Re: A reflection on your presentation for The Employee

Hi Josh and Lauren,

Thanks so much for such a thoughtful conversation on June 19 and your feedback on our presentation.  Before I forget, here is a print test PDF for the font for your reference. Be sure to print it at 100% and not "scale to fit."

We really like silver; we are teary-eyed to lose it. We understand your concern, but we also think the design is distinct enough where it’s not necessarily a clash. Also, if we move towards graphite, it’s more unique. In theory, there are many other metallic colour options available to us. We can try to confirm metallic options with our printer. Would you be open to a different metallic colour? If not a metallic colour, would you be open to another colour? If yes, we can incorporate that same colour into the website too. We really love B&W, but we think a third colour could be an interesting addition, especially for the layering effect, where shades of grey could fall a little flat. 

Let us know what you think about some of the options above. Again, thanks for your feedback and insights–we love working with you! Apologies for the delay; things are a "bit" frenetic at the moment. 

Josh, H9 is closed for the next two weeks, but when we’re back at our computers, I will check in with Alex about their research on Google Takeout.

All the best + more soon,

mark

Key Decisions / Next Steps

• Balance today’s discussion with follow-up feedback in Lauren/Josh’s email: A reflection on your presentation for The Employee (as noted above)

• Josh will potentially be in town end of September 2024

• Contact Lauren first before mailing anything to Belgium

• As of today, Drive has 97% of the content

• Josh: There’s a few things I want to clean up in my 2nd essay 

• Lauren’s intro is nearly in the bag 

• Otherwise, everything you have in the Drive is typesettable

• Farah to send printing invoice (DONE)

• Josh and Lauren will be proofreading

• Josh really likes the underlay effect of title page on Spread - title & text

• H9 to have 2nd contract end the book, with Josh’s signature on the back of the book

• Josh and Lauren would like Option 1 for spread / images

• Performance images: layout of Option 1, but include time + date stamp overlay; retain background information, so images should be in colour, or if treated, high enough contrast that we can see vinyl on wall, cat, etc…

• Endnotes: Josh and Lauren prefer Option 2

• Josh and Lauren like “Page 31 or 200” treatment; after discussion, we’ll go ahead with .DOCX headings

• H9 to run tests for application screenshots

• Okay to be in greyscale; okay to crop/manipulate

• Full bleed

• Once next round of edits are approved, H9 to design on TOC

• For images in “The Work Becomes Her,” Asher foundation will need to approve final spreads containing images.

Agenda

• Record meeting

• Review Louis’ presentation

• Timeline for book vs. timeline for dev?

• H9 away dates

• Printing timeline

• Do Josh/Lauren have a launch date in mind?

• Has everything in Drive been copy edited? (Lauren: Currently, you have 97% of the content. // Josh: There’s a few things I want to clean up in my 2nd essay; Lauren’s into is nearly in the bag. Otherwise, everything you have in the Drive is typesettable.)

• Website: Is there a need for cookies?

• Josh’s agenda items:

• Website notes

• Budget stuff

• Farah: design has been paid. ████████ ██████ ███ ███ ███████ █████ █████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ███████

• Josh: █████ ██████ ███ █████ ██ █ ██████ ████████ █ ████ ███ ████████ ██████ ██ ██ █████ ████ ████ ███████ ██████ ███ █████ ███ █ █████ ███ ████ █████ █████ ███████ ███ ██████████ █ ████ ██ ████ ██ ██████ ███ ████ ████████ █ ████ ██ ███ ███ ███ ████████ █████ ████ █ ███ ███ ███ █████ ████ ████████ ███ ████ ██████ 

• Farah: Sooner rather than later, we’ll need an accurate page count. That would be the way to move on. The design is something I’m obsessed with. 

• Josh: ██ █████ ████ ██ █████ █ █████████ ███ █████████ █ ███ ███ ███ █████ ███ ██████ ███ ████████ ██████ ████ ██ ██████ ███

• Farah: ███ █████ ████████████ █ ████ ███ ██ ███████ ███ █████████ ███ ███ ███ █ ████ ███ ██ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ████ █ █████████ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ███ ███ ███ ███ █████████ ███████

• ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██████████

• Josh: ███ ███ ██████████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ██████

Discussion:

• Lauren: Currently, you have 97% of the content.

• Josh: There’s a few things I want to clean up in my 2nd essay; Lauren’s into is nearly in the bag. Otherwise, everything you have in the Drive is typesettable.

• Lauren: Josh and I will do proofreading in PDF.

• Lauren: Can you tell us about the silver?

• Louis: I think Josh really likes the silver. Also, the whole website is B&W. But there’s a grey filter. So there’s this idea of grey on the website. So this is a bit of colour, a bit of a highlight. 

• Farah: I think the short answer is because it’s fun. But we also discussed it just being grey. So if you’d rather not have silver, that’s an option.

• Josh: There’s somethings I feel sure about, and some unsure. Looking at this book in my hand that has silver, it’s somewhat transparent. You can see a foreground/midground/background. The transparency is interesting. I’m wondering about it being graphite rather than silver? 

• Farah: still sparkly?

• Josh: Yes, graphite instead of silver. So rather than a reference to ink on paper, there’s more of a first/rough draft feeling.

• Farah: There are definitely darker shades we can choose. 

• Josh (Spread - title and text): I’m less convinced about having the notes highlighted.

• Lauren: I’m really concerned about this level of graphic intervention. In terms of the reading experience. Considering the entire book is text. This essay is quite complex. I’m not a huge fan of graphic intervention at this level.

• Farah: Would you be open to… Right now we’ve tied it to footnotes… It doesn’t have to be. We could use it less. You could pick specific passages. Something more sparingly.

• Farah: Josh, in terms of contrast, that’s a good point. We would want to check it against the specific shade of silver we use. So if we use a graphite, maybe the white ink for text would make more sense.

• Josh: I agree with Lauren. Supporting readability.

• Lauren: And if we were going to choose sections to highlight, there would need to be a logic for it, but I don’t know what that logic would be. I don’t even think a pull-quote vibe would make sense. And we’d have to have that conversation with the writers. And I don’t think I nor the writers have capacity for this.

• Farah: What about a consistent part of the texts? The first sentence of every essay?

• Josh: I agree that highlighting the footnotes undermines readability. I like the idea of something being formal that has its own logic. 

• Farah: We can for sure come up with a formal logic. But I agree. If it hinders reading, we haven’t done our job.

• Josh: I do really like the other side of the page, the title page of Spread - Title & text. I like the underlay.

• Lauren: I really like the layering here. I really like the way you’re treating it in the same way as the cover. It looks great. The inside becomes the outside. That’s really brilliant. I love that. 

• Josh: Can the last part of the 2nd contract be on the back cover?

• Louis: That last page is your signature. I think it would be great.

• Lauren: I love this. You’ve really cracked it open.

• Lauren (overall thing): What do you mean by really big?

• Louis: it’s more about the number of pages rather than dimensions (6.5 x 9.5 inches). For example, if it can be 400 pages rather than 300, that could be great. 

• Lauren: My only concern… I recently saw a catalogue that was so enormous for no reason and it had a lot of white space. It felt gratuitous. In this economy! My concern is how the book will live in the world via shipping. Shipping weight. But it sounds like what you’re saying now, is that the difference between small and big, is not a huge difference. 

• Lauren: I really like the Option 1 of spread images.

• Josh: Yea, spread images option one (Ukeles kneeling, photo solo on left page).

• Lauren: Colour images… How will they be treated?

• Louis: Our idea was to treat them in colour. But if you prefer them in B&W, we can do that too. 

• Lauren: In that case, I agree with keeping the colour (though they’re in public domain so we can do whatever we want)... To continue that logic, I think having the screenshots being in their original colour would be important.

• Josh: Performance Option 1… I kind of like it in silver… It gives it a continuity with the text. I like the 4 images per spread… it gives the feel of timeline or flip book, but I like the time caption of Option 2. 

• Lauren: I agree with the 4 images. But I think information is being lost in silver. 

• Louis: We could try to treat them with more contrast… But it is true, you are losing some details. 

• Lauren: And several of the texts refer to these elements. So I’m unsure about masking that. Even in the quality of the screen shot… That could be maintained. 

• Josh: You’re right, Lauren. I think that the silver unifies things, but the images are information. And that information needs to be communicated. Can overlay timestamps also include dates? 

• Lauren (End notes): I love that you’ve chosen this. I prefer the bigger ones.

• Josh: I do too.

• Lauren: I’m unsure about using the DOC file as the heading. I wrote them. 

• Miranda: To us, we know the file names inside out. So each reader has a different experience. 

• Farah: echoing that… Also, a big part of the project is highlighting the mundane. So I appreciated this detail. I think it carries this tongue-in-cheek humour that’s a part of Josh’s work.

• Lauren: okay, I understand completely now. And I really like Page 21 of 200.

• Josh: The perspective that I want to highlight is the process of making things. So I think these design working drafts, if you can pull from that aesthetic in what you bring to the surface… Peel open the process and show what you see on the screen. Lean into that. 

• Josh: Application screenshots?

• Louis: We’ve tried a lot of things. This is definitely the hardest part.

• Miranda: Some have 4 screenshots. Some have 1. But then you want to read them.

• Louis: Do you want people to be able to read those screenshots? Should they be big on the page? 

• Josh: I think some of them are really funny. Error messages. I do think it would be great to have a full bleed, even across the spine.

• Lauren: Yes, full bleed!

• Josh: Like you’re in the screen. You’re seeing what the employee is seeing. I can give you more so you have a more consistent number for each application. I streamlined down to what I thought was most funny. How boring and arbitrary these are. But if you want more or less… I just picked the ones that were the messiest.

• Louis: I like the full bleed, because we had spoken about having a spine that can lay flat. And if we can edit them a bit, that’d be great. But I like the full spread.

• Josh: And having silver overlay over them. Treating them as a screen, rather than an art piece. It’s fine to crop them. And to manipulate them to serve your purpose.

• Lauren: I think you should still be able to read them. If there can be a balance…

• Josh: They’re almost the opposite of the contract.

• Josh: I don’t think it’s necessary to retain the colour of these. They can be greyscale. 

• Josh: And what about having The Employee screenshots in greyscale, rather than silver? Would that retain their info?

• Farah: We can try a bunch of different things. 

• Farah: Your feedback was awesome. There aren’t too many changes for overall AD. I think we’d want to run the tests: 4 of performance, work on application screenshot full bleeds… Once all the page designs are good to go, then we would move into production. Table of contents. 

• Lauren: What font is this? Is it in bold?

• Miranda: It’s medium. Bolder than regular. 

• Lauren: I’m just wondering how it sits on the page. How can I see how big the typeface on the scale / on the page?

• Louis: We can send a PDF. (be sure to print it at 100% and not "scale to fit")

• Lauren: What are you thinking about paper?

• Louis: That usually comes a bit later. And would involve a conversation with the client. If you have some thoughts, please tell us. We have a large choice of paper. Recycled paper. It can be very thin, etc…

• Lauren: And with a white cover… How to choose something that doesn’t become immediately filthy. I love a white cover. But I can never keep it presentable. 

• Josh: I kind of want cover material and book material to be the same. The feeling on the hand. I want some continuity. If there’s a way to have the same kind of texture.

• Farah: We can mail you swatches/samples. 

• Josh: Yes, mailing is the best way to get things going.

• Lauren: For two of the images in The Work Becomes Her, we’ll have to send the Ascher foundation final PDFs. They’re a bit slow. Just the spreads it’s used in. Once that is confirmed, I can start that process. 

Dev Discussion [starts at 1:14:17]:

• Josh: Is it possible to have the website as a continuous scroll? [1:14:17]

• Farah: Yes.

• Josh: I’m overwhelmed by tagging emails. I want to remove this as an option. I’m not tagging in a consistent way. It’s too much. [1:14:17]

• Farah: That’s fine. We’ll remove this feature.

• Josh: In the first email in a thread, I can delete all emails. Subsequent… When you’re editing a line of emails… Email #2275: In-line attachment aren’t showing up [1:18:14]…

• Josh: If I search this in my original email account, the quoted/forwarded text is in my email, but it’s not showing up on the website. This happens a lot.

• Farah: Is there anywhere where the quote is showing up?

• Josh: Unsure. But I haven’t seen it.

• Josh: There’s a very sensitive email. I’m forwarding an email to Teresa. But it’s showing up as a blank square. Email #620. And there’s stuff I’ve blacked out, but it’s still showing up. [1:20:45]

• Josh: Email #393.  I want to make sure the blank frames where I’m forwarding content… How will that show up? [1:22:11]

• Farah: and redacting parts of the forwarded thread?

• Josh: Exactly.

• Josh: Email #1060. One person replies in a way that leads to… I want to separate them out into a separate thread…  [1:24:06]

• Josh: Email #2547 We respond to an email a month later… I want to start this as a new thread. There’s an option to merge threads, but not separate them. [1:25:26]

• Josh: Email thread #2242… I don’t need the first application. But I can’t delete the first email without deleting the entire thread. [1:27:18]

• Mid-July: check in with Max about these questions. 

• Josh: Can I pass on another Google Takeout? I would like to take the time I have to work on them. 

• Josh: I download them as a certain format. I send it to H9. And then it gets put into the backend. If this isn’t possible, that’s okay too.