About the Los Angeles Works publication
Introduction to Los Angeles Works publication by Tomorrow Book Studio
Our starting point was to use the Metropolis M grid designed by Will Holder and Stuart Baily. We wanted you to consider your content while being aware of the grid and reverse the roles and the normal procedure of the design process. This was also an attempt to have a more close relation to you!
The MM grid is basically a classic book design used in a magazine format. The reason for this is "an aim to return to a state where text would be read and not looked at." Implementing a classic book design into the format of a magazine generates a wide marginal space. This is another important part of the design.
The notion of the margins, was introduced from a metaphorical point of view (see the Norman Potter text below), and from a pro-active point of view and is best explained by Will Holder in the following draft;
"The margins became a way to break a piece of writing out of its own small (artistic) world, and an attempt to bring in secondary, associative elements that reconnected (art) writing with daily life/the outside world. I think our working relationship to Ryan Gander and his "Loose Associations" triggered this: showing the complexity of relationships with art and objects and the structures that uphold them."
"The margins were useful for us. We saw ourselves as the "first readers" of the magazine, and it became a way to annotate/footnote the magazine, as a way to help the other readers after us. For example, if I didn't know who a certain artist was, I would make a small research and find and edit a relevant explanatory piece. This was an attempt to get away from artistic jargon and name-dropping."
"After a while, some writers appreciated the notion of the marginal, and wrote pieces specifically for the margins.This was exactly what we had aimed at: not dictating, but presenting a more flexible structure within which to write, and as such allowing the magazine to change itself editorially."
This is for us the interesting part and we have taken this even one step further. The plan is to make a book for the Stroom and the LACE exhibitions. We want to bring back the grid to the format of a book again. This forces us to consider even more how to use the margins;
– What does it mean to actually cut the margins off in the end?
– Do we leave trace of the margin in the book?
– How can we use this (play with it) in the best way?
– Can this radical way of design restrictions actually help us create something interesting? (We do believe so!)
Structure of publishing:
We will make 3 publications based on the MM grid printed by Die Keure in Brugge
– Issue 1: Research (to be published in December 2007)
– Issue 2: Residency in LA (to be published in April/May 2008)
– Issue 3: Exhibition (to be published in December 2008)
Please think about content for the different topic!
During the exhibition in Stroom and in LA we want to put up a bookmaking workshop (with: printer, copier, binding equipment).
The 3 issues (of each one we keep 600 copies aside) will come together and form the book. The margins and the stapled spine will be cut off and we will have to design the magazine with the format of a book in mind. This is taking the grid back to where it comes from.
The plan is to finalize the book “just in time” for the exhibition. We want to push the limit of the deadline to the extreme to be able to have an updated version of the work in progress. By being there when the exhibition is set up we want to try to implement the very last days of the process in the book. We can add sheets in between before we glue it together (this enables us to make the book in Den Haag a different one from the book in LA).
We don't want the book to be just three issues of a magazine put together. That's why we want to add more pages of the book at the exhibition and it makes the two editions different from each-other. This way of making a book is presenting a more flexible structure for the content and hopefully the issues and the books will change itself editorially by accepting this "way of doing".
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