On the superficiality of politics and the meaning of design, or: What I want to be when I grow up, pt. 2.

I've just finished reading The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd, the assistant art director and an editor-at-large at Knopf, and I must say that it has been as insightful as it was frightening. Insightful in that it gave voice to things I had known only intuitively, and frightening in the scope of what I don't know. You know, the kinds of things that one would, say, learn in art school? But that's crap, because I worked this week with two top tier professionals in book design and they didn't get a degree in design. Their talent is of course undeniable, and in the words of Mr. Kidd himself, makes all the difference in the world. Do I have it? Did I ever? Or was I just always fooling myself and everybody around me?

Last night I had trouble sleeping because I kept critiquing my book covers. All week I've heard praise, along with a few tweaks, and listened to our resource people be quite generous in telling me that my covers were 'lovely' and 'beautiful', and that they wouldn't say that I had talent if they didn't mean it. But over and over in my mind I kept saying 'But I'm not good yet! I can't be! Yes, they look nice. But do they look inspired?' For that, friends, is my goal. To reach the sublime, to capture the essence, so that upon glancing at the cover, or the spread, or the whatever, one's only thought is

"Of course."

I'm a rather humble guy when it comes to this stuff (indeed, I felt extremely embarassed whenever somebody started talking about my covers: 'Talk to the sales or editorial or publicity people; they actually worked this week! I just dicked around in a design lab until I felt like it was presentable!') but I don't think I'm out of line to say that as far as the technical stuff is concerned, I'm getting it down pretty good. All of my picked-up typographic knowledge (ascenders and descenders; x-heights; the difference between the Didot/Bodoni families and, oh, say, Garamond perhaps?) served me well, and my thorough knowledge of InDesign and PhotoShop allowed me to transfer exactly what was in my mind onto the screen, and then to the page.

But that's the problem. I knew what I was capable of doing, or what I brought to the table and out of the technology at hand. I still don't know whether I felt myself reaching for an idea because I knew that I could take something from a lesser branch and through the magic/curse of desktop publishing, still be able to create a work of suitable design. (Though each cover does have a great idea behind it, esp. 'Devil's Chord' and 'Pin Factory.') There's a reason why Sara Eisenmann (who hired Chip Kidd at Knopf!) has been said to say that CPC students who come in with little or no design background usually do better at the covers. It's not hard to understand: they don't know what's possible yet. They don't know what the programs are and aren't capable of doing; they're not thinking in terms of kerning or halftone screens; the purity of the mind can allow for a greater reach of ideas. When they asked me how to curve text into a circle or a wavy line, I had to express my apologies, for I never did that before, and thus did not know; though I had always wanted to learn, I never took the time to explore those possibilities. I knew what I done before, and that was enough. It cannot be anymore.

You can take all of this for what you will; it is after midnight and I've yet to get a full night of sleep during this most intense week of my life. As for the title? I've yet to read a single daily newspaper or read more than a few stories from the NYTimes.com that wasn't World Cup or Book/Arts-related since I arrived in NYC. And I'm not freaking out. In fact, I'm somewhat relieved to know that the world can continue on without my spending three hours a day on political blogs. Spend enough time talking about a fake book on the Republican Revolution and you realize that it's all crap anyway; the conservative/liberal dichotomy, the perceived 'traditional values' or 'progressive wave', and the 'It's 900 days until Bush is out, and then everything will be well again!' No it won't! The problem isn't Bush. It's never been Bush. It's the system that allowed him to become president. It's the system that says that two parties are enough, thank you very much. It's the system that encourages a flag-burning amendment to come to the floor every fucking year and keeps the words 'minimum wage' from even being uttered within earshot of Congress. I realize I'm ranting here, and the point isn't that this is a thunderbolt from the great blue; it's that I'm done. Not with the ship of state, mind you; I'll still keep up on the goings-on, and chit-chat and vote accordingly. But as far as the game is concerned, put me on the bench, coach; it's not fun anymore, and I'll be damned if I'm going to do something that isn't fun.

Let others write their screeds, and I'll even respond occasionally, but I've got enough on my plate with this design business. And if I work really really hard, and spend more money on formal classes, and catch a few breaks, then maybe I'll actually get into a position where I can spend the better portion of my life racking my brain and body over a sketchpad and a cinema display. Ideas, when given expression on a page, or a sign, or a façade, have more power than we can possibly know. They are the very essence of meaning, and inevitably, invariably, bring us up to the ranks of the inspired.