From Pixels to Pages
In a world colored by digital work, we can easily forgo the frustration of making with our hands.
It’s installation week this week. Despite COVID conditions, the art school is hosting an exhibition for undergraduate art students from April 6-9. Though I am technically a Computing and the Arts major (a joint major in computer science and art), I exhibit my work as if I were an art major. Doing so feels a bit like fitting a square peg in a round hole.
Rather than spending the year painting or sculpting, I was on the computer making a variable typeface. I spent my first semester coding the beginnings of a typeface built out of small images rather than vectors. And then I spent a few more months refining the design by tweaking code. For nearly a year, I worked in the incorporeal world of javascript and other programming languages that do seemingly magical things.
Now I needed to make a type specimen, which just meant I needed to “show off” my typeface. My advisor discouraged me from continuing in this space of the digital. Stop making websites and gifs and videos. He suggested making a book. But how do I make a book to show off a typeface that is endlessly changeable? Make a big book, he said. A book so big it could demonstrate all the possibilities of this typeface. I was terrified. Make a big book? I’d only ever made a chapbook, at most 20 or so pages. How do I even print and bind a big book?
I couldn’t continue working in front of a computer. I had to print samples. I had to bind those samples. I had to walk to the print shop and put in an order that would take two days to print. I had a nightmare about this book.
And then I had to make a book stand with a laser cutter and a sheet of acrylic. I had to learn how to use epoxy glue and get epoxy glue all over my hands. And then I had to use some chemical that melts acrylic together, which of course, also got all over my hands.
I had to find a pedestal in the basement of the art school and then get locked out of the art school. I had to make posters to go with the big book so that my section of the exhibition wall wouldn’t look so empty.
At one point, I realized that the posters I’d ordered were different sizes. I lugged my posters from the art school back to the print shop, trying my best to keep the posters from folding or ripping. And then I lugged my new posters back to the art school. It was as if I was moving in our pre-COVID world again – the days of in-person design class, when I scrambled in the early morning to print and cut my poster.
In what felt like a blink of an eye, I had spent five hours moving between my apartment and the print shop and the art school. I went to sleep on Friday feeling sore everywhere.
The real world is full of inhibitors. But these inhibitors also allow for a sense of finality. For the space to enjoy the work you’ve built with your hands, your feet, your body. There is no ability to change the design or content after it’s printed and done. You can’t just go back into the code and hit refresh.
Once it’s all over, you can hold this thing in your hands, this thing that exists in the world and won't disappear unless you use your body to throw it in the trash.
When I first started taking design classes, our professor told us to cut and paste shapes that represented different emotions – as if computers didn’t exist! I couldn’t believe that I’d somehow reverted back to elementary school art class.
Now, I appreciate my professors for teaching me a design practice that existed before the pixel. In a world colored by digital work, we can easily forgo the frustration of making with our hands. Part of me has enjoyed taking design classes over Zoom for this exact reason.
But in doing so, we lose the satisfaction of feeling the weight of a book or the flimsiness of a poster, still warm from the printer. We lose the experience of dirtying our hands with glue and unnamed chemicals, all in the name of good design.
A note:
Design and art is expensive. It has been an immense privilege throughout my college years to have the financial support for this major. For all of the flaws in Yale’s financial system, I’m at least grateful for grants like the CPA, which help fund ambitious creative projects. The art school is also working towards providing students with adequate financial resources to finish an art/design major. But we still have a long way to go.