This is my personal site, where I keep a record of my research. It is a living document, and changes weekly if not daily. Contents of this website consist of information that is able to be accessed publicly. The site is arranged chronologically. You can show or hide my notes, and filter the writing by subject which will be shown below. If you came to find examples of design work, I implore you take a walk outside instead.
7 December 24 I am following a rabbit hole. I found Kaija Rantakari's website, which has some great looking fine bindings. I am not familiar with the bindings they are showing—sewn boards I knew but have not learned, and tue-mouche I know nothing of—so I spent some time learning and gathering materials for research. When I looked for tue-mouche I found the website of Ben Elbel. Ben is the originator of the binding, and sells printed guides on how to make the binding. Their website is interesting and I should spend some time on it.
Amos lent me a few boxes of bookbinding boards for an upcoming project. It reminds me to make a post and ask about what the best way to treat bookbinding boards is. I'm interested in what will keep the boards smooth, without also making them stick. I have some boards that are coated in polyurithane that are quite sticky.
We had our holiday party last night, which was beautiful and also exausting. I appreciate everyone being in the print shop and the willingness of the general community to accomidate each other—as I am terrible at it.
8 July 2024 Today I learned that MDOT uses a Model T to test roads for repair where Amish and Mennonite populations are, because of the simularity between the car and their wagons. I am sure that this is at least, in part, a convenient way for the DOT to justify driving a Model T around, but this also completely makes sense. However, they should drive a Model T around Detroit to see how bad it is for everyone else as well.
Why MDOT actually uses a Model T for road audits in some Amish areas.
6 November 2023 I listened to an episode of Hard Fork where guest Rebecca Tushnet explained the issue of giving more freedom to artists as ultamately problematic because of the artists relationship to Capitalism. This is around the 49' mark.
18 January 2023 Sentimentality is the extra dressing on the salad. It’s the extra mayo on the sandwich. No matter how much more you put on, it won’t make things any better than it was with just a little.
I am happy, currently, albiet overwhelmed. Teaching makes sense, is just very busy, but fine. The shop is doing well, and the design firm is doing better. Chen & I are binding books. We've been tasked with making ten this week.
1 January 2023 There is, or should be, an order of importance behind how we decide what we are making. You can think of this as the design equivalent of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
We first need to design for ourselves, in our immediate environment. What can we do to improve our situation? Can we design ways to organize ourselves better? Is there an action that we perform every day that could be resolved through the creation of something? A place for shoes, a hat. Part of this is also thinking about what “needs” to be designed, and what already exists that can instead be curated our sought out. Another part is learning to design where we are—to not design for a white cube gallery but the home we live in. How do the shapes and textures of the space we are currently residing change the way we design?
Second, what can we do to improve the state of those around us? This includes not only our immediate family, but also our closest friends. What can we do to help. Is there some skill that we possess that we can apply to better their situations? Additionally does what we designed for ourselves work for our families?
Third, that of the neighborhood. The same questions repeat. What is needed in the neighborhood? How can what we do improve our lives, our families’ lives, our neighbors’ lives. Think about how this can differ, from ourselves, to our families, to our neighbors.
Fourth, that of the town, the city. The location of where we live at large. Think of how what we are already doing can be applied to a larger scale. Does it need changing when moving to a broader audience? Does what we are working on make sense for a broader audience?
Fifth, everywhere else, and all the questions that came up along the path of getting here.
Equally, I want to put importance on making a living as opposed to finding a job. There is so much emphasis on “finding a job” and rightfully so—we need security to live. Milk has doubled in price, as has the cost of bread. Eggs are 4 times as expensive as they were last year. Still, “finding a job” is the wrong approach.
We should, always, be looking at our own communities for what it’s needs are, and then working to fulfill those needs. What does our community need the most? We should start with the most basic things. Is there a grocery store? Is there a library? If so, are either of these spaces in need of any assistance that you can provide? Is there public transit, and public spaces to gather? These are the questions that should be asked first, and if there is a glaring space where work is needed to be done, and you possess those skills, that is where you should go to work.
I also want to say that this is in defiance of “trend.” Do not follow trends, they do not last. You can look to trends in work to get an idea of where things are moving, but do not use them as the basis for work. Instead, look at the history of trends. Where did the last trend stop? When they stopped, did it negatively impact anything? If so, how can something be learned? Do not participate in good just because it is trendy to do so, be good because if fills you with joy.
While reading Updike, I was considering starting a podcast where I read aloud what I am currently reasearching and record it, for the benifit of my students or whomever would like to listen. As I ended reading 7 Champions of Typography at the last line, Updike uses a racial epithet. Why do this? Why end the book like that? To whom is this directed at?
I have been thinking about design and food, and how to move as a community to support dining and to support eating as a community. As a designer we are always making examples of fictional things, graphic identities for things that have never existed. I want to make more opportunities for doing things with the community, between cooking and graphics and objects. There is only so much I can take on, however.
I like the idea of a website that catalogs things, that is meant to be a secret, or the secret is part of how it operates. I'm not sure what that means. I like the idea of having to find something physical to work with something digital. Maybe re-approach the "text inside paper" idea.
Read The Handmade: The Machine Whisperer by G. Innella & A. Jaworska
Research the histroy of Supper Clubs & Underground Resturants
Research Unwanted Advertising
Research web pages with passwords.
30 December 2022 When you give yourself a title, it’s not for you. You can call yourself anything you want in private. You can be the queen, or a fisherman—no matter.
When you give yourself a title, it is for everyone else. It is a first point of contact, the first opportunity for trust.
When you give yourself a title, you are agreeing to position yourself within the history of that title. You assume the qualities that others assume of that title, and are obligated to withhold the standards that we, as a community of people, understand to be true. If a baker, you must be able to make bread, but not only that. You must be able to make the bread that your community asks of you.
When you give yourself a title, you can surpass that title. You can improve that title. You cannot, however, underperform that title. That would make you a charlatan. That would be a robbery of trust.
Amos came by the shop a week or two ago, and mentioned Church of Type and Harry Duncan.
I was listening to Chang-Rae Lee read Baader-Meinhof by Don DeLillo. and a fixture of the piece is a series of paintings by Gerhard Richter. In trying to research that I came across his color chart paintings, which I hadn't seen before.
Research "Church of Type."
Research "Harry Duncan."
Gerhard Richter color charts.
27 December 2022 You lose a possibility for depth when you don’t know how a thing is put together. When you print a poster all black with the text knocked out it’s not just dark and imposing—it’s expensive. It is menacing in its difficulty to produce both technically and financially. You have to mean it. Or you have to have the money to not care about meaning, and how it is put together.
Write notes on what would make a good and useful newsletter.
25 December 2022 It is Christmas today, and it is snowing. For many years now we have had little snow in winter, here in Detroit. It is nice to see. I woke up to near silence. Everyone at home. No one going to work. Just the sound of the wind, blowing snow across the yard. It should stay like this straight through the new year. Let us all not return to work for a week. Let us all not return to work at all.
I've never known what to do with Turkey Necks. You can braze them, or use them with the rest of the giblets to make a gravy. The nice thing about brazing them, is if you do a bad job (I did a bad job) you can always make them into gravy.
Look through Dan Reynolds Academia page.
Re-read “Type 1987” Revisited by Karrie Jacobs.
Read Everybody's Protest Novel by James Baldwin.
24 December 2022 At some point, it became apparent that we made things with our hands. We didn't notice before, because we didn't make things any other way. It probably felt childish, shameful, when those first machines began to produce their impossibly even shapes with speed that we couldn't have imagined otherwise. At that moment, we saw that the way we made things became two. We made things by hand, and by machine.
At another point, we must have had a conversation about whether things were better hand made or machine made. We must have also had a conversation about when the two diverge. Is using a hammer considered hand made, or tool assisted? What about a saw? A foot powered lathe? At some point we made a divide. One side said that making things by hand was inefficient, inaccurate. The other side saying that making things by machine was cold, and lacked craftsmanship. Neither were wrong. This made two definitions for each term.
For handmade, there was one definition that meant both poorly made and made by the poor, people making simple, crude things because they could not afford modern equipment. The other, denoted craftsmanship, hand made in a John Henry sense of the word, people that could beat the machine, that were better than a task than the machine due to their level of skill.
For machine made, one definition was that it was cold, alien, inhumane producer of objects. It took work from men who provided for their families. It was an unnatural, capital driven object. The other was that of reliability. The machine itself did not know greed. It would not poison your bread. It would make dependable things. Ir did not take leave or get sick. If the machine became injured, it could be fixed. Machines took away the most dangerous parts of work and increased safety.
There are legal ramifications for calling something handmade, that is not. When speaking of jewelry, the law has this to say:
It is unfair or deceptive to represent, directly or by implication, that any industry product is handmade or hand-wrought unless the entire shaping and forming of such product from raw materials and its finishing and decoration were accomplished by hand labor and manually-controlled methods which permit the maker to control and vary the construction, shape, design, and finish of each part of each individual product.
This has nothing, however, to say about the quality of an object. One could say that a thing was entirely hand made, and have that be true, and also have an awful piece of jewelry. We could also say that this is up to opinion, but there are limits to this—there is never a case where it is righteous to call something handmade for the sake of profit and not for believing some quality of the thing.
There are also legal implications for machine made objects. To call something machine made is to imply consistency, precision, repeatability. It is not unique, and does not value uniqueness, instead placing value on its ability to create multiples. To be reliable. To be inflexible, and in that way democratic in the least human way possible.
Problems arise when definitions begin to overlap. Calling something unique while using a machine based process attempts to capitalize on the best of two definitions, while achieving neither. In doing so, you at best tell the consumer that you are not a capable machine minder, and at worst that you are exploiting the language of craftwork that others depend on for their livelihood. When conflating the definition handmade, of which something is made by hand but of no particular quality, and the definition of handmade that implies the highest quality, much the same occurs.
The Tobiers were in Small Works this week and were interested in printing something, but it wasn't something we could produce. However, the subject matter was facinating. The House UnAmerican committee had procecuted a young professor and had him put in prison for paying for a pamphlet that was critical of the Committee.
Alastair posted that the St. Bride colletion of early type specimens has been uploaded to archive.org This collection has work from Bodoni, Caslon, Figgins, Thorowgood, and others.
Reading thought the Type West applicaton process, I stumbled on the Peoples Graphic Design Archive again. I need to spend more time looking through things related to Detroit.
I was reading about Richard Condon's The Manchurain Candidate, which lead me to a breif about Condon plagiarizing parts of the novel from I, Cladius by Robert Graves. This was apparently all written about by Johnathan Lethem in an article for Harper's. This is apparently how I reasearch things, this meandering. I should investigate this for the writing on desgin and basketball.
I glanced over Teddy Cruz's Returning Duchamp's Urinal to the Bathroom I want to love this essay, but I really strugle to read it in a way that is enjoyable. I love this website's layout and structure.
Make a new button to turn notes on and off.
Find pamphlet critical of House UnAmerican Committee.
Read through the St. Bride colletion
Look through the application process for Type West
Revisit Peoples Graphic Design Archive
Read The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism
Read Returning Duchamp's Urinal to the Bathroom and understand it.
23 December 2022 Approaching Morris and Ruskin, to make sense of some writing about the handmade and machine made. I had forgot about the quotes "have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful" & "No work which cannot be done with pleasure is worth doing." It's not so easy to find their collected works on design, and maybe this warrants making another site on design writings—but does there really need to be another website cataloging things? I feel like since I made this new site it's all I see.
I have the image of a printed object haunting me. There was an example of printed matter that showed a rather complicated design, which was created in opposition to the linotype and made to show that having a competent composer was still important. I remember that the print was made by a widowed woman, and was maybe, French. This is all I can recall. I will look in a moment to see if I can find anything.
I think I am going to post an independent study portion of my classes. This is supplimental to the course. I want to make sure, straight away, that all the students are on the same page. I started thinking about then when thinking about justification settings, and how I learned how to set up my "H&J" through youtube, but was never taught that in school.
If I did this, I would need it to be a light enough workload to be completed alongside the other content of the course. This would be in personal exploration along with personal projects. This would also include watching things like "Graphic Means" and "Art & Copy".
Find the example of complicated typesetting in opposition to linotype.
Find or buy a copy of "Graphic Means"
Find or buy a copy of "Art & Copy"
18 December 2022 Argentina (Messi) won the World Cup today.
Contracts on my mind again. That's the main lesson of 2022—contracts are vital. Good schedules, not over commiting, and good contracts. Anything that can aid the process of reflection.
In working with code again, and working on websites, I'm finding it hard to see working examples of websites with really simple typography. When you make a search for typographic websites you get a a lot of loud, but not so much good. I just want a thing that works. I don't want to be sold anything, I don't really want to be convinced, I just want the site to make things easier.
Begin sketches for new Small Works site
Look through Very Good Films website.
15 December 2022 I'm tired today, and I haven't updated in a while. Today was the last day of teaching for the semster, and it was bittersweet. I usually feel relief, but I feel beat up. I walked with Chen to her new classroom at the university, and on the way ran into a colleauge. I asked if we could use some of the facilities for our own work, and was told that the studios are for students, and not maintained for faculty. I wonder why the school keeps telling us that the benifit to being a faculty memeber at such low pay is that we have access to the universities resources. What resources?
I'm looking for what I would consider to be a good use of a website on the internet. It's harder than I thought it would be. First, I found this piece of code called kern.js that supposedly will aid finessing type for the web—I'm amazed at how far this has come. I'm probably way behind the curve on this subject, but I'm still impressed.
I ran into Taylor as I was leaving the university. They were helping a student, and talking to Chen & I as was cleaning up. They made reference to Sidney Poitier, as the actor that made a breakthrough in the movie industry, and spoke on the weight that it put on that person. We talked about the pressure that young students, people of color, have when entering their education for the first time and are hesitant to explore other processes that don't immediately show a return on that educational investment. It was a good talk, I'm glad that they are at the university.
Finish update to new personal website.
Guess who's coming to dinner.
WSU movie club.
12 December 2022 Making a note to transer the spreadsheet of the Chandler and Price census to the Monks & Friars drive.
Working on archving the Monks & Friars caledars and putting them on archive.org. 60 years is a long time to have a group together, especially when you're not working with a board or an endowment.
I'm doing research on my 8x12 C&P. I put out a message asking if anyone had a brake or a rider roller for an 8x12 on their press, or had one that they wanted to get rid of. One message stated that the press should not have a mount for a brake, that they did not naturally come that way, and I am finding that to be true. The catalog image of the press does not show the press with a brake. The holes in my press must have been added after.
What we say, and the accuracy of what we say, matters. Language is a social contract that we all have to abide by in order to foster trust, otherwise there is no way for us to communicate honestly.
Aya came to the shop today. She has a press that is used for die cutting papers for crafting, and I had asked if she would bring it by. I wanted to see if I could use it to conveniently die cut objects when needed, but it didn't work out as well as I thought it would in my head. I'm glad I tried that first before getting one myself.
We talked about how, if we share everythign all the time, that nothing is special anymore, nothing is a suprise. I want to add if everyone is experimental, then who is left to be good? To be reliable?
Transfer C&P census to M&F
10 December 2022 Going back though the last week or two of notes today and found that Monoskop has a translated version of Situationist International. I don't know why I thought it would be any less, but it is all of 500 pages.
Read translation of Situationist International.
9 December 2022 Extended We ended up at John K. King a few hours later. We had a day off today, with our only agenda items being visiting Charly to look at a few typewriters. We traded a Craftsmen Superior for out choice of a few things Charly had. We started the day at Brooklyn St. Local for breakfast, and then, to take up some time, went to the book store.
I had never went through the books on books section before today, as unlikely as that is, and found a few really good speciens. A book from the Thomas N, Fairbanks Company, which I assume was a paper distributor, showed samples from Fabriano and Portals Limited. This gives me a good idea of what the paper companies thought of as good paper and good printing in the 1930's.
There were some books from the Groiler Club, for their memebers, which showed their budgest and member list. I didn't get them but did want to note that the fist book I saw was from 1903 and the second in the 1970's. I found "Book Clubs and Printing Societies of Great Britan and Ireland" by Harold Williams, which had a really good book wrap. I don't know how it was made, I just loved the pattern, this teal, light brown/orange and black. These older printers had such a good command of color. The inside of the book is stlyed like a text block from Doves Press. I want to try to figure out how to make a pattern like that, now that we have the proof press.
Last, I found Printing Poetry: A Workbook in Typographic Reification by Clifford Burke. It is a really nice book to have found, because it talks about the process of getting a press and starting to print poetry from forty years ago. It also has examples of printing, both good and bad.
I'm looking for a rider roller for Stan. I've never seen a rider roller for an 8x12, but I reached out to Lloyd Bowcott at Cook Kettle Press and he had recently sold one—so I know it at least exists. The only one I've seen is in advertisements.
Ask Charly about typewriter papers.
9 December 2022 I continued looking at diagrams until I went to sleep. I need to go to John K. King and look though some older books for how they handled these things. For now, I'm looking at archive.org through what's there and found a book called Wordless Diagrams by Nigel Holmes. It was not what I expected—it's something like Graphic Design humor. There is a diagram for rolling a joint, for thowing a frisbee to a dog. I find that these older design books have so much to teach about execution, style, and form. I don't love the aesthetics, but I appreciate the craft. I just found a diagram for a hot dog eating contest. Apparently, Nigel Holmes was quite well known. I'd never heard of him before but I'll have to look him up now.
Logic Machines and Diagrams by Martin Gardner is more of what I was looking for, but not exactly. There are some nice shaded ven diagrams. Diagrams and Charts by Trevor Bounford has this excellent two year chart, that manifests as a curved ribbon. This book was intened to teach people how to make graphics for charts. It's too bad we don't have something like this now. Maybe we do, I just haven't seen it.
I can't stand gimmicks. I found a book titled Diagrams: An Innovative Solution for Graphic Designers by Carolyn Knight. It was designed in the style that was really common in the 90's and 2000's—this graphic heavy scrapbook of things. There's a lot of gimmick in it, but some good things too. There is a graphic design firm called LUST that had great work, similar to Sonnenzimmer. They are, of course, in the Hauge.
I am seeing a lot of dither, halftone, shaded patters that I assume used to come on a sheet of acetate and be cut out. I need to look up the history of that. I would like to do an assignment or a class where we investigate that history and make some diagrams—to talk about that process and how to make the thinking of design visual.
Make new diagram the Ulm School practice, but for design
Make a ven diagram for "Fast, Cheap, Good, Free"
Research Nigel Holmes
Email the Listserv looking for a Brake, and a rider roller.
Is there a contemporary graphics and charts book?
Make an assignment where we make the thinking of design visual.
8 December 2022 I often forget that I was born in the eighties. I was alive when Like a Prayer came out. Not by much, but it was enough that by the time I could remember the radio Madonna was on it. So was Flock of Seagulls. I often think that Nirvana was something that happened in the past, or Nine Inch Nails, but I was alive for it. I remember Gateway cow print boxes, new word processors. The Lawrence Welk show reruns. I wonder how often we are aware of how we are situated in time.
I have an urge to make diagrams again. I saw a ven diagram of overlapping disciplines that were taught at the Ulm School, and I do want some version of that in the future. Chen has a metaphor of a project, that was originally shown to her by Matt Rosner, of the distance between what we believe is the best and worst things we have expeienced, set against the reality of what that is like when we contextualize our practices. I also want to make a diagram based on the experience of having an elderly student this semster. I want to find a way to talk about what we take for granted when we begin to educate people at the college level. What happens when we no longer are teaching typing? What happens when no one can write or draw? How can we pull this all back in so that we can continue to educate?
Make new diagram of "Percieved Range of Effort" vs. "Actual Span of Possible Effort"
7 December 2022 Judith Moldenhauer came by the shop to print today and mentioned the book Emotional Digital by Alex Branczyk & the studio Moniteurs.
find Emotional Digital by Alex Branczyk
6 December 2022 I saw a Bias Chase somewhere, and then saw a bias furniture set for one on Skyline. For anyone that doesn't know, this puts as slight angle on your chase for two reasons. First, it makes it so the type meets the roller on a diagonal, which gives much better inking. Second, it tilts the printed object into a corner, which would aid it's register.
Franz Kafka wrote, in a collection of short stories that were recently found, that we should be equally suprised when things resist us as we do when things give in. Borges, in a short story I listened to today, said "all the cases of longevity that occour in the country are the result of either poor memory or a vauge notion of dates." There was another thing that I should have remembered but I wasn't able to find a pencil while listening at a stop light in the truck. No matter how well I keep notes, I always manage to forget something I want to remember.
I'm starting to believe that the only art that can exist is outsider art. Essentially, the second that you understand your work to be art and have value it ceases to be art. Since I watched that video of the Toyenbee Tiles, I'm getting ads for Daniel Johnston.
I managed to remember (by listening to the story again). Borges writes a line that I love, that states that the main character goes on a journey not because he wants to go, but because he can find no reason to not go. I like this—to not judge things based on whether or not you are interested, but to do something because you can find no reason why you wouldn't be interested.
Get bias furniture or make a bias chase.
5 December 2022 Alistair Johnson mentioned the book Sixteenth-Century Printing Types of the Low Countries by Hendrik D.L. Vervliet in the comments of a post on the Letterpress Facebook group. This was in reference to printing in a book book that someome wanted the face identified for.
Danielle Aubert had a talk through the American Printing History Association tonight, which was good as always. It was encouraging to see the design and printing community like that. Lincoln Cushing, Johanna Drucker, David Shields, Amos, were all in attendance, as were many people from the Facebook groups and elsewhere. This is an internet world that I'm glad to participate in.
There is a fellowship through the APHA called The Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History that I should apply for. This would also be good for the Printing Stewards. In any case, I need to apply for more fellowships and residencies, and make a good list somewhere. Maybe I should make another page with a list of grants, residencies, and fellowships to check in on.
Because he was in attendance at the lecture, I was compelled to take a look at Lincoln Cushing's website Docs Populi. It's a database of the things he's been working on, much in the style of David McMillan's site. It's great. I'm excited to spend more time on it.
Find a copy of Sixteenth-Century Printing Types of the Low Countries by Hendrik D.L. Vervliet.
Write an application for the APHA fellowship.
Look through Docs Populi.
Spend time on Circuitous Root
4 December 2022 I signed up for a free subscription on substack to a few writers, although I don't remember why I did. This is how I end up with so much junk mail.
I've been thinking about making boxes with decorative covers for things. I like the idea of making all the things for one year in advance—taking December off to just make things for the upcoming year and when those materials run out that's it. There is this great packaging of Harold Berliner type that I mentioned yesterday that I have been thinking a lot about. Off white, red, and blue. I have also been thinking about marbled paper. Rajiv Surendra has a video that makes it look easy. but it's probably not. I have a few dies for making business card sized boxes that I need to try out, and maybe I can paste printed papers to the box stock before die cutting, or apply it after. Last year we made boxes from leftover screen printed material, and that worked really well, so there is always that method.
Chen has been wanting to learn how to bind books and make book structures. I want to learn how to make book cases. Maybe this all will tie together in the future.
I am struggling to conceptualize a form of a website that I really love. I need to make a new site for myself (this is it), for Teikaut, and for Small Works. What I want is something that leans on traditions of disseminatable media—handbills, broadsheets, newspapers, but still conforms to the flexibility of websites that can be displated on more than one device. I really like this site for it's simple text format. There isn't much to it. It gets the job done. There are some similar things like the site for Center for Book Arts which has a great mobile site structre, but the images just look so bad. I went to look for the Evening Class website, but apparently it is down. I found it on the wayback machine, so I can still see some things from it, but I hope that this is just a glitch and they keep going. I was really moved by the idea that such a thing could exist.
I also need to reapproach several artist's works. I saw Lenore Tawney's work (apartment?) at the JMKAC this summer, and just recently I started making a connection between that work and the work of Mark Dion. I also need to revisit the work of Jesse Howard who I also saw at JMKAC.
Research Substack.
Try die cutting box material, and pasting paper to it.
See if there is a paper marbling class in Michigan. If not, at one of the Oxbow/Penland/Haystack artist spaces.
See if there is a paper marbling social media community.
Read through the Evening Class website.
Revisit Jesse Howard
3 December 2022 On the Toyenbee Tiles again. Another topic I haven't thought about since undergraduate school. Looking at that work again as an older person, it has lost a lot of it's magic. It's not as daring or large of an accomplishment as it seemed. There are so many people that make similar work, and the better makers of work have found ways not only to remain anonymous, but also to resist commodification or recognizability by the general public. Especially in Detroit, we may walk by a similar project every day.
I haven't given up on enjoying the project. I still find it facinating, and I am happy that I saw one here in the city. I read that there are a few—I should have a look for them again. I am watching the movie again passively while going about my day, and in the begining of the movie Justin Duerr remarks that he was so excited to use the very early internet to search for other Toyenbee Tile information that he took a day off of work to do so. Maybe this activity was the intention of the maker.
I also like the idea of the Toyenbee Tiles as a kind of viral marketing. The other day, my students made a print for a field trip they had to Signal Return and some of the flyers went out to Milwaukee Caffe. On the day of the field trip, some people phoned Signal Return to ask if there was a secret field trip. When those people were told that the field trip wasn't a secret, there was a flyer after all, they said "yes, but I couldn't find any information on the internet." Which leads me to think that in order for something to be real, it must be able to be found on the internet, at least at this point in time. The Toyenbee Tiles work the same way for a pre-internet world. They are not ads in a paper or image on a flyer. They are something else outside of what we recognize as media that is talking to us. I need to do more research on Culture Jamming.
I have this definition of art that involves making a flow chart to determine whether or not something is art or design, or something else. As part of this, I have made one of the determining factors "art must change the way you fundimentally experince your waking reality." This is a deeply personal experience. I feel that the Toyenbee Tiles make a grab for this idea very easily— it is not hard for these objects to take you out of your everyday existence.
I'm also reminding myself to get a copy of a type specimen book that has some ornaments in it. Bill Whitley reccomneded a book from Swamp Press that I should get. Paul Richer & Tom Colson pointed out that a ornament patter I had seen on some of Harold Berliner's font packaging consisted of AM807/808, AM700, & EM531/532. Paul also mentioned the book "A Garden of Printers Flowers" by Harold Berliner and Yvon A. Lantaigne mentioned "Grajon's Flowers: An Enquiry into Granjon's, Giolito's, and De Tourne's Ornaments 1542–86"
Check on the remaining Toyenbee tiles in Detroit.
Research Culture Jamming.
Update Css to that after each section there is automatically one extra space. What is the code for one hard return?
Purchase "Ornadementia" book from Swamp Press.
Purchase "Grajon's Flowers: An Enquiry into Granjon's, Giolito's, and De Tourne's Ornaments 1542–86."
See if "A Garden of Printers Flowers" can be found.
Make a flowchart of "Art & Design" for coursebook.
What would a map of public sightings of my design work look like? Is that useful?
2 December 2022 "Mirtha Dermisache's asemic writings remind us of the impossibility of discourse. Today they read as both radically political and necessary." Asemic writing is (apparently) writing without content, or making the visual form or format of writing without having any or few forms that operate as readable measures of language. I came across this when looking up information about the Situationists International and Letterists International. I know very little about this, but I feel like this was suggested to me in school by Daniel Shane McCafferty. I am interested in seeing what their publications looked like. Monoskop has an archive of these writings, looks like I'll have to keep working on my french lessons. In the first publication (maybe look up what they called the book object, was it a publication, a magazine?) There is a list of terms that are used by the group, which I have been thinking of doing as well. It's a lot easier to speak a common language.
I saw a frozen dessert in the grocery store this evening and it had copy on the packaging telling us it was "handmade" which made me wonder "what is legally considered the limit of handmade?" There must be a point where someone cannot say something is handmade, at least for a court of law should anyone complain. A quick google search turns up:
It is unfair or deceptive to represent, directly or by implication, that any industry product is handmade or hand-wrought unless the entire shaping and forming of such product from raw materials and its finishing and decoration were accomplished by hand labor and manually-controlled methods which permit the maker to control and vary the construction, shape, design, and finish of each part of each individual product.
All of this makes sense. It is misleading to make the claim that something is handmade when it is not, but I think we need to examine why we would want to make that claim in the first place—what makes us feel that it would be to our advanage to make that statement.
Before industrialization there would be no handmade. There was no reason to make a disctintion. Most things produced were produced by hand, and even if you had a certain tool, it wasn't enough of a difference to mention when marketing a product.† After industrialization, you have two reasons for making the distinction. One could make the claim that products made through an industrial process were much more reliable and consistent. One could also make the claim that products made through industrialization lacked finesse, and weren't made with the logic that comes with the time and experience that a craftsman would have. The best way I can make sense of this, is to say that calling something handmade is only (good, benificial?) if it exceeds the capabilities put forward by industrial process.
I am interested, next semester, in working on a kind of "radical transperency" for the design process. What I mean to say is I want an easy way for students to see what the design process is like in real time. I think that the scale of time is so illusive, and making the shape of the effort visible is important not only for describing expectations of the student but to also show what is possible, why things work the way they do, and to better describe the exercises that they are subjected to.
There are a total of 12 documents from Situationists International available on the Monoskop website.
Mr. Fisher put up a new section on his Teaching Documents website titled "no your product".
† There may be a history and study of when "handmade" was first introduced as a concept to distinguish between work of the hand (uncertianty) and work by tool or machine (certianty) and more research needs to be done bere before making the above statement.
