Thesis Book Project: James Grady

Shift Intuition

Transformation

Feedback

Contents

0.0 Abstract

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0.1 Introduction: Full Circle 0.2 Point of View 0.3 Experience 0.4 Empirical Methodology 0.5 Feedback Loop 0.6 Full Circle 0.7 Interview (excerpt) with Vaughan Oliver

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1.0 Input: Accumulate Inspiration 1.1 Trapper Keeper 1.2 Ephemeral Collection 1.3 Reading a Collection as Possibility 1.4 Form 1.5 Structure 1.6 Wabi-Sabi 1.7 Aesthetics 1.8 Tools of Capture 1.9 Interview (excerpt) with Daniel Paluska

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2.0 2.1 2.2 2.9 2.16

Output: Transform Awareness The Gap Output: Select Studio Projects (Year 1) Output: Select Studio Projects (Year 2) Interview (excerpt) with Ben Fry

3.0 Next Stop 3.1 Endnotes 3.2 Bibliography 3.3 Concordance

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The following pages outline my design methodology: critical writing, anecdotes and select studio projects developed from September 2010 – June 2012.

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10– 20 12

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sun 11/13/2011

mon 11/14/2011

tue 11/15/2011

wed 11/16/2011

thu 11/17/2011

fri 11/18/2011

sat 11/19/2011

sun 11/27/2011

mon 11/28/2011

tue 11/29/2011

wed 11/30/2011

thu 12/01/2011

fri 12/02/2011

sat 12/03/2011

sun 12/11/2011

mon 12/12/2011

tue 12/13/2011

wed 12/14/2011

thu 12/15/2011

fri 12/16/2011

sat 12/17/2011

sun 12/25/2011

mon 12/26/2011

tue 12/27/2011

wed

sun 01/01/2012

mon 01/02/2012

tue 01/03/2012

wed

sun 01/08/2012

mon 01/09/2012

tue 01/10/2012

wed

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sun 11/20/2011

mon 11/21/2011

tue 11/22/2011

wed 11/23/2011

thr 11/24/2011

fri 11/25/2011

sat 11/26/2011

sun 12/04/2011

mon 12/05/2011

tue 12/06/2011

wed 12/07/2011

thr 12/08/2011

fri 12/09/2011

sat 12/10/2011

sun 12/18/2011

mon 12/19/2011

tue 12/20/2011

wed 12/21/2011

thr 12/22/2011

fri 12/23/2011

sat 12/24/2011

12/28/2011

thu 12/29/2011

fri 12/30/2011

sat 12/31/2011

01/04/2012

thu 01/05/2012

fri 01/06/2012

sat 01/07/2012

01/11/2012

thu 01/12/2012

fri 01/13/2012

sat 01/14/2012

Commute

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2.3 Spark Sometimes the most obvious spark of inspiration is in front of our eyes. Commute was the first studio project I worked on in the Fall, 2010. The assignment stated, “Select an object that inspires you. This object along with one of the categories from Aristotle’s The Organon will be your starting point.” My object was a train ticket stub that I collect everyday while commuting on the train from Boston to Providence, and my category was time.

The Organon is about Aristotle’s works on logic.

Commuting back and forth from Boston to Providence for school may not be the most logical thing to do, but using the obstacle of an hour-long commute as an opportunity to glean inspiration for my thesis is quite logical.

The first time I held the ticket stub in my hand I felt nostalgia for the train. The analog process of collecting money and leaving ticket stub receipts to keep track of the passengers is a uniquely personal experience. The process is an endless ritual of repetition just like the back and forth of the commuter line. The similar horizontal proportions of the ticket stub and the digital time stamps reflect the shape of the train cars. In addition, the large time boards that hang in many train stations, including Boston and Providence, also fascinate me. As I repeat and overlap the forms, I achieve a sense of multiplicity and motion. Adding a random variable to the repetition of the forms creates a bit of chaos within a system that can easily be off schedule. A poster as context for this content allows for the framing of north and south. This provides an opportunity to highlight the first departure time in the morning out of Boston (6:42am) and the last departure time out of Providence (9:42pm), which is the schedule by which I am living.

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Commute, 2010, 28 x 40� Poster

fail sail

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2.5 Our prompt was to create a narrative based on any object within this archive. I was drawn to the book, The American Coast Pilot. Printed in 1793, it is a nautical journal without any illustrated charts or cartography, relying solely on text-based descriptions of sailing directions, tide tables, navigational landmarks, as well as other critical information of use to sailors.

I find the letterpress typography, simple layout, aged leather cover and frail parchment paper to be exquisite qualities of this book.

sail

Long s Character and Ligature

Uncovering an Archive fail sail begins with an investigation in the Lownes Science Collection within the John Hay Library at Brown University. This collection is an archive of significant books in the history of science as a bequest from Albert E. Lownes.

His final gift of over 5,000 volumes plus hundreds of prints and manuscripts spanned the centuries of scientific thought from Ptolemy to Einstein. Its physical site has a distinct presence with eccentricities, treasures, rules, and hours of operation particular to it. 29

Reading through the book I was intrigued to find a typographic character I’ve never seen before. The long, medial or descending s or is a form of the minuscule letter s formerly used where s occurred in the middle or at the beginning of a word; for example the word sail ( ail). The modern letterform was called the terminal or short s. The long s is subject to confusion with the lower case or minuscule f, sometimes even having an f-like nub at its middle, but on the left side only, in various roman typefaces and in blackletter. 30 Everywhere I was supposed to be reading the word sail I was reading fail. fail sail examines the peculiar typographic forms within the The American Coast Pilot. I can imagine the confusion it would cause if a navigator needed to use a guide with the long s character today.

This is an example within my methodology where concepts develop naturally from form as opposed to being predetermined in research.

fail sail, 2010, 6 x 9� Postcard (Detail)

2.7

Everyday Observations: Light

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Embrace Limitations With access to the camera on my iPhone in my pocket at all times, I’m able to collect a visual archive of my observations at a moment’s notice. For the past few years, I’ve been developing this database and uploading select images to flickr, an online photo sharing community. The process of uploading the files from my iPhone to flickr creates an algorithm without me even realizing it. Due to its file size, the iPhone to flickr transfer only allows five photos to be uploaded at a time.

I’m sure there are other apps that allow a larger number of photos and files sizes to be uploaded, but I enjoy this limitation. It relieves me from thinking too much about how many photos I want to share. At the same time it gives me the opportunity to create a mini-series based on a particular theme. Often I will shoot fleeting moments, abstract graphic forms, or light and shadows that catch my eye.

Everyday Observations: Light evaluates a typology of these images and identifies a dominant visual theme of light: natural, artificial and reflective. I select and remix fifty images of light from the database. Just as I embrace the limitations of the upload to the database, I apply algorithmic rules to the extraction of the photos from the database that are transformed into the visual narrative of the book: all selected photos must be used in chronological order; and formal relations and juxtapositions from the shape of light must relate to each image combination as well as from page to page.

Everyday Observations: Light, 2011, 8 x 10� 48 Page Book (Detail)

Blink

2.10 There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis. 39 — Malcolm Gladwell

Subconscious Intuition the Graphic Design MFA Department photographs the entire group of current and incoming students. It’s a great way to get to know everyone within the group. The night that my fellow classmate, Dinah Fried, and I were discussing the class photo. In the dream she said we should create mini-animations of everyone’s faces blinking. I thought that was a great idea! The dream was so real I woke up the next day and was not sure if she had actually suggested the idea to me before or if it was a dream. Sure enough I talked to her about this, and she assured me it must have been a dream.

But she agreed it was a good idea, and along with another classmate, Adam Lucas, they agreed to help me bring this dream to reality. Over the course of the semester, I expanded this idea into a printed poster and an interactive website, (with the help of another classmate, Ali Qadeer).

Finally, with the help of Fathom Information Design (where I was conducting an independent study), I turned Blink into a large-scale physical interactive installation.

Opposite Pages: Blink, 2011, Photos

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2.14