Lecture: Stuart Tolley & Andrew Sanigar (Thames & Hudson)

Interview of Andrew Sanigar

• Close relationship between author and publisher
• Research objectives
• Ethonographic research:
  • Example Richard Mosse film and photography in the Democratic Republic of Congo:
  • 1. He usually starts with the forms and medium he wants to use (photographic)
  • 2. work backwards: How can I use this to engage with/reveal/communicate with?
  • -> in his Ethnographic research in Congo he observed several groups such the rebels and military -> no simple answers for the conflict
  • – sublime -> making visible outside of language what exists (see Art-> Edmund Burke: “sublime as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling”)
  • – irony/ambiguity between subject that underwrites places and the aesthetic and beauty of those places in Congo
  • – good photographs make one reflect

What makes a good visual culture book concept?

• having a clear audience -> why they want or need the book?
• how communicating that want or need?
  • – format, positioning, packaging
• How much might they pay for the book
• platform for the book
• depends on the subject if global audience (or for ex. regional even book published in English)

Do you expect authors to be an expert in their field?

• author brings knowledge to the project + publisher his expertise => distill into commercially appealing form

Common hurdles (ex. marketing potential, sales) when presenting a book to the Thames & Hudson team?

• most challenging books are “survey books”: need to work hard to make a case for why this book because usually for only info people can look up Pinterest or Tumblr

What do printed books have/can do that digital tech can not?

• experience design
• something that adds something on top of the things you would see online
• curation, editing, reliability -> it’s more than just information
• inspired vs. informed
• comeback of analogue photography -> makes you look closer when taking the pics
• challenge will be how to create books for generation Z that is completely embedded in the digital
  • for ex: practical book comeback

Irma Boom: A tribute to Coco Chanel

• Boom was asked to design a book for Chanel No. 5
• she created a book with white pages: textured, relief and embossed/engrossing
• like the invisible parfum Chanel No. 5 -> invisible book
• in digital this book would be nothing
• book has proportions of Chanel No. 5 bottle

Lupton, E. and Miller, A., (1996) Design, Writing, Research: Writing on Graphic Design

Jaques Derrida: theory of deconstruction = mode of questioning and about technologies and social institutions

Deconstruction …

• strategy of critical form-making
• writing as an active form of representation not just transcription of spoken word
• any memory system is a form of writing as it records info for purpose of future transmissions
• Grammatatology = study of writing as distinctive form of representation => deconstruction is crucial mode of research and questioning (and within it are forms or processes of typography and graphic design)

Post-structuralism…

writers looked at modes of representation such as photography and how they build/remake social world

• example Poster: Typography as Discourse by Allen Hori
• openness of meaning
• interior self constructed by external systems and techn.
• MoMa exhibit 1988: Deconstructivist Architecture
• 1990: P. Meggs how-to guide for would-be deconstructivists in the magazine Step-by-Step Graphics

Deconstruction is not a historical style or period but rather a critical process – an act of questioning

• A sign is by it-self empty and it needs the context with other signs
• substance of typography not alphabet but the visual framework and graphic forms that materialize system of writing (Design and typography are at the edges of writing)
• books: Modern Typography by Robin Kinross; Photography Between Covers. The Dutch Documentary Photobook after 1945 by Fred Struving

Typography and writing are informed by deconstruction -> examine structures that dramatise intrusion of visual form into verbal content; invasion of ideas by graphic marks, gaps and differences

history of typography informed by deconstruction would mean…

graphic design has revealed, revised and ignored accepted rules of communication