Techniques and Trends
Critical Practice of Graphic Design and Academic Micro-publishing: Print-on-demand Editioning and the Contingent Nature of Contemporary Knowledge Production
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matthew Smith
This paper examines book design and production techniques used in traditional academic and university press publishing contexts, with design for contemporary academic micro-publishing. Micro-publishing is explored as a practice-based inquiry into publishing as critical graphic design. Print-on-demand technology allows academic micro-publishing practices to produce each copy of a book as an independent edition. Editorial and design changes can be, and often are, made between each printing. In this way, books become hybrid objects — simultaneously print-and-digital artifacts. Each book looks final, complete, and total, while remaining partial, contingent, and mutable. Special attention is paid to the collaborative nature of authorship, design, and design-as-authorship in academic micro-publishing.
Interactive Text and Publishing: Affording Reader Agency in Written Content
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session N. Eden Foley
Historically text, in all of its media iterations, was centered on the author, affording minimal agency to its reader. The written text, by its physical nature often does not allow such agency either as readers are afforded very little when it comes to interaction or input. They certainly cannot change the content of any written material beyond vandalizing it. Some of the latest software now available enables artists to create works where readers can make choices, change the text, and alter it in ways that are more meaningful to them, or perhaps generate text that builds on the text of the 1st author. I analyze text as medium in relationship to interactivity, looking at various changes that are taking place both in writing and publication thanks to new technologies, and reviewing new channels of sharing and dissemination. With this paper, using my own work along with others as a jumping off point, I will explore the language of interaction and user agency, pose questions about their relationship to text, and explore some of the current tools, and publishing channels that are available to artists.
Future of Publishing Processes Integrated with Cloud Platforms
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Prabhu Thangavelu
With the increasing complexity and expansion of digital technologies, there has emerged the need of cloud platforms for publishing activities which help in speed to market, faster delivery, and on demand methods thereby increasing process and procedure gaps linked to security and royalties issues. This paper explores the future of publishing industry success and its dependence on adopting cloud integration process more comprehensively and in the earlier stages.
Creation and Publication of “Paintings to Protect Life” Series (1929-1979)
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jing Zhang
The graphic novel series “Paintings to Protect Life” contains six-volumes with 450 religion-themed Chinese cartoons and classic poems, illustrated and co-written by Zikai Feng (1898-1975) and published between 1929 and 1979. Feng was a Kulapati Buddhist, his “Paintings to Protect Life” series was more than one-tenth of his entire life’s output, as a memorial to his teacher the Dharma Master Hongyi (1880-1942). Feng (1949) believes “...Buddhism’s underdevelopment and lack of enlightenment is due to the fact that its doctrines are too serious and too profound, which are hard for the common people to accept. It should open more convenient doors, stretch more rules to accommodate, from shallow to deep, and the outcomes of promoting dharma will definitely be enlarged.” Also, he often borrowed ideas from the “Paintings to Protect Life” to apply to his other Chinese cartoons in which Buddhist sentiments were more cultural than religious. In this research, I will introduce this series' creation process and publication stories, summarize Feng’s graphic style and design, and analyze elements and perspectives applied in storytelling and final presentation.
