Customer Reviews

The Designer Revolution

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Valerie Kirschenbaum is a woman with one modest goal: she wants to start a revolution. "The Designer Revolution: The Marriage of Art, Literature, Education, Technology" is the opening shot in her quest, drawn in good part from her experiences as a New York City high school teacher. Why, she asks, in this era of marvelous computer graphics should we continue to read the printed page in the same manner we have done so since the days of Gutenberg? Just as Henry Ford is reputed to have said that you could get a Model T in any color you wanted as long as it was black, so publishers have traditionally told us we can get a book in any color as long as it is black (and white).

Kirschenbaum believes that color is one element that should be explored and exploited to make reading come alive, not only for students but for all of us. Color is a tool for emphasis and engagement. Centuries ago in the era of hand-written manuscripts (that is, after all, what a "manuscript" is), color was an integral part of their creation - color not only for illustrations, but color of text to literally illuminate its meaning. With the dominance of mass printing of books on huge, inflexible presses, it made sense that color evaporated for entirely practical reasons. But we are now in another time when such limitations need no longer limit us. If one particular word or a special phrase or sentence or paragraph would benefit from color to emphasize it, then why not apply color?

Of course, the color of ink to print the text upon paper is only one aspect of Kirschenbaum's revolution. Integrated illustrations - and not just for children's books - are equally within reach of the computer-equipped author, illustrations that are intimately partnered to the text and not isolated to separate insert pages, corralled together away from words.

The third leg of Valerie Kirschenbaum's revolution is the shape of letters themselves, the font with which the words are printed. With computers we have become familiar with the notion that, if we choose to, we can select whatever style of "print" suits our purposes - Arial, Times New Roman, Century Gothic - whatever we want from that pull-down menu from the toolbar on our computer screen. Perhaps without thinking much about it, we are all aware on some level that the design, the "look", of font is important in how we relate and react to what is on the printed page. The shape of the letters speaks to us in an unconscious voice, aiding - or hindering - our reading. Pick up a dozen books and magazines and look at the font. They are not all the same. They speak in different tones, some more friendly, others more formal. But Kirschenbaum goes beyond merely advocating an informed selection of pre-made fonts to suit your purposes. With modern computer graphics, personalized, unique fonts tailored to individual preferences are within practical reach of each computer-savvy author.

At the heart of Kirschenbaum's revolution is the realization that computers can erase the line between author and publisher, allowing a unified creative process so that the final product is wholly within the control of a single creator.

The physical book "The Designer Revolution" is an embodiment of Valerie Kirschenbaum's writing/publishing ideas, a marriage of color, illustration, and font. Open it and let yourself swim in its visual variety. Open yourself to the idea that computers do not spell the end of the printed page, but its blossoming.

I finished this fascinating book later the same day I had read in my local daily newspaper that in 2001 a former assistant basketball coach at the University of Georgia had given a final exam for the only grade in a "Coaching Principles and Strategies of Basketball" course that consisted of 20 multiple choice questions. Two of the 18 questions included how many goals are on a basketball court and how many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a basketball game. So learning about teachers like Ms. Kirschenbaum provides a much needed antidote for the latest news item about education in Georgia. She begins this beautiful book with the following statement: "I will never forget the day that changed my life forever. [With the exception of the wondrous first letter "I" which I cannot describe, I believe those words are in burnt sienna] I was teaching The Canterbury Tales when one of my students raised her hand and asked, 'Ms. Kirschenbaum, how come our books are not in color, like they used to be?'" The author, for ten years a teacher of English at the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities, located just a mile or so from Ground Zero, set about to find an answer to that question. The result is this beautiful book of many colors, designed, written and printed in a "feminine" very reader-friendly font that Ms. Kirschenbaum herself designed.

Ms. Kirschenbaum has certainly done her homework. There are 363 pages of text and another 50 or so footnotes. The book is filled with quotations from artists, writers and scientists about the significance of color and all its ramifications. The writer discusses the books before Gutenberg, though not accessible to common people, that were always in color. She also refers to the ancient Greeks, Chinese and Eqyptians who invariably wrote in color. She gives anecdotal evidence from her own teaching experience that an overwhelming number of her students would prefer reading, for instance, Homer, Poe et al in "living color." I think the writer's two stongest points are (1) we are fast losing a whole generation of nonreading students to television, video games, and movies, all in color and (2) because of digital printing, books in color can now be produced economically.

Ms. Kirschenbaum discusses many writers, some who used color effectively in their prose, and others whose works cry out for it: the artist and writer William Morris, and William Blake, whom she describes as the "only instance after Gutenberg of a great poet and a great painter married into one magnificent soul." On Emily Dickinson: "Her manuscripts are bubbling with body language [in red letters] -- long dashes, short dashes, angled dashes, crosses, pluses, minuses, waves, curves, line breaks. . . " Finally the writer makes a good case-- Faulkner himself wanted it-- for THE SOUND AND THE FURY to be printed in color.

Ms. Kirschenbaum's theory of designer writing has been well received except by some "academics." (The quotations are mine.) "Some people in the academy have refused to take me seriously because I teach high school and not college; because I have only a master's degree and not a doctorate; because I am not an Ivy Leaguer; and God knows what else." One professor even called her "Madame Nobody." She's in good company since Miss Dickinson would say, "I'm nobody/who are you?" And Robert Frost didn't have a Ph.D as I recall.

In addition to the brilliant illustrations and colored images here, the text, almost all of it in color, is clear and well written. And Ms. Kirschenbaum is a great punster, both verbal and visual. She sold me on this book when, in first thumbing through it, I found a delightful visual pun at the beginning of the footnotes.

What comes through in every page of this book, which I cannot adequately describe, is that Ms. Kirschenbaum is the most dedicated of teachers and decent of people. "Whenever I visit a museum, I seem, unavoidably, to be reminded of my mortality and of the precious chance [red letters] I have been given, as a young American woman, to make a difference in the lives of others." Chaucer would have said of her, "gladly did she learn and gladly did she teach."

You must see this book for yourself. I am at a loss as to how to best describe it.

From her unique perspective as a high school teacher, Valerie Kirschenbaum has made some stunning discoveries about learning - that children learn much better when teachers use body language, that body language can be brought into writing with color and image which excite different groups of cells in the brain, that emotional arousal amplifies memory, that there is such a thing as visual thinking, and that word and image used simultaneously integrates brain operations and allows the student to come to a higher level of understanding more quickly. "Especially today," says the author, "if we don't immediately grab them, we too often lose them. Colorful visuals are a way of grabbing their attention, arousing their emotions and of sustaining their interest."

In researching the subject, Ms. Kirschenbaum discovered, for example, that "...the image of a Buddha can trigger the release of hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine, causing them to interact with nerves in the body and travel to the brain. Literally, the image opens the mind and heart of the reader." And in Tibet, the sight of an image that the viewer perceives as sacred can trigger electrochemical responses in the brain, i.e. readers could SEE concepts. "With the designer word," Valerie maintains, "we can transform traditionally verbal techniques into visual techniques. Rhyme, repetition, metaphor, figures of speech, characterization, tone, simile and symbolism can all be visual. We can foreshadow, change moods, express irony or sarcasm and allude and alliterate visually. The possibilities are endless..."If we cannot always make this exquisite avalanche of consciousness sayable, then we can at least make it showable." Amen to that.

It's not exactly rocket science to realize that this could be an incredible aid to reading and therefore to learning in our technological society, but as far as I am aware, nobody has connected these particular dots before this particular young woman came on the scene and pointed them out.

Before the advent of Gutenberg, Medieval illuminators used ornament and decoration to create "multiple simultaneous meanings." After Gutenberg, when block black-and-white printing became the norm, "...writers couldn't synthesize their verbal and visual innovations. They couldn't write outside the box and think outside the box simultaneously. They were stuck between word and image, seeing and thinking, left brain and right brain." And while Medieval denial may have been rooted in religion, our modern denial is rooted in an antiquated technology that insists that black and white blocks of texts are the only proper form for serious scholarship and that images, different fonts and color should be relegated to children's books.

As Leonard Shlain observed in his groundbreaking work, *The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image*, our era is evolving toward a new integration of left and right brain functions with keyboards, computers, TV, movies, etc. Why cannot that integration be extended to the printed word?

This book realizes left and right-brain integration in a most delightful way. I especially enjoyed the color graphics where Medieval, Greek and Renaissance characters are shown to be writing and on closer inspection, you see that they're using computers. I would have liked a snappier title for the book but have to admit that upon this writing, I haven't thought of any.

"First a new theory is attacked as absurd," says William James in *Pragmatism's conception of Truth.* "Then it is admitted to be true but insignificant. Finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it." One can only hope that Valerie Kirschenbaum's name will still be remembered long after her thesis has become a new canon. But as she herself admits, in the long run it doesn't matter as long as the new canon is adopted, because "...no matter how much I may have blossomed, I could never stand up before other teachers and writers and designers and not invite every one of them to surpass me."

"We will not join the ranks of the Old Canon. We will create a new Canon...."We will seek the rose in the prose. We will find the light in delight." And finally "incipit liberi besti" -"begin beautiful books." I believe this is an idea whose time has come. Bravo!

This is quite simply one of the most fascinating books I have read this past year. It touches on History, Design, Literature, Creativity and so many other areas with a zeal and passion that is rarely seen these days. It also is one of the most beautiful books just to page through as well. I have had several people pick my copy up and browse it briefly, only to get enthralled in the text and illustrations.

Ms. Kirschenbaum has written and designed a masterpiece that I hope will soon become a standard on the shelf of every design school, and it should be in the library of every graphic designer as well. Editors and publishers could also benefit to see that today's technologies need not only yield the standard black and white of yesterday's printing techniques-and all could benefit from books that engage the readers as actively as television and computers do at the present.

Beautiful, thoughtfully written, and quite engaging. Highly Recommended reading.

About the time the author entered the first grade, I was wallowing through my Master's thesis. Separated by thirty years, we reached the same conclusion: color and design encourages learning.

Since I did my work, technology has undergone a sea-change. Ms. Kirschenbaum, a teacher, writer and designer in New York City, uses it to illustrate passages from her next day's lessons to beautiful designs. She discovered responded with increased comprehension, retention and attentiveness - not a surprise for a generation reared on television, movies, the internet and video games.

She believes and effectively advocates for the return of what she terms the "designer-writer"; an artist who communicates with the written word and art. This combination has been absent since English Poet, William Blake.

That is, until now. This book is truly a work of art. True to its sub-title, it represents a marriage of Art, Literature, Education and Technology. Beautifully written and illustrated, it issues a clarion call to publishers to rethink their book designs.

If I had forgotten the finer points of my research years ago, reading this book refreshed the memories. I was not alone. I opted to start reading it on a multiple-leg airplane trip. The book's breathtaking illustrations quickly became the favored topic of conversation between and my traveling companions and me.

As I explained the book's thesis to them, they volunteered occasions when they added color to simple messages and improved the desired response.

If it was obvious to us, the point should not be lost on publishers. If the author and her publisher can profit selling this unique work of art ..., it is time for anyone who labors with words to rethink their presentation.

It is a sheer delight to read a book in which the author's passion and enthusiasm leaps forth from virtually every page. I was recently given the opportunity to read this book and have ambled leisurely through each page, gaining new insights for the motivation of young people, raised in a society characterized by visual bombardment, to discover or rediscover the love of learning from books. The author presents a compelling case for the development of books grow beyond the written word toward a total verbal/visual experience. However, just as impressive as Ms. Kirschenbaum's thoughtful presentation of her ideas, is the infusion of her actual person, her essence as it were, into each chapter of the book: her life, her dreams, and her passions. There are very few nonfiction books - or for that matter, many books - where so much of the author's inner being is revealed; how much more remarkable it is in a subject where one would normally expect the dry, black-and-white dustiness of academic theory. Ms. Kirschenbaum clearly has a number of fine ideas, which she conveys in a thoroughly engaging manner.

THE DESIGNER REVOLUTION is visually impressive, yet the particulars of the graphic design are not mere ornamentation. Rather, they have been carefully chosen to illustrate the power of communication to the reader through the use of color, font, style variation, and imagery. Too often, as the author discusses, the use of color and design have been belittled by so-called academics as mind candy for lesser-lights (my words, not hers), not appropriate for the bright or serious student. Ivory tower types, who bask in the pale light of the status-quo, view color, design and illustration as tools or gimmicks, not worthy of serious work. I often laugh when I read how these same characters, legends in their own mind, lament that their often tedious theories and works are never embraced by large numbers of people, despite their self-apparent wit and brilliance. Consider such things as home and gardening books, cookbooks, children's books and other pictorial texts. They are often richly illustrated and designed, beautiful in construction and feel - and yet are often scoffed as less sophisticated. However, these same books, precisely because of the engagement of the visual and the verbal, are picked up again and again by their owners, unlike "more serious literature," which is read once, at best, then relegated to the bookshelf (or worse, to the recycling bin).

As an aside, years ago, my mother (an occasional part-time teacher) was asked to tutor individual students who were having difficulties in reading. She brought in my old comic books and magazines. Her philosophy was to give the students something they wanted to read, so that their enthusiasm would be sparked - analogous to using newspaper and kindling to entice a reluctant campfire to a cheery blaze. Her students responded enthusiastically, "at last, something we LIKE to read." Most improved their skills dramatically and several have even become successful as educators. The author takes this simple approach - give the kids something they would like to read - to an entirely new level.

Ms. Kirschenbaum's ideas encourage the simultaneous engagement of ALL of the senses in inspiring and motivating her students. "How do we get students to WANT to read?" is the key question. She asserts that to have a lasting impact, you must communicate in the vernacular of the day. And what is this vernacular? Television, music videos, computer and video games? These are things which can stimulate all of the senses - but, because they are generally passive, often fall far short of fostering creativity and imagination. Books, because they require discipline, particularly in intellectual works, can be infinitely more rewarding - IF THEY ARE READ. The author provides both a wonderful way to write for today's author, as well as a solid methodology to encourage young readers in an ear of visual dominance.

The author's research of the use of color and design in the pre-Gutenberg and post-Gutenberg period is richly comprehensive. While she laments the decline of color and design in books, she recognizes that, as books were previously a scarce commodity for the affluent, the invention of the printing press did enable books to become available to the masses - although at a cost. Ms. Kirschenbaum notes that with the advent of computer and printing technology, color and design can easily be integrated into books, just as color, sound, and computerized special effects have taken motion pictures to incredible levels.

One particular chapter stands out. Chapter 28: Writing in the Color of the Stars is a delightful essay on the art and passion of writing from a deeply personal level. Ms. Kirschenbaum is wandering through New York City, looking at the great buildings. "Each building is a galaxy, each window is a star. In them I see the silhouettes of young men and women, the dreamers of my generation. Their candles burn at both ends, as Edna St. Vincent Millay would like to say, but they will last, last way beyond midnight. They fill me with a sense of awe and pride; in their 20s and 30s now, they are bursting with energy and mad with ambition."

THE DESIGNER REVOLUTION contains remarkable insight into how to touch the lives of students, the dreamers of the next generation.

The author, a passionate practitioner of the teaching arts in an inner-city classroom, has, amidst the ruins of print-based culture, rediscovered how to connect with the the fullest possible range of a would-be reader's senses. This is all the more timely, given what the rising generation internalizes as the normal way of information-processing. A. Bartlett Giamatti spotted the trend in the 1980s, and noted in "Take Time for Paradise," his ode to baseball, that the young were even them mentally imaging things as if on a screen - that their experiences with computers and video games dramatically altered their basic preception of knowledge transmission. (My son made the same observation - he learns more from the Discovery and History Channels than from text.)
Beyond that, the written word is not even what it once was: the plague of Newspeak-style bland language has all but extinguished the supple verve of good English prose in everyday usage. Business, newspapers, and textbooks, among other venues, are in the thrall of dumbed-down, disposable writing of a most forgettable kind. (Example: Compare a King James Bible with the New International Version, and try to find one memorable phrase in the latter that is not a leftover from the former.)
Ms. Kirschenbaum passionately wants to rescue our culture from irrelevance in the eyes of her students. Despite what she reports as indifference from academics more interested in pedigree than in the power of ideas, she gathered the panoramic sweep of how non-Gutenbergian cultures transmitted information - in vivid color, shaped in every way imaginable, as opposed to block text, with assistance from everything that two-dimensional art can offer to stimulate the brain (she discusses the science of that, too) to be receptive to the meaning conveyed by the author.
Ms. Kirchenbaum re-discovered the importance of color. In doing so, she stands in the center of a long tradition, sidetracked by the limitations of Gutenberg's printing press, but not entirely forgotten. The author is probably correct in thinking that black-on-white block text held sway for as long as it did because of the near-monopoly that it had in conveying printed information. The advent of multi-media and desktop publishing means that A.) Old-style text is not the only game in town, and B.) One must ask how anyone used to high levels of stimulation via television, the Internet, etc., can otherwise be induced to use unexercised imagination to make reading attractive.
The book is sprinkled with quotes from classic writers - Horace, Mencius, Hugh of St. Victor, etc., and experts in the field of graphic design, to bolster the author's case. That case rests on foundations as old as Plato: the preception of reality gained through reading may be as imperfect as the shadows on the wall in his famous anology of the cave; using art and color to enliven words can only help bring that image into sharper focus, and thus the phantasms of memory when the reader recalls it at a later date. In a post-literate world, such writing serves such as Gothic architecture once did for Christianity - a sermon in stone. To use a secular example, Shakespeare meant for his plays to be seen, not read; adding something to black-on-white block text brings the reader nearer to what the playwright wanted to convey, in terms of total, felt meaning.
The power of Ms. Kirchenbaum's message stayed with me as I read deeper into her book: While watching, "My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding," I connected the Orthodox use of icons ("Written," not painted - every stroke had specific meaning to the believer), incense, chanting, and candles - all elements absent from American Prtoestant Christianity, to the Eastern way of engaging all the senses in a religous experience.
In closing, while Ms. Kirschenbaum does not cite Thomas More, he wrote in support of her ideas, when he said, as quoted by Sister Miriam Joseph in her classic, "The Trivium" - "Images are necessary books for the uneducated and good books for the learned, too. For all words be but images representing the things that the writer or speaker conceives in his mind,... and so conceived in the mind, is but an image representing the very thing itself that a man thinks of."
What Ms. Kirchenbaum is attempting is not a revelolution, but a restoration, reconnecting us with the timeless knowledge of the ages. For that she deserves our approbation and active support.
-Lloyd A. Conway

In this book, Valerie Kirschenbaum takes on the Gutenberg model of the printed book--that is, the black-text-on-white-paper books we've all grown up with. According to her, books have the potential to be much more visually captivating-- and thus more interesting-- to young people, many of whom nowadays prefer viewing images online or on television to reading. But the book's premise goes beyond making books more enjoyable to kids. "The designer book" has the potential to become a new art form, one which stimulates both sides of the viewer's brain, weaving together text and image to create a multi-media aesthetic experience for all of us.

Ms. Kirschenbaum first started thinking about making books visually appealing while teaching literature at an inner city high school in New York City. Working mostly with disadvantaged kids, she found it a challenge just to maintain classroom order, much less get her students to read or do homework. She discovered that printing out reading assignments in color immediately grabbed her students' attention. The vast majority preferred these colored assignments, and read them.

Taking her cue from her students, Ms. Kirschenbaum decided to research the history of what she calls "color writing." She studied the vast treasury of ancient illuminated manuscripts from almost all the major literate civilizations, in order to see how people before the time of the Gutenberg printing press combined words and images. These are perhaps the most beautiful books ever made, created in each of their cultures for a powerful minority schooled in reading and aesthetic appreciation.

But according to Kirschenbaum, this same beauty can be enjoyed by a broad audience today, thanks to computer graphics. She trained herself in this medium, in addition to learning about color and design. The results of her work are evident in this book: it is one of the most beautiful and visually exciting modern books I've ever seen. Every page is in color, and contains images which range from very ancient to modern. Despite this variety, the book design is a unified whole.

As for the text, it tells the story of her work with her students, and much else besides. In addition to her visual studies, the author poured over research on topics such as literacy and education, linguistics, neurology, and philosophy. (She provides these sources in an extensive bibliography at the book's end.) Thus there is information on a wide range of topics: color writing used as a mnemonic device in ancient times; color reading and brain science; poetics; the nature of visual thinking; books as sacred texts; the sexual politics of font design; and much more. The writing is inspirational, and the visual layouts make turning every page a wonderful surprise.

Ms. Kirschenbaum encountered much resistance from academic experts while researching and writing this book. They were opposed to her theories about priming the left brain for reading by using color and imagery. One professor she spoke with called her "Madame Nobody."

But some of the best ideas are initially rejected by pompous experts before finally catching on, and I do believe the seeds she has sewn with this book have been planted in fertile ground. Her notion of merging visual imagery with written text mirrors an ongoing cultural movement to merge intuitive thinking with the rational mind, feminine ways of knowing with masculine ways, and the wisdom of early cultures with the scientific culture we now inhabit. In short, this book is about the integration of the human mind, and the creative leap forward it will engender.

This is not just a book- it's an accomplishment. "The Designer Revolution" is truly a work of art, as well as being an informative and really captivating resource. I studied Art History in college, and none of the $100 coffee table books I was required to buy are half as useful and inspiring.

The book itself would be worth the price if there were no written content- every thick, glossy page is covered from margin to margin with images culled from the history of art and design. Just flipping through it is an inspiration to any designer who is facing a little bit of a creative block. The words on every page are part of the design of the book; weaving around and through the images on every page in a playful way, using a number of different fonts. It's sort of like a big book of lavishly illustrated fairy tales for those of us who dream in Photoshop and paint with our digital cameras.

The actual content of the book is just as outstanding as the design. Kirschenbaum covers the history of design and all the ways in which we utilize it every single day, from the classroom to international media. I've studied art and film extensively and this book still manages to teach me new things. Any time I hit a slump, I pick up the book and look through the pages, and I get a jolt of inspiration.

This is one of the rare few books I wish *I* had the talent and vision to create (along with Nick Bantock's work and some older, illustrated manuscripts.) I envy all the students who get to use this as a textbook or resource. I'm glad to own it and I highly recommend it.

It was with great pleasure that I was given the chance to read and review on what I consider to be an impressive argument for using the tools this generation has at it's disposal to help our younger generation get more out of the time spent in a class room. It is also an attempt to enlighten the bureaucracy of the educational world that there just might be a better way using a better tool to educate our children.

Where am I coming from? Admittedly, I am not an educator, but a great lover of books who now that my school days are long past is not forced to read a book. I read for the pure joy of the written word, for an author to come and dazzle me with written words that engages me emotionally is rare. To be able to give that kind of joy to a young person, simply by engaging their visual awareness is to my mind a great gift! Not only do I find that Ms. Kirschenbaum makes a very eloquent and visually impressive argument in a text book that is so visually satisfying and well thought out, but were I part of the upper echelon of the educational bureaucracy, I would make this book required reading for all educators. She proves through actual interaction with her students the enthusiasm and attention given to assignments and papers presented in color and illustration versus the standard black and white text. More importantly, she gives the reader a feast for their eyes with lavish illustrations to bring home her point. Kirschenbaum presents a marvelous case that asks us what with computers and their vast abilities to reproduce graphics, fonts, etc. in living color and this younger generation totally acclimated to videos, DVDs and graphic imagery, why then are we still trying to teach them to read in black and white?

This impressive and lavishly illustrated book should be shared with any teacher you know, and with any parent you know whose children are in school. This effort by a most dedicated teacher should be applauded, praised and looked at with an eye for gifting young minds with the joy of reading, learning and understanding.

.....Marilyn Rondeau an Official Reviewer for www.historicalromancewriters.com