Printing--Conversation II

The first known cover of
my high school mag-
azine. When the new
building got rid of its dome,
name of the magazine changed
to DOME.

In high school, I became art editor of my school's magazine, DOME in my sophomore year. Although my public high school wasn't much to talk about, and still maintains its mediocre status in NYC's DOE roster, it came from the grand tradition of having both a monthly newspaper and a twice-yearly magazine.

Both publications had their own offices and DOMINO, the school newspaper, talked about pertinent events like school sports, academic achievements and the occasional music review (of which my brother wrote a few) while DOME was the art and literary magazine and featured the more fine art side of the school.

And, both were printed in their own representative style: DOMINO was black ink on newsprint, and DOME was black ink on coated paper stock with a 2-color Kromekote cover. Kromekote is a beautiful white-clay-coated paper used for offset--and now digital--printing. Sadly, it yellows and is not archival, but the surface is smooth as glass and lends itself well to hand lettering destined for print reproduction.

Designing the layout of the magazine was also my entry into print production, since every aspect of the magazine had to be handled by the students--all the way to the doorstep of the printer. We even had an advertising and budget staff--with some very tenacious individuals--one of whom sells TV ad time for the Super Bowl to this day. Just about everyone else on my staff entered the magazine art, design or writing industry one way or another. I spent most of my education years longing to become an art director or photographer for magazines. That's how intoxicating magazine life can be and sadly,  careers in it are often for the very affluent.

Which is to say, no one with a trust fund was ever found working in a press room.

The print-on-demand kiosk at
MoMA. No longer do pillars
of unsold catalogs linger at
their bookstore. Not a sheet
wasted.

I loved printing and publishing; ink on paper was the way to express everything from Happy Birthday to an incite to riot. I devoured everything I could find about printed materials: the wonderful Constructivist movie posters, magazines from the 1950s forward, the giant movie posters wheat-pasted in the subways--yes, they were offset printed as late as 1998. I just wasn't wild about printed illustrated books. That permanence didn't resonate with me, even though my first job out of art school was to work as an assistant in the Studio Books division at Viking Press.

I believed--as I do now--the print medium, is meant for immediate consumption; immediately disposed of the next day. Its preservation in an archive is perfectly acceptable and necessary; however its manufacture to a more permanent intent makes books seem pretentious and outdated as they come off the press, even before they're bound.

That's why I love the museum catalog digitally printed on demand from a kiosk. But, alas, it's also a symptom of a developing American disease: Fact Amnesia.

We tend to forget anything we've said or done by the next news cycle, and pin its reporting on the dreaded media.

A permutation of American Exceptionalism? Ask Vladimir Putin--or as our new president would say: I don't know, you tell me.