John, 2020
digital publication; glue, paper, gold felt pen, marker, and ink for the printed book
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The book John was created as a gift for one of my classmates, John, in my Critical Studio: Everyday Objects class. We had to informally interview each other, then write the interview, and finally, design a gift for the other person, all with the intent of exploring how objects can hold meanings in our lives. We studied, in particular, the concept of the gift, which is a special kind of object.
I ultimately decided to create a book to gift to John, as I felt it would be the best way to translate our interaction using skills I am more comfortable with (writing and graphic design).
The main challenge was: How do you capture someone’s essence - someone you’ve basically just met - visually? How do you capture someone’s essence through language? How do you capture someone’s essence point blank?
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John is such an intriguing person. There’s something about him that I don’t get. There’s something that I can’t grasp, but I can sense it. We’re similar in many ways: we don’t finish our sentences, we use “um” a lot, we have weird habits, we hesitate. We’re thinkers. But this project isn’t about me. It is about John. Who is John, you ask?
I am not sure myself. I do not know. But this is my attempt at finding out.
The gift I made is the product of my many conversations with John. It is an assembly of my thoughts, but which stem from a place of kinship and interaction. It is a collage of my impressions, an attempt at gathering and organizing the information I received from him. You could say it is a form of data visualization – this buzzword referring to the presentation of data, usually numerical and statistical information in a visual format, to make it more easily understandable. In this case, the “data” is our exchanges – words, facial expressions, actions – and the visualization is the book. It functions not only as an informational resource, but also as a keepsake. A way to return to what matters most about a person; not his accomplishments, titles, or credits, but his words, his interests, his viewpoints - the impression they leave on you. The book form forces you to stop for a moment and pay attention, to come back to the present and take the time to feel the material, the words, even the sounds of the poems as you read them in your head. It was my attempt at “slowing things down”, an idea I received from Clog Magazine – one of John’s favorites.
I was inspired by Clog magazine’s unique approach to media publication. Instead of providing superficial information on a wide range of topics and/or people, Clog focuses on one issue, topic, or person to provide deep and thorough information from myriad opinions. The end product is thus unlike any other magazine; reading it requires a certain level of cognitive focus and continuous attention reorientation. The reader cannot quickly skim through, especially considering the magazine’s minimal use of images and plain graphic format. It is precisely this experience the magazine seeks to initiate. It inevitably leads to the conscious action of slowing down.
The magazine’s unconventional format – which takes the appearance of a book – furthers this dynamic because it simulates the act of reading stories which is by nature a more intimate experience. Books also serve different functions than magazines: the latter exist to disseminate and present information, while the former are more personal and tell creative stories.
I thus wanted to reference and imitate Clog’s style in an attempt to bridge the intimate realm with the public, and to perhaps put into question the information that is ubiquitously available to us. What does the way we choose to select, categorize, and present “data” mean about us as individuals? As a society? How do we capture someone’s identity on a page? How do we separate meaningful information from the mundane and superfluous?
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Even though I designed the book from my point of view, and using skills I was comfortable with, fundamentally this gift was about John. It is an attempt at giving an idea of who this person is, to attempt to at least, because it is impossible to grasp all the complexities of one person into a single object. But if I could at least capture his essence, that was enough for me. Thus, I created John, a publication of some of his life’s interests, his thoughts, his quotes, and his work*.
In short, this was my attempt at doing the same work that Clog magazine does: deep diving into a single subject in order to give it the attention it deserves. So many of our interactions nowadays are quick, transitory, and automatic which makes them unsubstantial, meaningless, and effusive. This is facilitated by the instantaneous nature of technology and social media which have transformed us into robots and have rid of us of awareness. It seems that we now live in on auto-pilot mode. The interview process for this project allowed John and I to really interact: acknowledge each other’s presence and connect on a human level. We simply conversed and got to know each other – nothing complicated. But it is precisely the laid-back nature of the process that made it more meaningful. Additionally, during our conversation, John mentioned that he wasn’t good at documenting his work, and that he needed to start keeping track of it. So, this book serves that goal in a small way. At least I hope it can.
The book also includes a poem I wrote, which I morseled into pieces and dispersed throughout. Being a writer more than a visual artist, I usually gravitate towards using language as my creative medium. I use words to translate what is tangible into what is intangible: I take images and physical observations and convert them into moods and feelings. For this project, though, I needed to do the opposite; I needed to translate what is intangible into a physical thing. I looked at language as both a physical manifestation of ideas, thoughts, and observations (which are by nature intangible) - through the mark of ink on a page - and a metaphoric translation of physical concepts and situations. I wanted to examine language as both the written word, and language as this evanescent, transcendental, imaginary concept.
I left blank spaces in the book to allow for more ideas and images to be added. I didn’t want to gift John something completely finished and perfect. He told me that he likes to write and record meaningful things. So these blank spaces are designed for that purpose; they serve the realm of possibility, of creating, of further memory-making. They are also a reflection of my incomplete thoughts: the missing answers, the gaps in my knowledge, the uncertainties.
*the photographs I used in the book were taken by John.
Below is the printed book along with a miniature zine I made to compliment the gift.
