Design is about form. If we’re not conscious about form, then we’re not designers. We’re psychologists, or anthropologists, or scientists, or something else.
Part of education—initial, advanced and beyond—is challenging, pushing, expanding, furthering the investigation of how ideas take form.
I love books. I love to hold them, to look at them on my shelf, on my couch, in my lap. Working with Martha Scotford, I wanted to continue to expand my understanding of the book. How we can design different experiences and understanding. Create dialogue, deeper understanding and meaning in book design. These explorations are attempts in that direction:
Statement by the President on dropping the bomb in Hiroshima
My first work involved an historical document. Knowing now, what the impact of this decision was. How did that affect the way that a designer (me) might approach this project. I had a hard time even ‘designing’ it. It seemed petty, disrespectful, to give any sort of emphasis to the words, knowing now what the outcome of the decision was. As an historical document, it was fascinating to read the words again—the emphatic nature of it, and the lack of consideration of destruction. Images to come on this.
A Dimly Burning Wick
The second part to this project was bringing in a secondary text (which became my primary text) to ‘speak’ to the initial document. It seemed obvious to bring in one of the abundance of memories/memoirs from Japanese literature that spoke to the aftermath of the dropping of the bomb. I threaded the initial statement throughout the book—as side text—placing it alongside certain passages that it spoke most directly to.
