Every year, the New York Chapter of the AIGA stages a podium discussion of emerging designers as part of their Fresh Dialogue/New Voices in Graphic Design series; each event is subsequently recorded in a publication put out by Princeton Architectural Press. It’s a handy little paperback with big print, a running side margin documenting incidents of audience participation (sometimes laughter, sometimes applause), and down-to-earth dialogue between the moderator and speakers. Fresh Dialogue Seven: Making Magazines, the most recent offering, covers the June 7, 2006 conversation between maverick magazine editors Lisa Farjam of Bidoun, David Haskell of Topic, Tod Lippy of Esopus, and moderator James Truman. In the book, each editor/publisher offers their own fantastic, truncated genesis story, and then answers questions from Truman and the audience that have, in written form, none of the meandering hopelessness that so often induces despondency in live audiences.
I found Farjam’s discussion of Bidoun (in Arabic and Farsi, ‘without’—boundaries, limitations, you name it) the most fascinating of the three, because it seemed to be the publication with the most unobvious originality. Covering politics, art, and culture in the Middle East, Bidoun links ‘Cairo, Yehran, and Beirut to readers in London, New York and L.A.’ without oversimplifying the very often invisible issue of representation: is it a magazine for the audience it represents, or a supplication to the West to raise cultural awareness about an often devalued cultural landscape? Plus, apparently she pays all her contributors (pg 29).
Good panel questions abound throughout: How’d you find your printer? What’s the world’s best-designed magazine? Which has the most instantly annoying design? How do you moderate between alternative and mainstream content? Answers, like questions, vary between concrete and general, and, occasionally, are genuinely thought provoking. In response to a question about his design philosophy, Lippy offers the following, contentious gem:
‘My concept for the magazine was to remain almost invisible as a designer. This is not an easy thing to do, but I felt that I should try to let the work speak for itself whenever I could…generally, whenever possible, I wanted each contribution to work on its own terms.’
He goes on to state that ‘Similar to the “invisible design,” I wanted to create an invisible editorial presence, or the lack of a distinctive editorial voice.’ I love to think about this concept; it is, in my opinion, both endlessly seductive and completely impossible. Most viewers are aware that content isn’t just magically compiled on a site or page. Design is obvious and unavoidable, but for some reason we want to pretend that it can be arranged transparently enough to reveal some unarranged ‘truth’ of content. Of course, transparency is just as obvious as heavy-handedness—a distinct, but still controlled visual and editorial voice. Lippy’s ambition isn’t wrong, it’s just indicative of his belief in the unmediated power of the content included in Esopus.
My personal satisfaction with this publication comes from the replaced experience it represents. With a only few subtle layout tweaks, this written version of a live event has all the benefits of the real thing (the laughter! the applause!), without the annoyance of having to fly to NY—and back in time—to actually be a part of it. The language reads natural, and hasn’t been modified so much that it loses it’s aural appeal—for instance, Farjam, like me, indicates her approval with the apposite ‘awesome,’ and contractions abound throughout. The editing appears light, even though the questions and answers are clear, concise, and to the point, unlike anything you’d actually sit through in a panel discussion. Call me an unsocial miser, but I rather like the paperbound version of this night out I never had.
The publication ends with a final, pertinent question that’s deemed by Farjam ‘very mean’: ‘When will there be enough magazines?’ In response, Haskell, of the highly first-person oriented Topic, states quite nicely: ‘A society that’s overflowing with magazines—especially small, editorially driven ones—is a society that has a lot to say.’
