goodbye june 2:42 AM

classes are over, i have almost fully replenished my hearts from overworking myself through the summer [why yes we have been playing zelda, why do you ask], & i have been going out & seeing friends & staying out late & enjoying myself! this has been good.

i learned today that there is a paper shortage in the publishing industry! i do not have Cold Hard Facts to back this up but it was from a friend who works for a real publisher. we talked printing & production over greasy thai noodles & i thought a lot about what that means, which is to say: despite the fact that my view of the world has inarguably grown out of my use of the internet, the Real World is Real. books are made of paper & paper is made of trees & there are all sorts of reasons why anything in that chain could cease functioning & take everything down with it. there are all sorts of things that i take for granted & i have been trying the last few months [years, etc] to become aware of those things. i have more recently been trying to become more aware of those things that are invisible to me but are real & important factors in my work & my study. like this paper shortage.

it made me feel out-of-touch in a terrible way to hear that. i missed being involved in the industry, despite the fact that if i really did have to deal with this, it would likely be in a capacity where i was forced to cut other corners to work around it. i would likely be asked to produce lower-quality products in some way due to this problem. & so by the same token, being unaware of these things is due to the fact that i don't allow myself to [or i don't have to] compromise the quality of my own work.

we are moving technically tomorrow but i'd say in two days because i haven't slept tonight yet. thursday. we are moving thursday & then there will be a whole month of moving-in & getting-things-ready & decorating & having summerparties. i am a bit nervous but i am also excited. i have Big Plans. i want everything to work out.

i wish i had something to show you but i don't, not really. i started working on a few projects here & there, but ultimately they ended up getting frustrated. or i got frustrated & they were the casualties. i decided that i have earned the right to not do anything for a little while, until i can think again & make & do in a way that makes sense & doesn't feel forced. it has been good to have designated STOP time. this is a thing i should work more on scheduling in future.

so there's that. this is what i am doing during my STOP time: eating, drinking, zelda. moving. packing. not as much reading as i'd like [though i'm working on it]. lots & lots of watermelon. incubating & slowing. it's been nice, & i know that when it isn't anymore, i will be ready to get back to work. [probably in a week or two. after the 4th for sure. this is my estimate.]

thesis proposal presentation notes + writeup 12:47 PM

so i promised you some big update before, & so far i have not delivered.

sorry about that. i've been a little busy getting things together for my thesis proposal presentation [during which i learned a few things, like how to phrase what i mean so people don't misunderstand*], & also finishing up a marketing proposal for a fictitious small press, & also starting to pack for our BIG MOVE [we are moving to brooklyn in about a week! well i am. sasha has been living in brooklyn but he is also moving. we are moving to a new place together. you get the idea] so blogging has fallen to the wayside a little.

what i had wanted to do was post here what i was going to present in class, & it might be a good idea to get it all down anyhow, so i'll do my best. i had this handout that was itself an example of the kinds of things i want to make this year, & i'd really rather post photos of that than have digital copies, so you'll just have to sit tight on that.

anyhow. here's about what i said, more or less, in my proposal presentation on tuesday.

+ hello! i'm skyler. nice to meet you. i'm in this program by way of an undergrad degree in classics & literature followed by a brief stint in publishing, & that's about where i'm coming from.

+ we've all been hearing a lot about how "print is dead". by the mere fact that you're reading my handout [well, not you, dear blog reader, but my audience at the time] in print we can see how "dead" it really is.

+ the problem is not that some arbitrary medium is "dead" or not. the problem is that graphic design, which has up until recently been solely print, now has at least two media (print & digital) to utilize. digital media has become incredibly prominent & accessible, & our dependence on print is necessarily shifting. as designers, we all now must make conscious decisions whether to utilize print or digital media in or for our work.

+ [at this point, i put up a slide with images of the hypnerotomachia poliphili, montagne + vallate + strade x joffre, & house of leaves.] what we're seeing here is that print has always been able to be innovative. the hypnerotomachia poliphili was printed around 1499. this work demonstrates that the value of print objects can lie in their typesetting, in the form of the ink on the paper, or the "tome"-ness of the thing: think about infinite jest & how reading that, how lugging that heavy mass around, is a badge of honor.

+ [here, i put up a slide with images of photonica's HOTO magazine {scroll down in link} & uncut & unopened books.] here's another innovative-&-not thing as it relates specifically to books. hoto, a magazine put out by the japanese stock photo company photonica [now bought out by getty], did a number of different, interactive print issues. issue 2 was the selection issue, in which every set of pages was perforated. in order to read the issue, you had to choose which perforations to open—& in so doing, you chose the path you wanted to take to read the book. certain paths were no longer possible if you made other selections, because you had to tear the book open to make those selections. but this isn't a new thing at all. when books were first printed, they often were sold "unopened", with the signatures still folded. you had to read the book with a knife. [this led to the books being "uncut", a look we now replicate with the deckle edge. see my post ages back on this.] although this used to be Just How Things Were, now, this can be incredibly effective at creating an interactive bond with the medium & the message.

+ [here, i put up a slide with images of a HAVE YOU SEEN THIS FLYER & a sketchbook/organizer that's based on the old mac gui.] the third example i have are these two very contemporary pieces, both illustrating a subversion of form. with the sketchbook specifically, it draws on the fact that it is NOT digital in order to succeed. these two examples embrace the nature of print as print, embrace their function [or lack of, or their supposed function], & communicate simply but incredibly effectively.

+ [here, i put up a quote from frank chimero's post i linked to in an earlier blog post. i said basically the same thing he is saying here & also that i said in my post.]

+ [here is the misleading slide—see below for clarification.]

+ so this is the big question & the crux of my thesis. i want to explore what makes print successful as print; what ways print media can be used to shine & sing & be the most effective communication it can be. to do this, i have to start with a ton of research. articles, books, yes, but also looking at what's being made—so, observational research. i'm also planning to hold a number of interviews with designers, design studios, and design educators about the thought & design of print works; to complement that, i will interview "end-users" of the product [so, readers or non-designers] & find out what works for them. i will look at everything & read everything & find as many examples of innovative print work as i can.

+ what i'd like to find out is whether there are specific ways in which print can be used effectively most of the time; if there are any "rules" to creating these things. what ways can print demonstrate its value as print? above, i have shown at least three ways [the heavy, dense design that seems to auto-value itself; the interactive design that becomes an experience in & of itself; the referential & subversive design that delights in pushing the boundaries of its supposed form], but i know there are more. my goal is to define a set of properties exhibited by most [it would be nice if it could be all, but i'd settle for 85%] of these works, & then create a series of innovative print pieces that utilize those properties.



after presenting, i received a lot of good feedback. the first thing people seemed to say was that this was too subjective. & they are right: it is very subjective. but what i hope to do is get as much data through interviews & surveys that those subjective things become rules. if enough people agree that tearing open pages works as an effective property of interactive print design, that then becomes one of my properties to work with. HOWEVER, i do understand that context is everything. the act of tearing open pages could be incredibly effective in one instance & confusing or off-putting & completely ineffective in another. attempting to define the ways these pieces are effective will be part of my definition of their properties.

daniel said something about how the interactivity was really key to this whole thing, & i think he was totally right. i wanted to get away from that & broaden my field of research, but what really interests me is interactivity in print. as a reader & a consumer of design, i get really excited when i can have a meaningful, interactive experience with a print object. i want to see who else is doing this & how they are doing it & then do more with it on my own. the 'value' question is really pushing me along & i know there are other ways to demonstrate value than interactivity, but maybe i should start with just that.

also i should probably find another name for it than "interactive print design" because "interactive" seems to be a term that is inherently digital. there are so many reasons i think that itself is bogus but it'd probably be more effective to come up with a different name than to try to fight the current on this one.

so i think that's it! now i have ALL SUMMER to work & plan & maybe start some of this research / doing interviews / etc etc.

also moving. that's a big one.




* there was a slide i showed that had the question "how can print objects earn the right to be printed?" & that was probably the worst phrasing i could have possibly used. it was meant for me to use as a lead-in to talking about what i wanted to do with my thesis project, but it ended up provoking more like moral questions. "printed" is not the right word either. what i had meant was: how can we design print objects that take full advantage of the medium, that provide a full print experience? this is not the same thing as the sentence i put on the slide. at all. my bad.

an ice-cream interlude 4:47 PM

there has been far too much thesis-seriousness around these here parts.









there. that's better.

brief update 5:10 PM

we are watching the x-files [which i have never seen; my only previous interaction with the show was when i was in third grade & at my friend charlotte's house for a playdate & she wanted to watch it but the theme song was too scary so we turned it off] so i can't stay long.

a real update [or series of updates, as is usually the case] is forthcoming, i promise.

for now, feast your eyes:



why yes that is my thesis proposal as a tiny tiny booklet! thank you for noticing!

MORE LATER. you could cut the suspense with a knife, i know.

gooooooooal!!!, or, visualising data 2:48 PM

let it be said right now that i am one of the least sports-oriented people you will ever know. i follow tennis when it is in season & sometimes baseball because the men in my life watch it but that is it. this world cup thing? i think it's neat & fun but i haven't actually seen a game this year. [this may change in future.]

so when i came across this feature from the guardian entitled the World Cup 2010 Twitter Replay, i wasn't sure what to expect. probably some bracket nonsense. but imagine my delight when i saw this instead:



the website is a really fantastic way of visualising data (twitter posts) over time. i love how you can see the excitement wax & wane & wax again over time [no one cares about posting during halftime; everyone explodes as soon as a goal is scored]—it is actually a sped-up replay of the game from the audience's point of view, which is [at least in this instance] perhaps just as important as what actually happened in the game.

& now i hear france v uruguay is on. better check the twitter play on that one.

oh dear 12:54 PM

WHAT IS THE DEAL SKYLER YOU ARE ONLY POSTING WORDS WE WANT SOME PICTURES TO LOOK AT ALREADY GOSH, i know, i know, dear reader. i will work on that. for now, have some more words [though they might make you cringe]:

i came across this a couple days ago but it totally fits with that huge post i put up about print, specifically the part about newspapers: the new york times ran a letter to the editor about blogs.

here is a short snippet of the letter in question [emphasis mine]:

"Your column left mostly unanswered several questions that really should be addressed before we go much further into the swamp of online “journalism.” It dealt with the standards of blogs, as though we all agreed on what a blog is and is not. I spent 45 years at The Providence Journal, and I still do not understand them. Nor do I like them. ... I think we would all benefit if we just dropped the word “blog” and went back to simply putting out the newspaper, which we used to know how to do."

from a man who is a retired deputy executive editor of the providence journal.

this is another part of the 'problem' of print dying / not dying / etc. there is a major shift between the people [younger, more flexible] who embrace the new media [& i use this term loosely], who are able to move their thinking & see possibilities & not just that things aren't the way they used to be; & the people [older, more steadfast] who cling to relics & lament the passing of ways.

as long as there is still a large and vocal population demanding that we "[go] back to simply putting out the newspaper, which we used to know how to do", we will never move forward.

i hope that the new york times published this letter with the intention that it would be polarizing: while some readers would no doubt agree with its sentiments, it was rebuffed elegantly if briefly by jill abramson, the managing editor of the nyt; & the rest of the readers, who understand that we can move past the misguided and fearful [for in the same breath, this man admits he doesn't understand & thus doesn't like this new 'blog' thing] thoughts of those who used to control these media & form something new & different, something that makes more sense in the world as it exists now.

with god & the devil in the details it's getting a little crowded 10:45 PM

sometimes i get myself up on a blogging roll & this is just one of those times i guess.

sorry. maybe i'll try writing some of these in advance & saving them for later. patience is not my strongest virtue.

i may have mentioned this here before, but ever since i was small, i have been known to 'overcomplicate the diorama'. it should be clear what this means & also in what period of my life it was coined. i like to make big problems for myself & then think they need to be far more detailed & complicated than they do & then i like to have these big panic attacks right before the thing is due because it isn't good enough & then i get through the panic attack & do it & it generally works out one way or another.

you'd think after so many years of this i'd break the cycle but you'd be wrong.

but so i know that this thesis thing is going to be Kind Of A Big Deal. [unnecessary capitalization for emphasis!] & i know that if i don't get together a framework or a set of rules & guidelines for the project i will be miserable all year + however long it takes me to finish the thesis. & i don't want to do that, & i don't want to put my friends & family & other beloved ones through that.

i'd been thinking about this a lot, especially since i also know that the thesis is not just a sole project but kind of a whole of parts comprised of work from other courses. or, that my topic will help define my work in every way for the next year. & knowing that i am basically just starting out in design, this is a terrifying thing. how can i create a subject for myself that is limiting enough to create some sort of capstone piece that i can also use as proof that i am productive [& potentially employable] as a designer but also open enough that i continue learning & growing as a designer & as a person?

i have already defined what i do not want this project to be, & doing that was a step towards creating this framework. while talking about something with sasha earlier, i think i've come up with another piece, & that's what i'm interested in.

in my post about jeunet's film micmacs [below, possibly still on this page], i wrote about details & how rewarding they can be. this is a thing i keep coming back to. i absolutely love when you can tell attention was paid to details, when little parts can subvert a form, or when they add a whole new layer of meaning to the thing. sometimes it's about expecting your audience not to pay attention to your details, evoking a feeling of deja vu, which is also lovely. in book land, this sort of subversion is done fairly often in text, but it also happens in design. some of my recent favorites that do this are jesse ball's [& his wife's] book vera & linus [in which the numbering system is another layer of meaning] & jonathan messinger's hiding out [in which the whole book is full of secrets, or 'decoys', like a short story hiding in the copyright page].

last semester, i took type 2, in which we created a series of pieces that all played by the rules of one visual identity system. what i had wanted to do was something like this: a subversion of form, a way to encourage the user to pay attention to detail. what i ended up with was something like its opposite: a new form in itself that has its own rules, unconventional as they might be.

so here's the framework that i've been toying with: learn how to make beautiful, elegant, fully-functional things. then go back & find all the places where details & surprises & secrets can hide & plant them there to grow. acknowledge that your audience may not be sharp enough always to catch the details, & make your work accessible to them, too; but give your patient & thoughtful audience something rewarding.

this seems simple but to me deceptively so. first of all it requires me to be able to prove my competence as a designer by merely creating beautiful functional things—this is probably going to be the hardest part for me, but something i want to push myself more to do. i need to get myself to learn some boundaries & ways of creating 'real' design. & then i need to be able to go back & make it interesting, make it fun.

this has something to do also with the expository essay i wrote for class last week, which set up four groups into which design falls: good effective, good ineffective, bad ineffective, and bad effective. the first part of each term is completely subjective & usually more aesthetic; the second is objective & has everything to do with consideration of problem & solution. i of course want to strive for good effective design; lately i've been feeling like a lot of my work could really easily be sorted as good ineffective or bad effective [which i might place as having higher value than good ineffective], & having the form or the group specified here for all of my thesis work might help me work out how to bring my work to that level.

so, now for this week's homework, which is to write a potential thesis statement. here goes:

It is not a coincidence that the idioms 'God is in the details' and 'the devil is in the details' can have the same meaning: anything important manifests in the details. This thesis strives to emphasize the power of details in print design. Through careful planning and design of the whole, combined with minute attention to detail, it is possible to create a single work that speaks on multiple levels, depending entirely on the user's own attention to detail. In a world where much design is focused on a 'big picture' and not on details, where subtlety is forgotten entirely in pursuit of loud, abrasive communication, this thesis will prove that there is still value in designing with and for the details.

or something like that. something i have just learned while writing the above: i had better come up with another way to say 'detail' or 'details' if i am going to keep with this topic because otherwise it is going to get very repetitive very quickly.

my thoughts on why print is not dead, or, SKYLER SHOULD WRITE A DAMN BOOK ALREADY 6:56 PM

last night, sasha had a reading with like eight other people near union square. the event was for the most part uneventful, but after it was over, two of our friends & we went to get banh mi for dinner. as we were walking out, dai [one of the aforementioned friends] & i started talking about books, & the 'death of print', & what that means, & i have been thinking a lot about some of the things we talked about & have decided to write some of my thoughts here. namely:

+ print is not dead.

+ at least not with regard to books. for magazines & newspapers, it is a different story.

+ this is because these media [more so for newspapers] have been unable to place value on themselves. what is valuable in the case of newspapers & magazines is not the object but the content: the information. once that information is available without cost [on the internet, in myriad ways], there will of course be resistance to purchasing an object containing the same information. where is the value in that?

+ the answer is: the experience. i vastly prefer the experience of reading the new york times as a physical object to reading it online. i find i read more, i retain more information, & i find the whole thing far more enjoyable. however, as i mentioned to dai last night, i also believe that this is not a problem of medium but of format: if the new york times' website layout encouraged the same kind of ease-of-reading as their print newspaper does, i might have the same feeling towards it.

+ so newspapers have essentially put themselves out of business by placing value on their information, then allowing that information to be disseminated free on the internet. niche newspapers & magazines—that is, where there is no other venue for that specific information to be disseminated—still are probably just as profitable as they ever were. yet the value remains on the content, & not on the object.

+ another thing to keep in mind: people are still reading. in fact, overall, they may be reading more: demographics in which book sales have typically not been very high are probably also demographics in which internet literacy is extremely high. i do not consider this to be a 'problem', as some death-of-print enthusiasts do.

+ this is because i believe that it is possible, & SHOULD NOT BE DIFFICULT from solely a design perspective, to encourage people to move from digital to sometimes-print back to digital.

+ with books, however, the medium debate is only just beginning, & i think it puts authors, publishers, & designers in a position to either embrace & shape the future or cling to relics & fail.

+ for books have a very different value than newspapers or magazines. while of course there is value placed on content [you might be more willing to pay more for a highly-recommended, culturally important, life-changing piece of literature than for a drugstore romance novel, for example], there is also value placed on the object.

+ this is where parallels drawn to the music industry tend to fall flat. while i believe that publishing will see a similar split as the music industry did—that is, that there will be demand for two parallel items: the quickly-consumed digital format & the longer-lasting physical object—the experiences & benefits granted by music & books are totally different & it is difficult for me to agree that what happened exactly to the music industry is what is going to happen to publishing.

+ here is why: music has traditionally been a social medium, from prehistoric drum circles to classical concerts. even with the record player & radio, as music entered the home, it was still social, if only by virtue of being loud & filling a space that probably contained more than one person. it seems as though it was only with the advent of headphones & portable music devices—the walkman, the ipod—that music has become a solitary medium: you listen to music alone, yourself, even surrounded by hundreds of other people. & this shift in participation is definitely related to the success of 'instant', quickly-consumed digital-format music, especially when the archaic forms [records, tapes, even cds] do not lend themselves as easily to the solitary.

+ this being said, it should be clear how the same problem of value that the newspaper industry is currently seeing also influenced the music industry. as mp3s were just beginning to be spread through the internet, the riaa took it upon themselves to shut down sharing—which, we have seen, was ultimately unsuccessful. they have taken a lot of criticism for this, but their failing was not so much in trying to control the market as it was in their inability to perceive value. as file-sharing took off, value was intrinsically placed on the digital file—the content. at the same time, the physical object necessarily declined in value.

+ but this is also not entirely true. the physical object as everyday object—traditional cds, tapes, etc—declined in value. the physical object now had to prove its value as more than just the content. & in some cases, cd design & cd booklet design was enough to prove value & sell copies. in most cases, however, this meant the rise of the special-edition lp or other added-value physical objects. people started buying vinyl again, because that physical object became an art object & had increased value.

+ EDITED TO ADD: but another thing i meant to say here but couldn't really tie in is that the concert [or, music as social medium again] is totally totally gaining in popularity. there seems to be a trend now where the music experience is best in two parts: the digital, instantly-consumed part that you can listen to anytime, anywhere; & the concert experience, where you personally interact with the music & musician[s] in question. & i think this has a lot to do with the fact that our everyday music experience has become more solitary; value is thus placed on any social format that can establish value the solitary form can't grant—such as the concert.

+ alternately, the value again is in the experience: being able to listen to whatever you want whenever you want; seeing a band you love play the music you love live, very close to you.

+ SKYLER I THINK YOU MIGHT BE GETTING CARRIED AWAY i hear you saying, but i promise i will bring it all back soon!

+ so, ok. with books, we are beginning to see the rise of quickly-consumed digital format items, aka ebooks, as we did with mp3s. however, it is worth noting first that the experience of reading is & has generally always been solitary, with the exception of parents reading to their children. you read alone, even if you discuss what you read with someone else. nothing that ebooks are doing is going to change the fact that literature is a solitary medium. [there's one less shift books have to make than music did.]

+ also please note that ebooks are nothing new. they have been making the rounds on filesharing & torrent sites for years, maybe even decades. let's take a look at one of my favorite sites, the pirate bay. [& ignore their pirate dating for now. you can come back to it later.] there is a whole category for ebooks. but if we look a little closer, sorting by most seeds, we see that the most popular ebooks are magazines & how-to guides for the average techy dude. only about five of the titles on the first page [so five of thirty] are actual books published by major publishers; most of those are from john wiley & sons.

+ judging from this little experiment, it seems as though some nonfiction & especially how-to [or, wiley's imprint, "for dummies"] books are falling along the same way that newspapers have. with no value placed on their form or object & all value placed on their information or content, once that content appears digitally & is shareable for free, there is no way to get that value back.

+ what this experiment also means is that fiction books, including the harry potter & twilight series—mentioned here specifically because they are mass-market hits—are less likely to be shared digitally. [at least by the test example of the pirate bay.] not to mention that i think most of the formats that can be read by ereaders these days have some form of drm on them. [i am not a fan of drm, as you could probably gather from what i have written here so far.]

+ but that is because there is value in the object for those things. when the last harry potter book came out, i had a lot of fun riding the subway & seeing how many copies of the book i could spot. my total was very low, but i attribute that to the facts that a.] i was not riding at peak times or immediately after the book was released; b.] most people probably read the book the night it was released, in bookstores or at parties or in their home; & c.] the thing is a massive book that people are not inclined to lug around. this last is really what i mean, & part of what i loved about frank chimero's tumblr post i mentioned here last.

+ the physicality of a book object is part of our experience in reading it.

+ so this brings us back to what i said before, about how publishers & authors & designers now have new challenges to face. the new way of looking at books will have more consideration of content & object than there currently exists in most publishers' business models. there will be more of a consideration of value than there currently exists. & i also believe that as ebooks become more & more commonplace [which is still slow to come, given that we now expect everyone who reads ebooks to purchase a multi-hundred-dollar electronic device on which to read them], there will be more value placed on the physical object. designers can create books that are art objects & bring the value of the book to both content & object. [publishers will have to realize their place in the new world, which i argue is to bypass booksellers & sell directly to readers instead of buyers at b&n, borders, etc, but that's neither here nor there in this piece.]




this was a very long way of saying HEY LOOK I HAVE IDEAS ABOUT THIS THING THAT I SORT OF KNOW SOME THINGS ABOUT, & that maybe somewhere along the way this might become a potential thesis topic. seems like it's less a design thesis than a research / writing thesis, which is probably to be expected, as that's about where i come from. but TUNE IN NEXT TIME, when i will write about my idea for what could definitely be a design thesis!