Tue, Feb 28

I have two core issues that I'm dealing with in this project: first, I've accumulated some knowledge that I'm not sure how to use but like to reflect on; second, my mentor (like, drag mom, ok) abandoned me and never liked me in the first place. By externalizing these issues I can have a frank conversation about them (predominantly just with myself) and finally close the case while also making people think and laugh, and what, cry? Nah. Mostly just go "I like it, what is it?"

Now it's time to decide where this project is going. I had some thoughts:

Too Long Didn't Read
Can the tldr's be the future of storytelling?
If we look at how people read online, we'll see that they don't. More often, they're skipping through. This is not to say people don't read at all, though.

A good story still can hold people's attention. But today's teens prefer to consume stories in small portions. Think instagram stories. Also, Masha can't sit through any video longer than 10 minutes.

Snaps are a preferred way of learning about things.
News and personal lives have successfully been converted.
Now, how about doing the same with fiction?

Good old fashioned plot analysis or Snapchat-like breakdown of events?

When they shoot a scene for a movie, they take a note of who is directing, what camera it is, what the surroundings are like.
When you write a book, the set of variables for each scene is pretty much up to you. Some details add flavor, some take attention away from the story. This is kinda like cooking.
So fiction is tricky.
But screenwriting is more programmatic and can be standardized.

In my case, different subplots can have different kind of narration and tone of voice (We know about Tae Joon from Daily Mirror, for example, and Liu only exists on Skype). Because convergence.

Most of today's design jobs are painful. There's something about design that makes it at least a bit of a drag for both the designer and the client. And sometimes just a total disaster. Why?

Design is very subjective, yet must follow the brief. It's personal to the maker, but belongs to the commissioner. And in the condition of visual over-saturation, every graphic design project risks becoming a disposable replica of something else.

Sounds terrible. I hope not everyone feels this way. But I do. And here's how I think I can build on this:

I want to help preserve the sense of time and purpose, that we are massively ignoring.
Create kind of a snow globe. A souvenir from the reality that once existed and worked for many people (mainstream sector of design industry). I feel like it would be more valuable to me than either "innovating" or "decorating".

Why is it important?
As we know, the internet has mixed up the concept of time. In the condition of atemporality, we're not making memories in the same way, and we don't know how blurry our recollections of present time will be in a decade or two.
So far, it looks like in a hundred years people will have very hard time understanding their grandparents' tweets.

Who needs it?
Most of all, the future versions of ourselves and people from the next generations. I believe that there will be not much solid factual things to remember about our times. In 2010s, there's too little substance and too much commentary.

Ok, but why not do journalism instead?
Journalism in its traditional form can't exist anymore. We don't trust journalists, we want find facts and make conclusions ourselves. Besides, nobody cares for long texts with slow narration. These are good for the novels. But the stories of now simply don't fit in plain text. We share pictures, repost someone else's thoughts, make memes. We don't write letters anymore. So we need a new visual language.

How is it of any use to me?
There's no right answer. The audience of this isn't broad. This is an introverted project that only really helps the author to dig deeper into the subject.
Maybe try to think of this as art. Art of curating a reality. And instead of paint and canvas, there's screenshots, dialogues and places.

March 11, 2017

It's been a long time. I made about a dozen different editions and now I'm gonna talk about them, as well as overall state of the project.

First of all, I've finished 90% of the writing. Good job, me!
My first three editions of the book were all wrong: I just pasted everything I had on the pages, and, unsurprisingly, it fell apart. Too much stuff.

Small format and lots of graphics could never work. I tried to keep images and icons apart, I tried to put icons in context of arcade-style illustrations, and to use location photos as backgrounds. Yes. I tried all the different flavors of awfulness.

So on Tuesday, I started over. I created a file with a primary text frame and pasted the thing in it. Tried serif and sans serif. Printed it out. Cringed in disgust and rewrote some parts. (Why is it that text on screen and on paper reads differently? On screen, some things seem like a great idea, but on paper they fall flat. If not turn ugly.)
Finally, I've mapped out where to insert images and started to get the feel of what bookmaking is about.

On Wednesday, I made some dummies. They turned our very nice and soft. The idea is that the cover and the stock is plain paper, but there is a few neon pink inserts that represent events from outside the story-world. Show business pages.

On Thursday, I returned to inDesign and tried to typeset the first 10 pages.
Then I printed them out on paper I'm supposed to be using (scrap paper, aka paperback stock). I saw many many mistakes and felt like I must fix everything urgently. Which I did. And, I'm not sure I want this brown paperback stock anymore. Maybe I'll go with plain white paper. I'll leave a few more pictures of things that worked out fine.
The cover!

Fullpage screenshots

On Friday (today!), I came closer to the design I like. Funny how it gets less and less inventive, but better, instead of boring. And I have a fear of making a boring thing. Now the content doesn't hide behind design, and I can see logic in the layouts.
So at some point it seemed like I could use larger pages. And I decided to print it out as A5. And it felt right. So I created yet another new file, A5 size, and adjusted the layout to fit.
This seems more satisfying so far. This week, I added some certainty to this mash.
Some things are still unresolved, such as: do I need photo captions? How should I use my icons? Is the font size too big? When will I find the time to design the pdfs and screenshots? Is there a good way to avoid it? This is something I'm gonna be worried about next week. This week is over, I think I won, or at least it's a tie.

Physical properties

Size
Paper(s)
Binding
Cover
Spine

Interior properties

Font
Column(s) width
Color
Use of images

Content

Each chapter contains:
Dialogue
Date
Time
Location
Userpics

Some chapters contain:
Contextual pictures
Screenshots
Institution logo
Janet's stitchings

The plan
The current (11th) edition may be described as more or less put together but lacking variations and that designery typography everyone likes. And I CANT DO DESIGNERY TYPOGRAPHY like, at all. While my managerial brain thinks we're on the right course, my typographer brain is freaking the hell out of here.

But. Here's what I'm gonna do now.
Close inDesign.
Open Keynote.
And remake the story as if it was a screen presentation! Very hack. Alright great.
Because being very shy book designer, I'm quite good at designery presentations. So maybe treating pages as slides gonna help? Make it visually stronger? Something?

Oh, maybe it's not gonna help. Who knows. Suspense. Credits.