Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism: Design Learning

One student's take on an avant-garde program in the heart of New York City.

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Adobe InDesign document

This is an example of what the backs of the conversation cards would look like. It is meant to be a bit of a play on traditional Thank You cards, while also informing the interviewer which card deck they hold. When I initially designed these, I tried to be conscious of the locations that the cards could fit. Between military uniforms (variety of pockets) and civilian attire, I initially thought that smaller would be better. The initial design was for a 3.5″x5″ card stock paper. this seemed to be not only too small to hold and read comfortably, but also to print without jamming. Ultimately a size between A4 and A5 felt like an appropriate size and could still fit relatively easily within a travel calendar-sized notebook or cargo pocket. A bit large, but still versatile.

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Adobe InDesign document

Like the civilian conversation starter cards, these cards are aimed at providing service members prompts to engage in conversations with civilians about “Thank you for your service.”

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Adobe InDesign document

These cards are part of what initiates the deliberate conversation with civilians and service members. For this scenario, a volunteer service member would find a civilian willing to have a conversation about “Thank you for your service.” These cards could serve as prompts to engage in deeper conversations about the phrase and the meaning of public service.

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For my final project, I wanted to address an often inadequate communication exchange between civilians and service members. “Thank you for your service,” is a phrase slung almost casually in an era of hyper-patriotism. As a former service member, I myself have found the conversations fleeting and insufficient. This project aims to continue the conversation from the initial exchange to a podcast platform. The platform will provide in-depth productions of good conversations meant to tease out the greater meanings behind the phrase “Thank you for your service.” By shifting the conversation to something listeners can engage with say on a subway or car ride commute to and from work, it would allow for a deeper connection with the subject matter and provide context for either a renewed conversation or meaningful action.

The entire project challenged me, from start to finish. I struggled with a cohesive concept that would challenge an idea in publishing that wasn’t also somehow a business plan. I struggled for weeks in non-overlapping subjects and ultimately landed on this one with the help of a thorough conversation. My prototype iterations were few, but the feedback I received on the ones I did complete was invaluable. I initially tried to create my own website and audio content, and realized that I needed much better thought-out versions of each. Once I began to break down the project into incremental levels its feasibility seemed more likely and, quite frankly, more enjoyable to complete. The future of this project could easily expand to include different types of voices, it could easily have a video component to reach even more of an audience, and could take the conversation beyond just U.S. military service members and its citizens (service member could mean public servants like firefighters, emergency medical technicians, police officers, first responders, etc.). 

The process taught me to just get started. Fortunately, through the critique and patience of my peers I feel as though I landed on a project that could extend outside the classroom and enhance my skills in alternative media. 

I used Figma to create a clickable prototype of an iPhone X mobile site as the launch area of the podcast. You can view the project here: https://www.figma.com/file/XXmurDWRdmYKhShjrmNV6QTn/TYFYS-Phone

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Examples of the two projects I completed for the design class. We used the Coupland text to practice typesetting and completing the process of publishing through Blurb. 

The booklet in purple used enhanced elements from the first assignment (typesetting, font choice, cover design, etc.). I chose the text from three different authors’ essays from the CPCJ Core class assignment. These were all essays on reasons for writing or, like the titles of at least two of the essays, “Why I Write.” I printed the cover on a heavy-weight purple cotton paper with gold print through a risograph printer. 

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The full PDF contents of a collection of essays typeset and constructed in booklet form.

Main Type: Cardea OT

Additional Elements considered for this project: folios, paragraph styles, text design, item placement, margin adjustment, auto flow text, and elements of typography

Resources: Adobe InDesign tutorials through Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning, and Book Design Made Simple by Fiona Raven and Glenna Collett

(note: due to the printing limitations at the Design Lab, the text had to be formatted as outlines. I did not save the original files, so in the future I would 1) save my original files in a version accessible after edits, 2) adjust the spacing of the folios from the underlined paragraph elements, and 3) reconsider the use of Small Caps.)

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The current mainstream publishing practice of giving away content for free, was anticipated by an underground scene of designers producing a substantial number of free electronic magazines...These PDF-zines...were created to showcase creative skills and emphasize affinities between various groups of designers, and generally to function as a breeding ground for aesthetic experiments and content that was either too controversial or simply of no commercial value for mainstream magazines.

Alessandro Ludovico, Post-Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing since 1894

I have used ISSUU, a PDF-zine publication format, for years. I have viewed from my smart screen larger, well-known magazines and lesser known, independent publications all for the same cost--FREE, on this platform. Poetry zines, female-power magazines, magazines dedicated solely to the aesthetic beauty of color, and hordes of other genres are all accessible with the click of a home screen button. The latter half of Ludovico’s quote rings particularly true--some of these magazine’s wouldn’t just show up at your local bookstore. They are sometimes hyper-niche, but at the same time, of the type of quality that showcases the publishing talent and engages new audiences. I followed one youth style magazine’s featured graphic designer/poet’s recommended Instagram @stinewilson to see that she had a cult following within the genre. This piece was potentially a stab at cultural criticism of a hard-to-pin social current. Her account has organically grown from about 200, when the article first appeared, to now 2,288. 

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The business model of traditional periodical print is still based on selling copies as well as advertisements. The free distribution model, on the other hand, though entirely dependent on advertisers, also brings greater flexibility to try out innovative distribution models-- including experiments such as combining a free newspaper with a morning coffee, or handing out a free fashion magazine at a fashion store. Nevertheless, the independent press, in its many incarnations, is nowhere near dead. Various digital technologies are being widely deployed in order to support production, sales, and visibility.

Alessandro Ludovico, Post-Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing since 1894

This seems to be yet another example of how the media continuously reinvents its business models to stay afloat. Not mentioned as heavily, although potentially still effective, are the crowdfunding platforms like Patreon or Kickstarter, which give the publisher the flexibility to entertain purely product-based revenue. Perhaps this is the next, least financially cumbersome, wave of supporting the sales of independent press.

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How do my words look?

I didn’t give much thought to the intention behind the design or appearance of words until the Design and Future of Publishing class. I just knew what I liked to read or didn’t. I picked up books that I felt had a message I needed to hear or read columns of newspapers I found thought-provoking. Almost anything I consumed in print seemed easy to digest. Web information, however, seemed a bit different. I tended to steer clear of website designs that I thought lacked substance or were clearly coded in naked HTML/CSS. They just felt like poor quality, so I didn’t give the material on the page the time of day.

I thought recently about how vanity can help convey a message we want to send to others. Let’s say it’s the skinny jeans you think will get you some attention at the bar on a Saturday night. You ask you friend or parter-- how does my butt look in these jeans?-- knowing that you’re trying to present an image of yourself that doesn’t scream “muffin top” or “saddle bags.” I can’t help but notice now the equivalent faux pas in design and attraction to a published source. The wrong typographical errors, poor grammar, missing attention to syntactical detail, bad color schemes, slowly loading profiles, etc. So I wonder, how do my words look on this page? If the medium is the message, is the package the first impression?

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Book Design Project #1 Interior: A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next 10 Years

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Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet or computer. Start with 15 GB of Google storage – free.

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“When the release day comes, the album just appears on Spotify. The value of critics to major music artists (but maybe not so much smaller ones) has been so thoroughly diminished that the access they used to be granted—to the musicians as well as their music—is now just granted directly to the fans. And who is a critic to argue with that?” -John Herrman, The Awl, “Access Denied”

In this article Herrman discusses the idea of content and the role of the media in shaping it in the recent (as of 2015) environment of social media giant platforms. He notes that the role of the media as a powerful voice or advocate to disseminate its message to the masses, waned or became obsolete when platforms like Spotify, Facebook, and Twitter erupted/disrupted. So what is content, then, if it’s no longer a message relayed from one entity through another? A quick tweet or post removes the need to grant exclusive interviews -- thought to exposure occurs nearly instantly and with few filters. In this perspective, which relied most heavily on well-known or already powerful figures, media content is that which takes sides or provides context to what already exists. It’s commentary on the narratives constantly fighting for control. 

Content, in the new media environment, is curated. It creates meaning from the barrage of pre-existing keyboard character storms flitting across ever-changing screens. Maybe reporters aren’t granted immediate, exclusive access to a major reveal, but they can get the context right. They can read between the lines of portrayal and accomplishment. They can take this deluge of information and create digestible commentary. Maybe that’s all we needed to begin with.

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“’If telegraph shortened the sentence, radio shortened the news story, and TV injected the interrogative mood into journalism.”’ -Marshall McLuhan

This portion of Alessandro Ludovico’s examination into the ‘death’ of the print medium captures the broader realities he outlines in his first chapter. Essentially, though the print medium has been predicted to face extinction, it seems to constantly evolve into newer forms of storytelling. 

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Style Analysis

This was my first attempt at working with Adobe InDesign. Fortunately, my Lynda.com account still works with my LinkedIn access so I was able to watch the quick 30-minute tutorial to get started. The course is taught by David Blatner and the entire series consists of 9 hours of instruction. Only 8.5 more hours to go...

This is the link to my first assignment via Adobe InDesign: https://indd.adobe.com/view/2003a2f2-2d1e-4607-acf5-488b898936c8

 I hope to gain the skills necessary to create a better overall product.

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“ [Auteur theory] never dealt adequately with the collaborative nature of the cinema and the messy problems of movie-making. But while the theory is passé, its effect is still with us: to this day, when we think of film structure, the director is squarely in the middle.” -Michael Rock, Designer as Author

The author here uses the pivotal, centered position of the director in the film industry as a root example of the lingering effects of the auteur theory. Rock does not present another possible solution to explain this hierarchy, which could weaken his argument. Assuming there were no other reasons for the power dynamic shift to directors, this would make a decent illustration of auteur theory’s remnant effects.