The Employee + H9 Meeting Notes: January 26, 2024

Hi Josh and Lauren

Thanks for the talks today. Please find below our meeting notes from January 26, 2024, along with Next Steps/Key Decisions, a recording of the meeting, and some cover tests ℅ Farah.

Thanks as always + talk soon (hope you feel better soon, Lauren!)

mark

Next Steps / Key Decisions

• Final book content will arrive to H9 at the end of February

• Currently there are  9 finished texts… Lauren’s intro and Josh’s 2nd essay are forthcoming.

• Book to be paperback, approx 50–60k words, 400 copies, some pages in colour; ideally, book will lay flat

• Total number of contributors: 8 + Josh & Lauren

• For all documentation, please make note of the ones that have to be treated in certain ways; what can be redesigned and what cannot

• Cover tests: please see cover tests below meeting notes

• Awaiting image permissions

• In theory, once all content is in-hand, we are envisioning 3 months to final product (approx 2 months for design, approx 1 month for printer)

• Website design is approved; Jordan will start responsive views.

Agenda:

• Record meeting

• Book next steps: final content arriving end of February

• Design edits to website from January 24

• Email consent (we didn’t discuss but will at the next meeting)

Discussion:

• Lauren: we are pulling into the train station! We have all of the texts ready for layout except for a text by me and a text by Josh.

• Josh: We have 9 finished texts… Lauren’s intro and my 2nd essay are forthcoming.

• Farah: The 9 we have, they’ve been copy edited?

• Lauren: Yes, Jessica Antony has looked at them. Footers as well.

• Josh: The only thing is that image permissions haven’t arrived.

• Josh: Most of the texts do not have inline images. Some have infographics. There are potential images that are not integral to the text’s exposition, aside from my final essay that do have some paintings and photos that need permissions. We have images that are documentation of the project. PDF of paperwork documents… Stills of videos… I can share that folder with you. 

• Farah: What do you think is a reasonable ETA for all permissions, the remaining essays?

• Josh: End of February?

• Lauren: We can work towards that. 

• Farah: I think for memory… Once we receive everything, we’ll go through everything and get back to you with questions. 

• Farah: You mentioned the word infographic… All the images you're providing? Or do you need us to make something?

• Josh: I think we’re good. If there are some that are not the best quality, feel free to trace in Illustrator. 

• Lauren: Is the idea we don’t start the design process until there is everything in hand?

• Farah: It is really better that way. It’s good to have all the variables in one place. We might come up with a perfect layout for a text, but then images arrive, and it throws everything off.

• Lauren: Material of the book?

• Farah: We can… But it just makes sense to do everything together in sequence. Let’s say we start making some decisions on material… but then we start the layout, that opinion might change. The other thing that happens is you start making some decisions… Time passes… I know you will get things to us when you say you will…

• Lauren: Not necessarily!

• Farah: Our struggle is memory. I would rather just do everything altogether.

• Farah: Is there a new intended deadline for having the book in your hands?

• Josh: We were hoping for May… But we’re open… 

• Farah: I want the printer to have 3–4 weeks to print and bind. May might be soon if you’re delivering things at the end of February. 

• Louis: Yes, I think we should always give the printer a month. I really need to understand all the content to understand the complexity of the book. At least 1 month for the printer, and possibly 2 months to design the book. 

• Josh: I want it to be paperback.

• Lauren: We might have to contend with a high page number count. Ideally it’s not a brick. Hopefully it’s a book that can travel. Around 50–60k words.

• Josh: I really feel like this is going to be longer than A Dream in Which I am You.

• Farah: For some reason, I’m envisioning The Employee being an inch thing. 

• Josh: 2 cm thick / 17 cm width / 24cm height; I’m envisioning it being like this size of book (Broken Relations: Infrastructure Aesthetics and Critique)

• Louis: the images will be screenshots… will there be scans of docs?

• Josh: Yes

• Louis: So it’ll make sense to have it in full size. Bigger, if not the normal size for primary documents. 

• Josh: Yes, it’ll be important for people to read them.

• Farah: So we want to make sure documentation is as close as possible to life-size. At least legible. 

• Louis: Do you have content where things have to be exact?

• Josh: Screenshots from the granting process, they’re bad designs, but they should be left as it.

• Farah: That’s fine. The book will be black-and-white.

• Josh: Will it be in black-and-white?

• Farah: Do you have a budget for colour?

• Josh: Maybe just colour for the middle section and for the final essay? There are two paintings in there. I don’t know if it’s worth 2k to reproduce them in colour. 

• Louis: How many copies are we printing?

• Josh: 400

• Louis: I assume we’ll be printing digitally. Printing in colour is not that much more. You’ll only be charged for the pages where you use colour. The rest of the book, if it’s black and white, you’re just paying for the black ink. If you only have colour on 10 pages, you’re only getting charged for those 10 pages.

• Farah: Binding?

• Josh: I love the open-face binding. But it doesn’t need to be a fancy trick.

• Lauren: My stipulation is that if it’s a book of the size that we’re discussing, ideally it will lay flat. I find it frustrating to have a heavy-text book that you have to hold open. 

• Farah: On our side, maybe what we can do to move forward a little, is research some bindings where things lay flat. We can think about some bells and whistles. 

• Lauren: I know you did the cover for ArtMetropole… We stopped the conversation around cover… We had been talking about how to have all contributors named on the cover. That is something that maybe could be addressed at this point. It did seem like it would be a tricky thing to fit it. 

• Josh: Lauren, hadn’t you mentioned maybe just having names on the back?

• Lauren: We could. But I would love to have them on the front.

• Farah: One of the things you wanted to remove is the fade, which is fine… But presenting the contributors in this fashion, does that work?

• Lauren: No, they need to be listed outside of the imagery of the cover. In the same way that Josh’s name sits above the email screen. So people can understand there’s multiple contributors. But I don’t want to mess with what’s going on with the ArtMetropole cover… So even if it’s a block text on the back. Does that make sense, Josh?

• Josh: Absolutely. The book is not the artwork; it’s reflections on the artwork.

• Lauren: totally number of contributors: 8, not including me and Josh

• Farah: I have an idea, but I want to test it with Louis and Jordon first.

• Josh: Farah, your email earlier this week, you are totally right. We set a design. You are right (January 24 web meeting and email). 

• Farah: website design is set then. Approved. Jordan will start responsive views.

• Farah: for documentation, please make note of the ones that have to be treated in certain ways. What can be redesigned and what cannot.

Cover tests:

We did a few preliminary tests, which might change as we work on the book, but all this to say that we think it’s possible to include the contributors while maintaining this design: