Anatomy of Design

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ANATOMY OF DESIGN

As new media collide, resulting in hybrid forms, one of the oldest and most

venerated is undergoing transformations aimed at making it more relevant in a

digitally saturated world. Although conventional book production has not changed

much since 1455, when Gutenberg created his 42-line Mainz Bible, book

designers have nonetheless long been engaged in testing formats and materials.

With the tidal shift away from print to consumption of all things digital, basic

book manufacture is being intensely challenged. Therefore, one reason for today's

surge in experimentation may be to prove once again (because experimentation

seems to occur every time “the end of print” is near) that books are not

antiquated objects from a pre-techno era, and another is to entice readers who

are indeed receiving the mass of their information on the Internet to return to

the pleasures of turning the printed page. Books are not dead. But today they

are routinely repackaged to attract new readers—either as multimedia reliquaries

of information or, with bells and whistles, as venues for entertainment.

In the quest for eternal relevance, books (or three-dimensional booklike

objects) seek increased permanence by enticingly gussying up their containers.

A cover, for example, needn't be solely cardboard or paper over boards; now

printers offer molded plastic, rubber, velvet, Astroturf, and most recently,

sponge, among the common new coverings. Soft and pliable, synthetic

spongelike surfaces serve the primary function of protecting pages while adding

a layer of playful tactility. Given how often sponge (and other congealed molded

foams) has been used of late, it might be considered the signature material of

the new millennium, at least in some publishing circles. Certainly the 2004

Motion Blur, produced by Onedotzero, a London-based multimedia design firm and

digital entrepreneur, is one of many twenty-first-century books to use sponge's

resilient properties to advantage.

As a survey of moving digital images—film, TV, animation, and special

effects as well as cross-media image makers—and their respective impacts on

visual culture,

Motion Blur throws down the gauntlet for a distinct challenge: to

imbue an otherwise static object with kinetic qualities. To this end, it borrows

from contemporary bookmakers by employing unconventional materials, complex

printing techniques, and multiple content components. Included in this package

(for

Motion Blur is more than a mere book) is a DVD featuring two hours of

music videos, personal shorts, TV identities, title sequences, and commercials,

as well as a conventional book/catalog that fits smartly and sensually into the

smooth sponge slipcase.

The notion of cramming gobs of related and disparate material into a

book is not, however, unique to the Digital Age but evolves directly from the

early-twentieth-century

livre d'artiste. One of the most notable and influential of

these artist's books, and perhaps a precursor to Motion Blur, is Marcel Duchamp's

1934 Green Box, a lavish limited-edition portfolio containing carefully reproduced

facsimiles of notes and diagrams for his installation, Large Glass, considered a

seminal artwork of the century. The Green Box is an ersatz book that has

influenced generations of book designers to rethink the traditional book's strict

parameters. But even this artifact is not the holiest grail of book-objects: Placing

ancillary materials between covers dates to personal scrapbooks of the

eighteenth and nineteenth century and subsequently has become a frequent

publishing conceit.

Motion Blur is a sophisticated scrapbook of digital matter.

Apart from the utter tactility of the package, Motion Blur includes

transparent typographic windows produced by laser cutting the title into the

sponge. This feat is a means of simulating motion; when the book and DVD are

pulled from the sponge slipcase, they flash through the lettering, creating a

kind of blur. In the parlance of the digital world, blurring images and

letterforms is an effective way to suggest motion—and it dates to the beginning

of the Machine Age. In his 1912 painting

Nude Descending a Staircase, Duchamp

was attempting to capture the sensation of motion on canvas through the blur

of his cubistic/abstract female figure. The Futurist painters, concerned with

simulating Machine Age dynamism, also used the blur as a symbol of progress.

For most of the twentieth century, typographers and photographers created

static blurs as indictors of forward movement and thinking—that is, speed.

Today, even the word blur, rather than meaning unfocused, implies the fast

pace of converging visual media.

Motion Blur: Graphic Moving Image Makers

Designer: Onedotzero

2004 Motion Blur: Graphic Moving Image Makers, book

d: Onedotzero

Included in this package (for Motion Blur is more than a mere book) is a DVD featuring two

hours of music videos, personal shorts, TV identities, title sequences, and commercials, as

well as a conventional book/catalog that fits smartly and sensually into the smooth

sponge slipcase.

Innovative book cases

Holding many items together

Creating color motion

Creating image motion