ebooks & design: big, bigger, biggest 11:49 AM

no pictures this time. just a lot of words about a few things that could change the publishing industry in bigger ways than anyone is talking about.

earlier this week, amazon made a huge announcement: sales of kindle ebooks have surpassed hardcover sales. everyone in the world picked this story up, believing it was a Big Deal.

in reality, this is not a big deal. there are so many factors that go into purchases of ebooks & purchases of cloth [hardcover; stay with me here] books that it's completely misleading to claim that the rise of ebook sales has anything to do with physical book sales & their rise or decline. in fact, i haven't heard anything saying that cloth sales are down.

what this news really means is that ebooks are a real medium that we need to take seriously, which is a thing that we have known for a long time already. this is only a big deal if you have been living under a rock with your fingers in your ears, thinking that if you wish hard enough digital media will disappear in a puff of fairy-dust. even then, you probably don't think it's a big deal—you just need to wish harder.

this would be a big deal if other factors were reported: how many transactions of ebooks took place [are individuals purchasing dozens of ebooks at a time?]; what kinds of ebooks sell best [nonfiction? fiction? trashy romance novels?]; whether physical book sales were impacted at all by this [in terms of individual ebooks selling their physical counterparts & also any decline in physical book sales at all].

unfortunately, i think amazon tried to play this small tidbit up [look at all those links!] in order to detract / distract from the real Big Deal happening this week: the wylie agency has partnered with amazon in a deal to publish 20 ebooks of their most powerful authors exclusively through kindle.

the link [just one there] will tell you more about this, but some brief facts: the wylie agency handles a significant amount of the biggest & most prominent & best writers out there. donald barthelme. borges. bolano. philip roth. dave eggers. salman rushdie. saul bellow. mcsweeney's. susan sontag. norman mailer. the names go on. their client list reads like the best book recommendations you've ever received. the agency is powerful & smart & can & will do whatever they want—& they want to make money & be successful. so the first Big Deal part of this is the fact that all this innovation is with the goddamn wylie agency.

the second Big Deal part of this is that this is the first time that a literary agency—a corporation or institution or whatever you want to call it whose sole purpose is to represent authors & their writing & get the most publicity & sales possible—has bypassed a publisher. previously, this was impossible. you could not publish a book without going through a publisher. but now? all you need are connections, an audience, a team of coders, & a way of selling the product. this is probably a Bigger Deal than the first part.

think about it. this means that for ebooks, which are what publishing considers the future of books [careful wording there!], publishers are obsolete. this is a game-changer.

but also think about the parts needed. one of those, the team of coders, is a stand-in for designers. in this specific deal, wylie has set up the "ebook publishing company" odyssey editions, which is really a collaboration between wylie's authors & an ebook production company [the coders in question], enhanced editions.

the role that enhanced editions is playing here is, to me, the Biggest Deal. the fact that they exist, that they are successful, & that they are being asked to partner with wylie is proof that their role is pivotal & necessary to this future model. i may have just said the same thing twice without saying anything, but what i really mean is: it looks like there is now an opportunity for independent design studios to step in & work with authors/agencies to create innovative books.

for designers, this is amazing news. i cannot believe that this is all being downplayed. this is a chance for us to demonstrate our value & role in this whole publishing ebook/print debacle. & of course i want to bring it all back to my thesis, but i can't help but get excited about this.

now let's just wish real hard that these wylie/odyssey ebooks take off.

POSTSCRIPT: i forgot to mention that this wylie+amazon partnership has not all been smiles for everyone. random house, upset that their ebook rights [as they have active contracts with a number of the authors/works now being put out via odyssey] have been usurped in the deal, has announced that it will no longer conduct new english-language business with the wylie agency. at least temporarily.

all i think i need to say about this: omelettes & eggs.

idle hands 12:47 AM

spent a lot of today on trains & in cars & walking around.

started reading ben marcus' notable american women & have consequently been thinking very very much about design. not that this book is particularly interestingly-designed—it is great but the design is not really remarkable—but that the things he is talking about, about how we interact with the physicality of language, are things that i want to bring into my work. i want to make blueprints like the ones he writes. i may confine myself to blueprints like that for some small projects. we'll see.



this is how the project i have been working on slowly-slowly looked in the morning. i have big dreams & i am glad i have time & time right now to think & make. hopefully more tomorrow.

working in progress 10:39 PM

this is the first full day i am spending in my new place, having slept here a night & avoided being eaten by the apartment. [yay me & yay real life not being like house of leaves!] despite all the things that need to be done to make this house a home, there are also things i need to do to keep myself afloat.

when i started at pratt, i jumped right into a lot of courses, including one called visual communications. looking back on it, i wonder if that course couldn't be called something else, as isn't everything we do visual communications? but this was probably the course i struggled with the most, because despite knowing that i had to communicate visually, i hadn't really ever been asked to communicate something specific visually.

i'd written a whole thesis & dozens of papers—i can communicate verbally—& i'd studied photography for a couple of years, which meant i knew how to create evocative images, but it was difficult for me to put these two things together. viscom [as we called the course] remains my lowest graded course of graduate school, & ranks with the lowest grade i've ever gotten for a semester. [i mean, let's not be too down. i'm still averaging well above a 3.5 here & got magna in undergrad.]

what i mean to say here is: i struggled. but what that also means is: i learned what works for me & what doesn't, what makes sense & what doesn't, what i lean to when i feel i am stuck in a corner & what i should push myself harder to master.



one of our assignments probably a third of the way into the semester involved collage work. i didn't have too much material to work with, since i was still living in my grandmother's apartment, but i / she did have a lot of old phone books & travel magazines from the mid-90s & earlier. so i worked with those & made a few noodling things like the piece above & discovered to my surprise that this was a medium i really enjoyed working in & in which i could make things that seemed to work.

so i've been biding my time & saving scraps for someday when i have space & time & motivation. in the interim, i've been putting together some little pieces with old photographs—



—but a lot of those felt forced & weird. this is because they were composed on the computer. i know better than that but it's still a thing i fall into sometimes.

now that i have room to move around & all my things are in one place [& i have a whole folder full of scrap paper to be cut up], i have started working on some small things. i've had images & ideas running around in my head for weeks - some of which i've sketched out & others that are still purely conceptual.



this is one, where all i could think for two days straight was 'all i want is to be of some use' in many different phrase-permutations & this image with the hands. this is an in-progress shot, technically [what i'd imagined was something with the hands cut out], but i am keeping the white paper as-is. thinking now about having an army of hands. we'll see.

whatever these turn into, it feels so good to start making again. i have a whole month before classes start up & i'd like to see how much non-thesis, non-coursework-related work i can get out before then.

[i also have an upcoming post about ebooks & how they are outselling cloth & how agencies are bypassing publishers to put out ebooks but that will happen later. too serious. let's enjoy the summer for once.]

holy cow 12:12 AM

it is really late but i have just gotten home from seeing inception

which i was admittedly not jazzed about from the trailer / plot / etc etc

but seriously. holy cow.

i spent the entirety of this movie with my hands to my face, a la the east pediment of the temple of zeus at olympia*

this is the first movie i've seen in a very very long time, maybe even for ever, that i feel functions perfectly as a movie. it does everything it should & only a little bit more than that. not too much. just right. it takes advantage of its medium & it gives an amazing performance.

i may write more after i have slept [ha!] & can maybe put words to it

but. i am out of phrases. i might start using obscenities & no one wants that.

i don't want to be one of those people who says GO SEE THIS MOVIE but you would probably like it. a lot. i might not even know you personally or very well but i will stick by this statement.



* oh geez i can't believe this was seriously the first thing that came to mind to describe this action. ask me about my knowledge of this temple sometime! i will talk your entire head off. promise.

i don't do too much talking these days 1:29 AM

but that's about to change.



i've mostly taken to reading & reading & eating & sitting in the passenger seat & listening & dreaming. having my dreams stolen. this happens in many ways & sometimes i can still keep them & other times i can't.

it's true that i have never been one much for change. i am not a very good traveller. sometimes i get carsick. vertigo. i have overwhelming fits of nostalgia. despite getting very excited about new things & being quick to understand new concepts & learn everything, when it comes to executing big changes, i tend to bristle a bit.

this move is sort of one of those things. i am very excited about it & it is only good news all around & when i am in the apartment i am in love with the space & with everything & i love feeling like i am in love with everything! but the getting there is not easy. i still have not slept a night in the new place for many different reasons all one after another, some of which in & others out of my control. i am in fact writing this from another state entirely.

& i know this is meant to be a design blog & i am getting to that. i am talking about change & how sometimes what seems like it should be a seamless transition is full of stitches that have to be ripped out & re-sewn like eight times before you get it right. sometimes you have to try a thing on inside-out & pin it so it fits better & then do it again. these are metaphors but they are also not.

a few weeks ago already i had a lengthy conversation with someone i respect & admire a lot. the topic came around to evolution & i wondered a lot of things but ultimately came back to my view of life in general, which is: who am i to say that what someone else thinks is any more or less valid than what i think? we could all be wrong. i don't know. the opposition [if i can even call it that; it was far friendlier] made the point that it's detrimental to refuse to accept things that are proven & fact & science & knowledge. it's detrimental to deny things that are fundamentally sound. & it's far more detrimental to deny others the right to believe what they want to believe [which of course i agreed with].

the other day, i read this article in the new york times about gravity & how this one scientist has set out to redefine gravity.

i thought a lot about the conversation i'd had in this light, trying to see how one refusal of belief can be so controversial & negative & how another can be enlightened & exciting & full of discovery. & that was really the key of the thing, for me. one of these things is fundamentally a denial, while the other is a discovery. one is a push backward & the other is a moving-forward. & this is the important part & what i am taking as i think about my thesis & my work & why i brought all this up here: examine everything, but only if you are prepared to figure it out in a move forward.

alternately: always be prepared to move forward.

this may be a difficult thing for someone like me, who likes to keep her feet on the ground, who carefully weighs the cost of change, but if i am prepared for a constant speed [as opposed to a constant acceleration] i think i will do better.

i have been reading about three books at once lately, which is not something i usually do but is a necessity due to the physical size of the books & also the places i read. the most rewarding of the three is marshall mcluhan, whom i have been reading in short small bursts for months. the book is bigger than my bag is most days. a month & a half probably. it is the sort of thing i don't want to end because whatever i read from him makes me think in new & exciting ways, gets the cogs in my brain rolling around at top-speed, has my eyes light up over & over again.

sometimes i wish i weren't wired to enjoy intellectual stimulation quite so much. sometimes i think i'd have more fun if that were the case. but i also probably wouldn't be here, so there's that.

but so this is the same thing again. despite being careful & cautious & bad at moving [did i ever mention that my nickname for years growing up was 'accident girl'? it was coined by my kindergarten teacher & stuck for longer than i will admit. that's how bad at moving i am], i love love love love love intellectual progress. this sounds like it could almost be a statement for some non-profit but it is far more selfish than that. i love thinking in new ways & understanding things more fully & being able to see the world in ways i hadn't before. & i am going to keep at this for my whole life, because that is just how i work.

the challenge will be to take all that & make it into something real. something tangible. something that makes sense visually as well as intellectually. something that can have the same effect in a different way. but, see: i can define even that. i can meet a challenge if i've defined it. or at least get as close as i can.

the last thing i posted here was a proclamation of a STOP period. this is probably evidence that the STOP period was successful. i am rested & restless & ready to start up again. so let's go.

moving very still 4:16 PM

it's a good thing i declared a STOP period on my work so recently because life has been GO GO GO GO GO lately. non-stop.

first, we moved.



or, i should say, sasha moved.



but i helped.



[this is marginally funnier when you understand that i to this day do not know how to ride a bike.]

my things are still in more than one place & with the weather the way it has been [breaking triple digits around these here parts] & the apartment the way it is [air conditioning, but not very strongly; on the third floor of a walk-up that gets a lot of sun] i probably will not be moved until i gain access to a car & until the weather cools down. high 80s would be bearable. anything would be preferable to this right now.

but so after we moved all of sasha's things we spent some time in vermont! it was beautiful & relaxing in the best way [you know how sometimes you feel like there is pressure to relax because you are on vacation, etc etc? there was none of that here. it was the best thing ever.] & i had a wonderful time!



my idea of relaxing: marshall mcluhan & lawn chairs, intermittently watching an unintentionally relevant & impromptu badminton game. [i also was sporting a mighty fine bruise on my leg from moving, visible above. it's better now.]

we were only there for a few days but it was amazing to me how different things were. how my hair & skin were brighter, how i could breathe more easily, even with the altitude, how i wanted to wake up early every day & do everything but only things like walking & sitting at the edge of a pond to make eyes at salamanders & tadpoles & going into town to get fudge & pies & smoked salmon & lounging around with a book or five & flyfishing for sunnies & picnicking & drinking & having the best time. i didn't bring my computer & there was no cell service & i relished this immensely.

this was, i decided, the kind of place i want to live when i am done doing, when i have decided there is no more work i can do in my work, when i 'retire' or whatever it is that is most approximating that. i couldn't help but think of my college days, spent in a tiny town in western massachusetts, which was a similar place to this: it is a place people go to not do. to stop. to enjoy. & i found it at times oppressive & small & i couldn't wait to leave & be in new york, where there are things to do & where i could do & make & think & be productive.

for the last few months, i have worked myself so hard i have been unable to breathe. so i am going to do what i need to for now to catch my breath.



but even with all that, it's been nice to come home to a view like this.