central task of this work, therefore, is to provide a space for postgraduates to publish work that is on going but is also of a high academic standard. More specifically, each chapter adopts an essentially analytical perspective so as to raise questions initially over the international punk scene, including its form, structure and cultural significance.

From its inception, punk, as articulated through its fanzines, was anti-elitist; positioning itself against self-indulgent, outmoded rock stars and the pretentions of rock journalism. 1 Pioneering punk zine Sniffin' Glue (July 1976) and those that immediately followed 2 sought an authentic form of expression to relate directly with 'disaffected kids' who comprised the demographic of punk subculture. Against the hierarchical structure inherent in mainstream media, punk zines showed their egalitarian approach by encouraging readers to submit work or start their own fanzines. Readers were urged to be active participants rather than passive consumers. Punk zines-and fanzines more generally-were liberated from many of the marketing constraints associated with commercial magazines and as such they could foster alternative forms of communication and editorial content. This enabled their creators and readers to define their identity, political leanings and culture autonomously rather than in response to consumerist dictates. In particular, fanzines encouraged individuals and groups otherwise excluded from the cultural decision-making process to be actively engaged in the creation of alternative culture. Mark Perry set a precedent, writing in 1976: ' All you kids. Don't be satisfied with what we write. Go out and start your own fanzines … flood the market with punk writing. ' 3 Other fanzines, such as Panache and Sideburns, then helped to embed this sense of autonomous production as a practical ideal. Interestingly, however, while early punk zines engaged with