Tim McCormick

Japanese candy wrapper flies plane into World Trade Center again.  Here’s a wrapper (unfolded) for a pack of Japanese Morinaga-brand “Hi-chew” candy.

and here it is again, with the center frame highlighted:

Looking closer at the center panels, we can see that the backdrop is clearly lower Manhattan, with the Bank of New York at left (and the Woolworth Building in the third panel).  Then there’s the strip of text flying by, led by what might be read as a passenger jet on its side, flying past (or into) a building that looks a lot like the Twin Towers of the former WTC.

What happened?  Total accident, possible sly joke?  Who knows?  In a world globalized and overflowing with image, there is plenty of graphic collision, and it can be hard to say what means what to whom.

The flavor of this Hi-chew pack, however, is “American Cherry”, which may explain things. I imagine some beleaguered graphic designers, deep in a sub-basement of the headquarters of candy-making behemoth Morinaga Seika Kabushiki-gaisha, needing to come up with a design for the next day, and casting about for something recognizably American, that they could find usable images of easily.

I imagine this possibility because New York City is a powerful, global brand — symbol that for many people is almost one with the United States.  It is a tremendous asset for New York, except for making the city a prime terrorist target.  Many New Yorkers, of course, being rather alienated from the country, might find it strange that foreigners regard the city as synonymous with the nation.

Thus perhaps the lower-Manhattan imagery.  The plane?  Well that’s the plane with the product slogan text trailing behind it that we  put on every package design! (I imagine them saying).  Here the worlds collide.

I also recently picked up an assortment pack of Meiji-brand candies:

I buy one of these now and then, I admit, because it has great fun value:  seeing the cacaphony of boxes lined up in one package;  cracking the outer cellophane to let the different jewel-like, matchbox-sized boxes spill out, each cellophane wrapped as well, and with playing-card markings on back so you could play cards if you collected enough of them.

By the time you go through the individual-box cellophane, open the cardboard box, and have one of the tiny intense candies, it is as if you are eating pure colors or images.  Yes they are for children, but I like to think it may also help one understand the pleasure Japanese have with packaging.  Also I like the candy.  Their world and my world, we meet here.

this is real, as far as I can tell. A different take on the e-book, God on the Go (pictured) contains the entire NRSV Bible, plus reading software, on a thumb-sized flash drive. Wherever you may be, just plug in to have your scriptures. on Amazon, $39.95.

Global information publisher Thomson Reuters recently collected citations from the journal literature it indexed in 2007 — mainly academic / peer-reviewed journals — to books and their authors.  Below is the list of the most-cited works/authors in the humanities and social sciences.  (in the sciences, the journal rather than the book is the main communication vehicle).

For a measure of your canonical literacy, or perhaps your academic orientation, see how many of these authors you’ve read something by.  I’ve been so bold.

From Times Higher Education (UK).

1    Michel Foucault (1926-1984) Philosophy, sociology, criticism”
2    Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) Sociology
3    Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) Philosophy
4    Albert Bandura (1925- ) Psychology
5    Anthony Giddens (1938- ) Sociology
6    Erving Goffman (1922-1982) Sociology
7    Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) Philosophy, sociology”
8    Max Weber (1864-1920) Sociology
9    Judith Butler (1956- ) Philosophy
10    Bruno Latour (1947- ) Sociology, anthropology”
11    Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Psychoanalysis
12    Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) Philosophy
13    Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Philosophy
14    Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) Philosophy
15    Noam Chomsky (1928- ) Linguistics, philosophy”
16    Ulrich Beck (1944- ) Sociology
17    Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Philosophy
18    David Harvey (1935- ) Geography
19    John Rawls (1921-2002) Philosophy
20    Geert Hofstede (1928- ) Cultural studies
21    Edward W. Said (1935-2003) Criticism
22    Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Sociology
23    Roland Barthes (1915-1980) Criticism, philosophy”
24    Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) Anthropology
25    Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Political theory
26    Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) Criticism, philosophy”
27    Henri Tajfel (1919-1982) Social psychology
28    Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) Philosophy
29    Barney G. Glaser (1930- ) Sociology
30    George Lakoff (1941- ) Linguistics
31    John Dewey (1859-1952) Philosophy, psychology, education”
32    Benedict Anderson (1936- ) International studies
33    Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) Philosophy
34    Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) Psychoanalysis, philosophy, criticism”
35    Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996) History and philosophy of science
36    Karl Marx (1818-1883) Political theory, economics, sociology”
37    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Philosophy

I was digging around for some old photographs, and came across an online album of photos and commentary I did after a 3-week trip up the West Coast in 2000. All organized by location, indexed, with bibliography and template design. First, I can’t believe how much effort I put into it. Second, I remember that this was the time I began shooting photographs again, after a number of years’ hiatus following the theft of my camera. I recall I saw a $10 point-and-shoot at a supermarket, quite incidentally, and threw it in my basket, thinking it might be good for a few shots.

Ok, not that I’m an acclaimed professional photographer now, remembering where I started out; but it was the first time I used the camera as a way to very deliberately examine places, and record them as for a visual record (as opposed to, as an artistic interpretation).  This is almost entirely what I’ve done  with photography ever since, probably at the expense of its artistry.

Below are a few samples.  Click on photos to go to corresponding album page.

The October 19 cover of The New Yorker features a painting by Eric Drooker, titled “In the World of Books”.   It’s very similar to the image used on the below sticker for Powells Books, in Portland, OR.   Actually, Powells has been producing posters and other goods with this theme for some years, in keeping with its slogan, “City of Books”.

So, did a)  Eric Drooker lift the graphic idea from Powells?  Or, perhaps b) the idea is obvious enough to be independently arrived at, or c) there is some common source.  Or, perhaps d) Drooker did the posters/stickers for Powells.   I can at least say for b) that I haven’t seen it anywhere else, in years of looking at book and bookstore materials.  For d) I note that Drucker’s and the sticker’s painting styles are very different.  c) common source:  can anyone suggest?

In any case, I think the difference in emphasis, between “City of Books” and “World of Books” is interesting.  The “world” of books, in Drooker’s view, contains nothing but books;  in Powells’ view, by contrast, books are a large presence, equivalent to the skyscrapers of a city, but they are set amid a real environment: trees, streetlamps, a Portland streetcar going by (like the one that goes past Powells’ main store), and a mountain backdrop (Mt. Hood, Oregon).

The Powells view, to me, seems wiser and more humane.  It says, we come together in “cities” to print and sell books. and for cultural conversation.  But it isn’t all of life:  there are other parts to the city, and there is nature beyond the city.  Books are part of this world, are located; they’re not just a fantasy zone, “through the looking glass.”

Why are Bibles so unreadable, to perhaps a majority of people?  Possibly it is partly due to the fact that most Bibles contain an abnormal amount of content, much higher page density, smaller type, and unfamiliar paragraph and page layout, compared to virtually any other contemporary book.  I hesitate to second-guess the large and sophisticated Bible-publishing industry;  but as a designer, I have to at least wonder, if Bible readership is the goal, why are readers usually being offered such unwieldy and illegible volumes to read from?

So this suggests an experiment.

The design issues above mostly result from trying to force the entire Bible into a single, portable volume.  But why the determination to do this?  After all, most educated people know that what we call  “the Bible” is a compendium of different writings from different times and contexts.  Nonetheless, when it comes to Bible publishing, there seems to be an overwhelming preference, or call it compulsion, or perhaps economic logic, to pack it all into one volume. Thus the Bible edition — familiar to many of us from Gideon’s Bibles in hotel rooms, or the family bookshelf, etc. — with usually King James Version text, printed 2 columns per page, with each new sentence or “verse” numbered and starting on a new line.

Key design factors, for anyone seeking to increase readibility:

1. choice of translation (if any);
2. lineation: are sentences gathered into paragraph, or each one given a new line?  
   
3. page layout: one column or multiple;
4. number of volumes: one or multiple.

In many years of looking for Bible editions in bookstores used and new, I’ve found that paragraph and single-column layouts are unusual, and multi-volume complete Bibles are quite rare (correct me on that, bibliophiles, if need be!).  More to the point, I’ve simply never found the reading Bible that I want:  a King James Version, paragraph single-column format, in a edition of 4-6 volumes, with readable type size and no show-through on the paper.

So, I decided to make my own.

Historical note: Bible design exerts a fascination over many book designers, quite independent of any religious or even literary interest in the text.  That is because the Bible is widely considered to be the ultimate challenge in book design — and a challenge with centuries of fascinating history behind it. It’s something like the Ur-text of book design: still, the most widely printed book in the world, every year for centuries.

Ok, so, I started with Penguin’s paperback edition of the The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible (2005, edited by David Norton), below.  This edition traces its lineage to the landmark 1873 Cambridge Paragraph Bible, edited by F. H. A. Scrivener.

Like the 1873 edition, it is a King James Version text, printed one column per page, and with prose sentences gathered into paragraphs (rather than each on a new, numbered line).  These two reforms bring the presentation much closer to 19th / 20th Century book-design norm.

Then, I literally cut the book into sections, cutting through the spine with an X-acto knife.  This produced separate book segments for front matter, back matter, and six other sections. Then I applied new wrappers (i.e. wraparound paper covers) made of 120-lb cardstock, which I pre-scored to produce flat spines of appropriate width.   The front matter and back matter, I recombined into one booklet.

The end result:  a King James Version Bible, in readable, paragraph, single-column layout; divided into six easy-to-handle paperbacks.

The division into volumes was my determination, but for simplicity’s sake it keeps books in the same order as the Cambridge/Penguin source volume.  The volumes are:

1. The Pentateuch;
2. Former Prophets, Chronicles;
3. Wisdom Writings;
4. Latter Prophets;
5. Apocrypha;
6. New Testament.

At last, a Bible edition that feels much like a contemporary paperback novel (or set of novels).  I happen to think there is an untapped market for an edition like this, for people like me;  but again, it’s hard to believe that Zondervan and other other big Bible publishers have not already considered it carefully.  If not, have your people call my people. I’ll be enjoying my beautifully readable edition.

So you’re determined to make use of this online social network phenomenon, which is apparently now how jobs are filled, companies are started, the social “A” list determined, and so on. Good. What to do? Well, a main part of it is to make your online activities visible to the right people, in the right way. To think about this, I propose an analogy of a river system.

What? Ok, so in general, a person using social networks has some set of activities and communications which she wishes to convey to certain audiences, possibly to the world. But not all of your audiences want to get all of your news.

Perhaps this is stating the obvious. But half the people I talk to, if social networks come up, profess total incomprehension, and often dismay, fear, and paranoia. So this is for you.

My key, if not earth-shattering, idea, is that various audiences want progressively more filtered versions of your personal newsfeed. But there is probably a core stream, such as your personal or professional blog, that is occasional and newsworthy enough for everyone to tolerate.  Think of that core stream as the headwaters of your river — clear, pure wisdom, up in the mountains.

Now the river flows along, and other tributaries enter into it, and the river gets wider.  This is like your news stream being joined by new data, such as postings about your new photographs, or notices from your book-collecting service about your new acquisitions (I’m cutting back, I promise!), etc.  Well, various audiences downstream are OK with drinking from the bigger river, because well, the river is bigger and they want more of your water.

What do you think?  Is your social networking like this, or is everything in one flood, or do you have multiple rivers?

Here’s the diagram illustrating the model.  Click on the image to see a full-size version.

Bob Stein at if:book blog (Institute for the Future of the Book) points to the recent vision-of-the-future video from French publisher Editis.   He remarks, “this film loads very very slowly but i think it’s the most exciting vision of the book of the future since Apple’s Knowledge Navigator in  1987.”

In the 9-minute video, we get mouth-watering, partly tongue-in-cheek scenes of continental Europe’s quality-of-life — fantastic trains & pedestrian streetscapes,independent bookstores, delicious food, world-class museums, weekend getaway to Bruges, etc.– as the movie follows a couple through a riotous few days of E-book high living.

On their fabulously svelte, Kindle 2-like devices, they

• read and purchase novels
• enjoy reading on the beach
• get multimedia museum guides
• navigate foreign cities with ease
• stay in multimedia contact with friends and family
• collaborate with colleagues on shared virtual desktops while at sidewalk cafes
• see many hi-resolution Breughel paintings online and off that I’m dying to see myself
• etc.

It’s great stuff.  I couldn’t help but be struck, however, by the sheer badness of my user experience in trying to watch this video.  On my cable-modem connection at home — which costs an an exorbitant sum, by present-day French broadband standards — the nine minutes of video stopped and started across 30 minutes of my viewing time, such that before long I shifted focus to another task and was just glancing over at the video pane now and then when a few new seconds deigned to arrive.

Of course, we can say that my connection is bad, and maybe my online-backup process is conflicting, and maybe Time Warner Cable has limitations on sites starting with “e”, and maybe the demand for the video is really high at this particular hour, the host is rationing access, yadda yadda.

The thing is, though, my connection isn’t really bad, it’s normal to good.  It’s video-capable in the last-mile, for sure;  but across large Internet distances it’s subject to many latency delays like almost everything is.

What’s really bad is that it a purportedly state-of-the-art Web video presentation would be implemented as a stream only, quite possibly streaming from a French host directly to me.  This is sheer madness from the standpoint of user experience. (admittedly, I didn’t look into it very far to see if alternate presentations are possible. But I’m channeling past experience with other video clips here).

Even if the host has limited bandwidth (not likely –  Editis is one of Europe’s biggest publishing companies), the last thing you want to do is force a viewer to sit through the stuttering, piecemeal delivery that results.  Please make the file downloadable, so the viewer can watch it undistracted when and only when it’s all there. Or distribute it to Youtube, Bittorrent, and/or other scaleable infrastructures. If there were a best-practices  `”pattern language” for how to do web video, this would probably be among the first entries.

The deeper point is that, technology aside, I myself am the cause of all sorts of interruptions: like, the kettle boiling, an urgent or more interesting message appearing, deciding to go walk the dog, etc.  The video download should no more presume my continuous full attention than it should assume continuous full bandwidth.

You could also say, life is mostly not full-attention. Social interaction, or walking down a street, or browsing a market, or working in an office, is a full-blown constant negotiation of many communication channels and actors.

Full attention is a peculiar condition, of certain occasions such as religious ritual, theater and film stagings and screening, of interpersonal intimacy, of deep pleasure reading or intensive study.

The Editis video addresses this reality beautifully, in my opinion, precisely by showing their e-book device embedded effortlessly in so many different real-world scenarios of the main characters.  It isn’t a thing-in-itself, in a demo setting.  The Editis video stresses, as did computer visionary Douglas Engelbart decades ago, how the technology is valuable because it augments our lives and intelligence, rather than displacing it or delivering something purportedly all new.

Without this being the baseline vision, we are in the land of tech fetish objects worshipped by early adopters, with the rest of us unserved or subservient.

What do you do with the books you’re thinking about reading, are reading, or recently read?  What should or might you do with these books, to maintain and change reading priorities, to maximize recall, to enjoy the cover art, etc.?  I think the structure and presentation of this reading space, as it might be called, probably has an important effect on our reading and thinking.

For me, cueing up books-to-read-next is a crucial activity, which might extend over many years between hearing of or acquiring a book, and finally reading it.  Cognitively, it may be inseperable from reading.  So I’ve used designated bookshelves, and sometimes variations on the proverbial “bedside reading pile”, plus many lists.  (such as my Amazon wish list, or long term Reading List).

The book shelf or pile has never seemed satisfactory, though, perhaps because these stow the books so only spine titles are visible — the same way books are stored permanently.  Shelved books are back in the ranks — they don’t seem active, ready to launch, and if you have a lot of books, the cued-up books are not distinguished from any others.

So, as an experiment, I decided to put together a little 2′ x 4′ reading rack to mount on the front of a bookshelf, pictured above.  It needn’t be on a bookshelf, but this seemed convenient.

It’s just a 2′ x 4′ piece of plywood, some moulding, two hinges to mount it directly onto  bookshelf front, and a hinged extender to push the bottom out and make the rack sloping.

The dimensions and slope are such that small books (e.g. mass paperback) will fit in flat, but trade paper or larger will overlap the row above.  Goal is for each book to be accessible, the cover art/title to be readable, while maximizing number of books per unit of rack space.  The slope keeps the books laying in place, even if they overlap the ledge for the row above.

I judge it… a success.  I think reading is enhanced by keeping the recently read and to-read on hand for reinforcement.  My prototype rack is set up to be visible from my primary workspace, just to the right of my sightline to computer monitor, so I’m sure to casually and/or unconsciously survey it often.  Next time around, I’d probably make the rack the same width as the book shelf (3 feet here), i.e. if I were starting from scratch rather than using only existing wood pieces as-is.

I like that front-mounting a book rack on a book shelf not only a) uses unused airspace, but b) hides the books behind it, thus achieving a further pruning or attenuation of the book load.

night photos at University of Virginia, old campus — Jefferson’s “academical village”.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/contextobject/sets/72157619712826710/