osp blog - texts

'Artists and cultural workers in Belgium: Statement of Solidarity with Palestine'

2023-10-21T00:00:00+02:00

OSP responds to the Call for action for artistic and cultural organisations and institutions

As cultural workers committed to opposing all forms of racism and colonial violence, we strongly and unambiguously support the Palestinian population in their struggle for freedom.

The call asks for symbolic and tangible actions that we are and will be undertaking in solidarity with the Palestinian people in this time of genocide.

As designers we have no audience per say but a network of collaborators and platforms accumulated over years of common projects. We believe that those platforms and communities can be political tools. We contacted our collaborators and relayed this call to such platforms with an intention of mutual responsabilisation as an action of support.

We invite the groups for which we build design to use their platforms according to this call. We hope that it can help opening up spaces for: spreading information, dissusions and symbolic or material actions within the Brussels cultural sector.

We invite other design studio to do the same, and think about their position as builders of identities and visibility in time where unambiguous political positionning can impact the public opinion and the position and action of states.

OSP endorses the BDS movement as formulated by BACBI

In addition to the important links shared in in the call, we add:

This declaration was inspired by one from Varia and others.

Comment le livre devient machine

2011-09-06T12:28:00+02:00

L'entrepreneur et amateur de texte justifié Kaplan nous livre une articulation des futurs du livre efficace comme son tunnel Powerpoint, voie A et b. Le blog Lafeuille reformule et déploie (2 formats donc). Les torsions qui appuient sur le savoir (à l'esprit dirait peut-être Stiegler) quand le livre est capturé dans une application sur une machine fermée restent à creuser, ce qu'ils ne font encore que peu, sans doute pour des raisons différentes.

Time for a new adventure

2010-11-02T12:02:00+01:00

Dear Ubuntu,

A few weeks ago I needed to re-install my computer. Using the convenient Startup Disk Creator, I prepared a USB-stick with a fresh version of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, rebooted the computer and clicked 'install'. While the Ubuntu slide-show took my mind off the wait and the automatized installation process was taking place, I fondly remembered the nervous excitement that installing earlier versions would bring. Although I sometimes miss that sense of adventure, I admire the rapid development that Ubuntu has gone through. Compared to my first experience in 2006, the install is now faultless, fast and pleasant.

But the last slide took me by surprise. It reads: “Take a look at the Ubuntu Software Center to install (and remove) software from our online repository, which we carefully organize to be safe and up to date.” And: “If you need something that isn't available through us, find out if there is a Debian package or another repository available. That way, it will be really easy to install and you will receive automatic updates.”

Software from our online repository available through us?

I opened the Applications menu on the completed Lucid Lynx install and took a thorough look at the Ubuntu Software Center for the first time. I discovered that the cardboard box icon that represented the repository has been replaced by a brown paper shopping bag and also the vocabulary has changed. 'Ubuntu Software' covers the main category of the Debian archive; the rest now falls under 'Other Software', including packages in the categories contrib, non-free and potentially packages for sale. The term 'Third party' was awkward already, but to replace it by 'Other' seems vague on purpose. Even more alarming is that the Software Center refers to some non-free resources as 'Canonical partners'.

I use Ubuntu since 2006 because I sympathize with your attempt to invite users along that traditionally do not side with Free Software. I certainly enjoyed the increasing stability and ease-of-use that the distribution provides, without sacrificing command-line access. By offering non-free packages such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader and Skype as 'Third party sources', you made me aware and responsible for my own choice to install non-free software. To a user migrating from MacOS X like me, collaborating with people using proprietary tools, it seemed a healthy approach to digital practice; a clean break between free and non-free is easier said than done. Through the project's obvious care for interface-issues, Ubuntu also seemed to avoid the over-simplified GUI vs. command-line position that is present in many F/LOSS projects and I secretly hoped that with your attention for design, you would one day find us a way out of there.

The latest developments are unfortunately not very promising as they seem to be about hiding rather than finding interesting hybrid expressions. To compare installing Free Software to shopping is missing the point in such a grotesque way that I have decided to refrain from installing Ubuntu in the future. Here is more background on this decision:

If you want to be in contact with software as an actual material, you need an operating system that can be questioned and experienced. For years, subsequent versions of Ubuntu offered the kind of reflexive environment that I was looking for, if only in contrast with the system I moved away from. The current redesign and rephrasing that is supposed to help make using Ubuntu a more reliable and predictable experience, leaves me feeling alienated from how and why this technology is being produced. It obscures the characteristics of the system, equals out the variations between different sources that it is built upon and ultimately starts to internalize a commercial vocabulary. Speaking of Technology, we are Dreaming of Society ((Mirko Tobias Schaeffer: Designing a Better Tomorrow: How design is informed by metaphors, images and associations of social progress http://river-valley.tv/designing-a-better-tomorrow)).

Over the last few years, I spent many hours with 'sudo apt-get install' and Synaptic ((Synaptic is a Graphical User Interface for apt-get or Aptitude, the Debian package-manager.)), browsing exotic softwares that I happily installed, tried and uninstalled. In that way I learned about dependencies and libraries and ultimately about the many cultures of software. This sense of interdependence, of richness and diversity has been a source of inspiration for many of the activities and ideas we developed at OSP ((“We launched OSP because our portfolio started to fill up with designs for alternative music, copyleft activities and Linux Install Parties and the gap between the language of our work and the jargon of the commercial software we used became more obvious with every new job. We were also interested in the role that software plays in the creative process and trying to find out how our digital tools could become a creative and substantial element in design itself. But since the software packages of Adobe Inc. have become quite the standard in art academies, creative studios and printshops, it is difficult to detect their influence, let alone analyse their effect.” Awkward Gestures. OSP in The Mag.net reader 3: Processual Publishing. Actual Gestures, edited by Alessandro Ludovico and Nat Muller. 2008)).

The changes in the re-branded Ubuntu remind me of how much the software repository is at the heart of a Linux-distribution. By defining what goes into the categories main, contrib or non-free and deciding which update is considered stable and which one is unstable, the package managers make the repository a primary location for taking position on software. Re-phrasing the terminology around it, both visually and in terms of language is therefore an important shift, as it redefines the politics of use.

The fact that Ubuntu wants to develop revenue models ((“In order to monetize, Canonical needs to change its user base, Enderle said. However, it first needs to provide a platform that's more polished so people are more likely to buy. Adding the Unity interface for highly mobile computing is an 'important' step in making Canonical's platform more user-friendly, but 'they still have a long way to go and will need to change the perceptions surrounding the product as well if they want to attract people who will spend money on it” Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Pokes Its Head Out. Richard Adhikari in LinuxInsider http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/71012.html)) is obviously not a problem in itself. It is important that projects like yours find ways to be sustainable, and with such a widely used distribution you probably need more money than I can imagine. But in order to monetize the project, you apparently feel the need to hide the interesting trouble that comes with Free Software, and so you decided to put a grocery store at the heart of it. I think it is a mistake to speak about Free Software as products free for the taking, especially as they will soon be joined by others being for sale.

At first I found it hard to believe that part of the Ubuntu redesign was commissioned to people not engaged in free culture whatsoever and sad to see them consequently use proprietary tools with no apparent discomfort. ((For the redesign of the Ubuntu Font, Canonical decided to commission the London design agency Dalton Maag Ltd. The font is released under a free license, but designed using the proprietary tool FontLab without interaction from the Free Font community. http://www.daltonmaag.com/docs/FontDevelopment.pdf. See also Nathan Willis: Ubuntu's font beta sparks discussions about open font development http://lwn.net/Articles/396711/)) Had I cared to look at the Brand Communication Guide, this should not have come as a shock. The new visual strategy is built around so-called voice, audience and developer sliders and the whole design concept is meant to elegantly express a series of binary oppositions: Community (Ubuntu Orange) vs. Commercial (Canonical Aubergine), Consumer vs. Enterprise, End-user vs. Engineer. “If you find that you have positioned a slider in the centre, think carefully about the purpose of your communication and what it is trying to say. In general, the only time it’s useful to say “both” is for transitional or gateway pages, like a home page” ((Ubuntu Brand Communication Guide http://design.canonical.com/brand/A.%20Brand_Communication_Guide_v1.pdf)).

It worries me that Canonical, a company committed to both F/LOSS and design is so unambitious about visualizing the vibrancy of the Free software community. This is bad news for F/LOSS as a whole, bad news for the excellent Libre Graphic tools out there that could have gained from your support, but also for design itself. Once again it is being reduced to a cover-up, facilitating the disconnect between the technologies it is supposed to represent.

The decision I made in 2006 to move away from integrated, seamless systems literally has caught up with me. It is fair to say that the urge to try out other F/LOSS operating systems is partially motivated by the feeling that I am getting used to the Ubuntu-way to such an extent that it is hard to stay aware of it (I almost missed the changes happening to the package manager). The direction Ubuntu is taking right now, means that in order for “people to love and appreciate free software” ((http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brand)) you make it a priority to be in direct competition with proprietary systems. You decided to replace the Human-theme by the Light-theme (“Visually, light is beautiful, light is ethereal, light brings clarity and comfort” ) and are busy with Core Brand Values. Now Ubuntu starts to speak like the proprietary tools I wanted to leave behind, it is time to move on.

The cardboard box icon that has been in use throughout various Gnome-icon sets always seemed a bit of an empty metaphor. Looking at it in this context, it gains power as a subtle allusion to transportability, modularity, storage and archive. It ultimately refers to opening Pandora's box ((Using her fingers, the maid pried open the lid of the great jar,
Sprinkling its contents; her purpose, to bring sad hardships to mankind.
Nothing but Hope stayed there in her stout, irrefrangible dwelling,
Under the lip of the jar, inside, and she never would venture
Outdoors, having the lid of the vessel itself to prevent her,
Willed there by Zeus, who arranges the storm clouds and carries the aegis.
Otherwise, myriad miseries flit round miserable mortals;
Furthermore, full is the earth of much mischief, the deep sea also.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/329658.html)), unleashing the unruly forces of Free Software. It is this unreliable potential that I have grown to love and appreciate in Free Software and I would like to find an operating system that reflects it. A distribution that cares about interface, does not confuse openness with consistency, is not afraid to risk reliability over solidarity and can think beyond circles when it comes to visually representing a community. One that does not mistake users for consumers, nor has a binary view on differentiating between them and developers.

Before saying goodbye I would like to thank you because without Ubuntu I would not have made it this far. I truly hope you will stay around, convincing many other users to consider Free Software. But I am ready to embark on a new adventure.

Kind regards,

Femke

Coming to terms

2010-08-05T10:08:00+02:00

"If everything is both neutral and imbued with values at the same time, how can we separate instrumentality from ideology? This is essentially what I take the distinction between Free and Open to be about. Free is an ideological standpoint, the idea that users of software should have the right to look under the hood, to know exactly what their software is doing and to make changes to it, should they so choose. Free is about freedom, which is an admirable thing. Free takes on the idea that freedom can be built into code and its licensing schemes. Open, on the other hand, speaks to the instrumental. It speaks to the idea that companies don't want to put the word Free on their products, for fear that people will fail to make the distinction between freedom and monetary freeness, as they do."

ginger coons coming to terms with Open, Free and Libre. Apparently something we all go through, but hers is eloquent and frank like we know her: http://www.adaptstudio.ca/blog/2010/08/coming-to-grips-with-my-own-opinions-about-open-libre-and-free.html

Tools for conviviality

2010-01-28T01:35:00+01:00

In the train back from Stuttgart, I read Tools for Conviviality, a pamphlet by social philosopher Ivan Ilich (1973). A 'convivial society', he argues, is a society in which everyone can act autonomously, and this can be achieved through the design and use of 'convivial tools':

People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the growth of tools beyond a certain point increases reglementation, dependence, and impotence. I use the term "tool" broadly enough to include not only simple hardware such as drills, pots, syringes, brooms, building elements, or motors, and not just large machines like cars or power stations; I also include among tools productive institutions such as factories that produce tangible commodities such as corn flakes or electric current, and productive systems for intangible commodities such a those which produce "education," "health," "knowledge" or "decisions."

The transformer

2009-10-09T13:28:00+02:00

The transformer (Marie Neurath) at work

Today a long awaited booklet arrived in the post: The transformer, principles of making Isotype charts written by Robin Kinross & Marie Neurath. It is inspiring in its modest but precise description of unorthodox working methods developed by philosopher, sociologist, and economist Otto Neurath and his associates. To produce 'pictures out of data', a central role was given to 'the transformer'. Marie Neurath explains:

It is the responsibility of the 'transformer' to understand the data, to get all necessary information from the expert, to decide what is worth transmitting to the public, how to make it understandable, how to link it with general knowledge or with information already given in other charts. In this sense, the transformer is the 'trustee of the public'

http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk/books/978-0-907259-40-4

seamful

2009-05-19T18:12:00+02:00

"Open Source doesn't mean free access, nor open space or open air; it presumes a seamful approach to design as a response to the increasing reliance on technology and its accessibility"

http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/research_2009.html...

Unimaginable tools

2009-01-23T12:06:00+01:00

"Only rarely, if indeed ever, are a tool and an altogether original job it is to do, invented together. Tools as symbols, however, invite their imaginative displacements into other than their original contexts. In their new frames of reference, that is, as new symbols in an already established imaginative calculus, they may themselves be transformed, and may even transform the originally prescriptive calculus. These transformations may, in turn, create entirely new problems which then engender the invention of hitherto literally unimaginable tools"

Joseph Weizenbaum. Computer power and human reason: from judgment to calculation. MIT, 1976

What is in a name

2008-11-05T12:34:00+01:00

Of course we discuss now and than amongst ourselves, whether it is better to change 'Open Source Publishing' to: 'Free Software Publishing' (FSP...), or maybe: 'Free, Libre and Open Source Publishing' (FLOSP!). Reading Rob Myers text 'Open Source Art Again' makes me bring it up here:

The name Open Source was deliberately chosen for its meaninglessness and ideological vacuity. This was intended to make the results of a very strong ideology more palatable to large corporations by disguising its origins. That ideology is Free Software. ((Rob Myers, Open Source Art Again, 2006 http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2006/09/19/open-source-art-again/ (Find an extended version of this text in FLOSS+Art, GOTO10, 2008) ))

When we started OSP in 2006, we were only vaguely aware of the many cultures within F/LOSS and merely interested in the idea of Open Source because it felt as an invitation to "open up your sources". We were trying to re-do design practice, and that seemed a good place to start. For us, however confused our understanding might have been at the time, Open Source was an inspiring thought that went much further than what software we used under which license.

At this point I would say we are most of all interested in the generative and generous 'four freedoms' that form the core of Free Software and try to imaginatively apply them to design. I guess you could describe what we do as a creative version of Free Culture activism, although also that term is not without confusion.

The representational freedom of artists, part of which is the freedom to depict and build or comment on existing culture, to continue the conversation of culture, is the freedom of art. ((idem))

Which might explain why we replaced our full name by the acronym 'OSP' in the blog header, why we prefer the Free Art License over more neutrally formulated Creative Commons Licenses and if you've followed this site for a while, you must have noticed that we slowly became more careful about using the terms 'F/LOSS' and 'Free Software' rather than 'Open Source'.

We understand why the difference between Free Software and Open Source Software matters and are grateful for the relentless energy of people around us to make the difference clear. But besides the fact that our lateral kind of practice does not really work from a clear cut definition, Free Software thinking poses problems when you try to extend it to a larger domain than just software. It tends to want to separate the 'useful' from the 'artistic' expression (what does that mean for design?), and in general it does not go well with non-digital objects. Interesting problems, but we're not sure what to think about all this yet.

So, after all, for now, we decided to stick to our initial name: Open Source Publishing!

Awkward Gestures

2008-11-02T20:40:00+01:00

Out now: The Mag.net reader 3: Processual Publishing. Actual Gestures, edited by Alessandro Ludovico and Nat Muller.

From the introduction:
"a radical change is to be detected between the lines: publishing on paper is not about rigorously selling and distributing content to a specific target readership. It is more a 'gesture' that creates a space of intimacy between the publisher/editor and the reader.This space of intimacy is definitely a 'physical' one"

Download the publication in PDF or order a paper copy here: http://www.moreismore.net/en/magnet-reader-3-processual-publishing-actual

OSP is included in the chapter Hacktivist Publishing with Awkward Gestures, designing with Free Software:

"While a familiar gesture is one that fits perfectly well in a generally accepted model, an awkward gesture is a movement that is not completely synchronic. It’s not a counter-movement, nor a break from the norm; it doesn’t exist outside of the pattern, nor completely in it. Just as a moiré effect reveals the presence of a grid, awkward behaviour can lead to a state of increased awareness; a form of productive insecurity"

Download the text here: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/awkward_gestures.pdf

doubt, critique, reason, hope

2008-10-07T16:11:00+02:00

For everyone (like me) who keeps re-reading the 1992 edition of Robin Kinross' Modern Typography: an essay in critical history... his revised edition (published in 2004) ends in an interestingly different way*:

"The phrase ‘democratization of typography’ has become common, referring to the wide availability of the tools of production for type and typographic design. One may take this with some skepticism: after all, for the majority, the generation and production of these tools is still largely in the hands of a few corporations — though the open source software movement may provide an alternative.
If democracy implies a spreading of power to the people, this is the wrong description of what is going on here: it is more a simple spreading of typography among the masses. The astonishing development in this period has not been the contribution of any designer or writer, but rather the spread of the means of making sophisticated typography to anyone with a computer. The domain of typography has been opened up, as never before, and there is a much wider interest in the activity now than there was even twenty years ago. (...) The great negative of the modern — irrevocable and disastrous damage to the natural world — gathers terrifying pace. Enlightenment thus proceeds, amid much babble and confusion. The watchwords remain: doubt, critique, reason, hope.”

(Robin Kinross in: Modern Typography: an essay in critical history. Hyphen Press, 2004)

Thank you Dave Crossland for the reminder :-)

* 1992 ending: "The attempt of this essay has been to point to the effort of reason that has extended over centuries and which, in typography, has shown itself in a concern for fundamental issues: the means by which the processes of production can be controlled; the ways in which the needs and desires of readers and users can be incorporated into the shaping of products; the description and ordering of the activity and its materials. Reflection and discussion are the chief means by which this process has been effected: thus the 'black art' has been lifted from its dark, magical origins, into what is sometimes (though still too rarely) a forum of articulate practice and constructive criticism. There is some connection between this critical rationality and an approach to the production of artifacts and their eventual form. This connection will be left undefined here: it is open for discussion and exploration."

Has re-design replaced revolution?

2008-09-17T11:26:00+02:00

Philosopher of science, Bruno Latour, opened the recent Networks of Design conference with a keynote address: A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design. In his lecture, Latour linked the growing importance of design with his idea that "matters of fact" have become "matters of concern".

Provocatively presenting Peter Sloterdijk as philosopher of design, he states:

The great importance of Sloterdijk’s philosophy (and I think the major interest of a designer’s way of looking at things) is that it offers another idiom. The idiom of matters of concern reclaims matter, matters and materiality and renders them into something that can and must be carefully redesigned.

In his conclusion, Latour challenges designers "to draw things together", shifting the meaning of design from re-looking to a practice which gathers scientist, technicians etc. around the table:

What is needed instead are tools that capture what have always been the hidden practices of modernist innovations: objects have always been projects; matters of fact have always been matters of concern. The tools we need to grasp these hidden practices will teach us just as much as the old aesthetics of matters of fact —and then again much more.

Download the paper here: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/articles/article/112-DESIGN-CORNWALL.pdf

TUG Interview Corner

2008-06-10T20:04:00+02:00

Dave Walden from the TeX User Group introduces his excellent TUG Interview Corner as follows:

"technology is created by and evolves with use by people, and the points of view and backgrounds of the people influence the technology"

The ever growing list of interviewees include Barbara Beeton, Donald Knuth, Herman Zapf and numerous other less widely known TeX users and developers. The interview corner is a meticulously edited set of documents, portraying the full spectrum of the TeX project. Absolutely worth reading and/or browsing through.

http://www.tug.org/interviews/

Asynchronous live blogging

2008-05-10T07:38:00+02:00

These past few days I've been navigating a sea of acronyms, neologisms and tiny iconic metaphors here at LGM. The thing that I can't get out of my head is the tool that pippin of GIMP used for his talk. At first it looked like a PowerPoint clone, but then he started correcting it on-the-fly by tweaking C code. I got the impression that it was a custom tool that he was using to showcase the library he was talking about. `got the impression' because, to be honest my mind went blank ten minutes or so into it. Anyway... it was about GEGL, and GEGL is ``the next generation core of GIMP.'' I don't know if I regretted not getting into the talk at a technical level. It was great to see so much code fly across the screen with such proficiency, and it was a great privilege to see one of the GIMP developers at work. The fish that he occassionally sent swimming across the screen was also nice.

A more intimate relationship

2008-02-20T19:42:00+01:00

David Reinfurt's essay Making do and getting by departs from the work of Muriel Cooper and Anthony Froshaug, and relates their critically engaged practice to contemporary projects such as Juerg Lehni's Scriptographer. In this way, he convincingly shows how designers can and should reclaim a more intimate relationship with the digital production of their work. Although he remains quite vague about what this could really mean; sticks to a plugin architecture for Adobe software and uses MacOSX as example of an Open Source Project... his text contains many inspiring examples and interesting points of departure.

"Individually, we can commit to using software critically, engage the mechanics of production, ask questions, use old software, share, write new software and refuse to passively consume the latest innovations. Like Muriel, Anthony, Will and Hektor have suggested, this might actually lead us back — closer to our work."

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/makingdo/

Yes, indeed: published on the website of Adobe's Design Center Think Tank ;-)

William Morris: Art and Its Producers

2007-10-27T19:25:00+02:00

While looking for designers writing about their relation to tools, I discovered the excellent William Morris Archives, part of the Marxist writers' Internet Archive. To Morris, to own his means of production, was the only way a designer/workman could find back pleasure in work, and this in turn he considered a prerequisite for the production of (applied) art and beauty. It is hard to imagine someone as keen on handicraft as William Morris in the age of computing, but after reading his text Art and its producers, I wonder how he would have felt about using Free Software?

'I do not believe we should aim at abolishing all machinery; I would do some things with machinery which are now done by hand, and other things by hand which are now done by machinery; in short, we would be the masters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this or that... machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny which oppresses the lives of all of us'

(William Morris: Art and Its Producers, 1881)

Play!

2007-10-17T09:22:00+02:00

"It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work." (Eric S. Raymond, postscript (2000) to The Cathedral and the Bazaar)

The Cathedral and the Bazaar is probably one of the most quotable texts about Open Source you could find. Raymond confidently explains why a distributed, decentralized and seemingly chaotic model of software development (The Bazaar) actually 'works'. This essay, which was originally published in 1997, coined aphorisms such as 'Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow' and 'Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch'. He does not paint a very exciting image for non-hacker-use but we'll get back to this later.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/

Full quote:

Rather, I want to suggest what may be a wider lesson about software, (and probably about every kind of creative or professional work). Human beings generally take pleasure in a task when it falls in a sort of optimal-challenge zone; not so easy as to be boring, not too hard to achieve. A happy programmer is one who is neither underutilized nor weighed down with ill-formulated goals and stressful process friction. Enjoyment predicts efficiency.

Relating to your own work process with fear and loathing (even in the displaced, ironic way suggested by hanging up Dilbert cartoons) should therefore be regarded in itself as a sign that the process has failed. Joy, humor, and playfulness are indeed assets; it was not mainly for the alliteration that I wrote of "happy hordes" above, and it is no mere joke that the Linux mascot is a cuddly, neotenous penguin.

It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.

Dear Software Developer,

2007-06-04T10:56:00+02:00

~~We hope you are as much inspired by these texts as we are.~~
~~You should read this!~~
~~We think these texts are essential.~~
~~These texts need to be seen in context of their time.~~
~~Would this be of any use?~~
~~Will you read this please?~~
~~Please do not take their advice literally!~~
~~We hope you find time to have a look at this.~~
...

→ Jan Tschichold, The Form of the Book, Essays on the Morality of Good Design, Hartley & Marks Publishers, 1991
→ Josef Muller-Brockmann, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, Niederteufen 1981

The double aspect of code

2007-05-16T19:52:00+02:00

"Neurath's pictograms owe much to the Modernist belief that reality may be modified by being codified – standardised, easy-to-grasp templates as a revolution in human affairs. But the templates themselves, or the code, may end up in their turn aestheticised, reified, in need of a further round of de-cryption, a paradigm common also to failed revolutions. It is this double aspect of code as invisible, totalising system and an apparent mechanism for intervening in it, and the constant relay between them that opens this specious dichotomy onto a wider social history (...)"

Marina Vishmidt in: The Dutch Are Weeping in Four Universal Pictorial Languages (Mute, May 2007)

Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat?

2007-04-16T12:46:00+02:00

The Institute of Network Cultures published an insightful study on the culture of new media work by Sociologist Rosalind Gill. Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web, is based on 40 'semi-structured' interviews with practitioners (designers, developers, artists, information architects, ...). Her study reveals the often precarious situations web workers find themselves in, but most of all her analysis and critique of their (our?) egalitarian self-image, makes it a Must-Read.

"It is striking to see that two of the three people who commented on this issue (racism - FS) were themselves immigrants to The Netherlands; it simply did not seem to be visible or worthy of comment to others of our participants - a tendency which tells us a great deal about the normalization and power of whiteness."

Download the publication
Lecture Rosalind Gill http://www.decadeofwebdesign.org/videos/day_2/encoded/1mbs/22_gill230205.mp4

FOSS and the Commercial Print World

2007-01-03T12:28:00+01:00

Craig Bradney and Peter Linnell discuss the future of Free and Open Source Software for commercial printing:

Right now, I would say the biggest weakness from an FOSS point of view is there are few good high quality fonts. It is one of those areas which requires tremendous amounts of QA to make them reliable in the commercial print world. This is highlighted throughout our documentation.

(QA = Quality Assurance ;-))

Read the interview here: http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page...

Watch this thread: Free Font Manifesto

2006-11-25T02:14:00+01:00

Ellen Lupton's question: Why would a typeface designer want to give a font away? sparked off a series of comments worth reading. The discussion shows how much typographers struggle with 'open source' as an idea. It makes you wonder why Lupton decided to ask 'to give away a font' and not 'to share source' - the latter probably fits the typographic spirit better. A few samples:

"(...) this movement you start up has the potential to make look bad and selfish the designers who wish not to participate, possibly because they are independents and just can't afford to give away months, sometimes years of hard labour. I don't want to sound pedantic, but I think your initiative could use a fair amount of discretion, because this possibly has already done harm to the type community without you even realising it."

"To suggest that the world would be better if Latin "graphic designers" had more free fonts to choose from not only makes it seem like misers are in control here, but it also makes it clear that good thinkers do not exist out there."

"The whole P2P community is breeding a generation of lazy idiots who think they can get anything for free. May it be music or typefaces. Why buy good type, when you can get it for free."

but also:

"To say that an "Open Source" font initiative would put designers out of business, or dilute the value of legitimate 'commercial' fonts is simply trying to lock the barn after the horses have long since left. Where have they been over the past twenty years?"

Read full thread here

Skeleton, Corset, Skin

2006-11-03T01:14:00+01:00

Stroom Den Haag started their year long project After Neurath with a public symposium. After Neurath looked/looks at the relevance of 1930's philosopher and information activist Otto Neurath, and as you can imagine various familiar issues came up.

More information about Otto Neurath: http://www.stroom.nl/webdossiers/webdossier.php?wd_id=3530772

The project is curated by Steve Rushton. Speakers: Frank Hartmann, Robin Kinross, Kristóf Nyíri and myself.

My talk is here: corsetskinskeleton.pdf

Les nouveaux habits de la copie

2006-09-10T22:49:00+02:00

Les nouveaux habits de la copie, Nicolas Malevé
Text available on line: http://www.constantvzw.com/downloads/nouveaux_habits.pdf
PDF lay-out: habits_quarantainec.pdf
PDF cover: cover_robot.pdf
License: Copyleft, License Art Libre
Date of publishing: 07-07-2006 (Quarantaine)

Maternal Politics

2006-09-10T22:26:00+02:00

Maternal Politics, Irina Aristarkhova
Text available on line:
PDF lay-out: maternal_politicsb.pdf
License:
Date of publishing: 03-06-2006 (Digitales)