An interview with Ryley
Lawson and Hope Lumsden-Barry
talkingthrough.work
Talking through is a publication that explores ways of working and relating in the face of precarity and uncertainty. The project weaves together conversations with a group of socially-engaged designers working across fields including service design, book design, type design, systems practice, facilitation, futuring, community organising and education. Talking through gives visibility to strategies for alternative practices and raises urgent questions about how design practitioners might shift their thinking towards care, maintenance and mutual support.
Edited by Ryley Lawson and Hope Lumsden-Barry, featuring interviews with:
• Megan Patty
• Stuart Geddes
• Zenobia Ahmed
• Dennis Grauel
• Vincent Chan
• Lina Patel
• Çaca Yvaire
• Clare Cooper
• Yoko Akama & Kate McEntee
• Kate Goodwin
• Jo Szczepanska
Question
Can you tell us briefly what this publication is about? What does it hope to achieve?
Hope
A very good question. Ryley, do you feel like you can respond to this?
Ryley
Do I? I mean, I haven’t answered this question in a long time. Other than... telling my mum (Laughs). I mean, the book is a collection of interviews, it’s most basic, and maybe slightly further than that. It’s like a collection of practices of different people’s design practices and kind of conversations about those practices that we thought might be really interesting to bring together and send out into the community. And we were calling it materials to imagine with, so getting together these different design practices, and almost like giving them to people as a gift, so that they could maybe think about, you know, reflect on their own design practice and potentially imagine how that could be different. Hope, would you want to build on that?
Hope
Yeah, I think that pretty much covers it. To be honest, I think, ultimately, the aim, as you say of the book, is to, I guess, invite people in or invite the reader into these conversations that hopefully will give them each conversation, kind of covers one or two key topics. Hopefully, it provides the reader with something to reflect on and possibly be inspired by in terms of shaping their design practice. We intentionally spoke to people who have very different approaches. Hence, we talk to type designers and graphic designers and work in service design and facilitation design and that kind of thing, which is very different materially. Still, they have similar ideas to each other in terms of how they’ve shaped their practice, and so by showing a diverse range of practices, we hope it’s kind of as helpful to as many people as possible.
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A very good question. Ryley, do you feel like you can respond to this?
Ryley
Do I? I mean, I haven’t answered this question in a long time. Other than... telling my mum (Laughs). I mean, the book is a collection of interviews, it’s most basic, and maybe slightly further than that. It’s like a collection of practices of different people’s design practices and kind of conversations about those practices that we thought might be really interesting to bring together and send out into the community. And we were calling it materials to imagine with, so getting together these different design practices, and almost like giving them to people as a gift, so that they could maybe think about, you know, reflect on their own design practice and potentially imagine how that could be different. Hope, would you want to build on that?
Hope
Yeah, I think that pretty much covers it. To be honest, I think, ultimately, the aim, as you say of the book, is to, I guess, invite people in or invite the reader into these conversations that hopefully will give them each conversation, kind of covers one or two key topics. Hopefully, it provides the reader with something to reflect on and possibly be inspired by in terms of shaping their design practice. We intentionally spoke to people who have very different approaches. Hence, we talk to type designers and graphic designers and work in service design and facilitation design and that kind of thing, which is very different materially. Still, they have similar ideas to each other in terms of how they’ve shaped their practice, and so by showing a diverse range of practices, we hope it’s kind of as helpful to as many people as possible.
Yeah, that sounds really cool. Now for the next question, what inspired you to make those conversations into a publication as a whole?
Hope
That’s a very good question. I think, originally, we weren’t going to do a publication. Our original plan is that we were going to conduct the interviews and record them and just turn them into videos. But then we realized we didn’t really have a lot of experience with that. And we were not sure if we’d be able to do something of good enough quality for what we, you know what we wanted to put out into the world for Melbourne Design Week, so because we’ve done publications in the past and it’s something we’re more comfortable with. That’s why we ultimately decided to do a publication, but it didn’t necessarily need to take the form of a publication. The most important thing for us was that it was something we could share out there in the world.
Ryley
Maybe the shortest answer to this question, we made it into a book because we like to make books.
Hope
Yeah. (Laughs)
That’s a very good question. I think, originally, we weren’t going to do a publication. Our original plan is that we were going to conduct the interviews and record them and just turn them into videos. But then we realized we didn’t really have a lot of experience with that. And we were not sure if we’d be able to do something of good enough quality for what we, you know what we wanted to put out into the world for Melbourne Design Week, so because we’ve done publications in the past and it’s something we’re more comfortable with. That’s why we ultimately decided to do a publication, but it didn’t necessarily need to take the form of a publication. The most important thing for us was that it was something we could share out there in the world.
Ryley
Maybe the shortest answer to this question, we made it into a book because we like to make books.
Hope
Yeah. (Laughs)
Yeah, okay. So… Why do you think the conversations with these 12 designers are important? Is there any particular reason for picking them?
Ryley
Yeah, two main reasons we invited the people in. One is because of their practice, and the other is because of our relationship with them. So, in terms of their practice, as I’ve mentioned, they have quite different practices, they come from very different backgrounds, but they all had a powerful element and foundation of reflection. As part of their practice, they were constantly reflecting on what they were doing and how they were doing it, and its effect on the world. And you know, making changes too. In response to that reflection, each of these people for quiet practices was critical and often entirely political, very aware of who they were in the world, that’s one reason because we respect their work, and the way they are thinking about their work. Then the other side is that we have strong relationships with every person who was in the book. That was important for us as well. It’s a book about community and the importance of community and community building, so we thought it was essential to draw on our community and show the moments of interconnection between the community members. One of us has worked with pretty much everybody on the list.
Hope
Yeah, I think between the two of us, we've worked with everybody in the book. For some of them both of us have worked with them.
Yeah, two main reasons we invited the people in. One is because of their practice, and the other is because of our relationship with them. So, in terms of their practice, as I’ve mentioned, they have quite different practices, they come from very different backgrounds, but they all had a powerful element and foundation of reflection. As part of their practice, they were constantly reflecting on what they were doing and how they were doing it, and its effect on the world. And you know, making changes too. In response to that reflection, each of these people for quiet practices was critical and often entirely political, very aware of who they were in the world, that’s one reason because we respect their work, and the way they are thinking about their work. Then the other side is that we have strong relationships with every person who was in the book. That was important for us as well. It’s a book about community and the importance of community and community building, so we thought it was essential to draw on our community and show the moments of interconnection between the community members. One of us has worked with pretty much everybody on the list.
Hope
Yeah, I think between the two of us, we've worked with everybody in the book. For some of them both of us have worked with them.
Okay, through the conversations with a group of designers from different design fields, how did you transform the conversations into a physical publication?
Hope
It was quite a laborious process, so I would talk about it from start to end. I guess the conversations was sort of the basis and chat around the interview itself, so not just the interview but talking to them directly in a kind of more casual way. Before that, we approached them via email to see if they would even be interested in the first place. The interview itself was recorded, you know that is similar to this, via a video chat platform. We recorded it, and fit it into a program called Auto AI, which is a kind of automatic transcription program. It struggles a bit if you don’t have an American accent, but it still works. It just spits out a raw transcript of the audio and then that raw transcript which has a lot of errors in it and grammar problems. For example, we use that to form the basis of the text, which we edit down and a big part of that is also just getting rid of huge chunks of text that are irrelevant, just little bits of chitchat at the start and the end and that kind of thing. Then we edited it together, after that we send it to the person we interviewed, they would edit it sometimes or a fewtimes. It was very much a collaborative process, and obviously from there taking it in, laying it out in the publication and finishing it that way.
Ryley
It’s probably worth adding there. Each of the interviews was worth between an hour and an hour and a half or two hours for one. The transcription was about 8,000 to 10,000 words however, final interviews were only 2,000 words. So, we had to... I wasn’t just cutting out to chat, there were also… whole tangents and kinds of areas that people talked about that we add to it. Yeah, that was hard.
Hope
But we ran our long interviews because we gathered from experience that an hour is a good length of time to really get into at least one of those topic areas. If someone has a really broad practice, there’s lots of different things that they’ll want to talk about, sometimes it’s good to give them the space to focus on one or two key points that will end up shaping into the interview.
It was quite a laborious process, so I would talk about it from start to end. I guess the conversations was sort of the basis and chat around the interview itself, so not just the interview but talking to them directly in a kind of more casual way. Before that, we approached them via email to see if they would even be interested in the first place. The interview itself was recorded, you know that is similar to this, via a video chat platform. We recorded it, and fit it into a program called Auto AI, which is a kind of automatic transcription program. It struggles a bit if you don’t have an American accent, but it still works. It just spits out a raw transcript of the audio and then that raw transcript which has a lot of errors in it and grammar problems. For example, we use that to form the basis of the text, which we edit down and a big part of that is also just getting rid of huge chunks of text that are irrelevant, just little bits of chitchat at the start and the end and that kind of thing. Then we edited it together, after that we send it to the person we interviewed, they would edit it sometimes or a fewtimes. It was very much a collaborative process, and obviously from there taking it in, laying it out in the publication and finishing it that way.
Ryley
It’s probably worth adding there. Each of the interviews was worth between an hour and an hour and a half or two hours for one. The transcription was about 8,000 to 10,000 words however, final interviews were only 2,000 words. So, we had to... I wasn’t just cutting out to chat, there were also… whole tangents and kinds of areas that people talked about that we add to it. Yeah, that was hard.
Hope
But we ran our long interviews because we gathered from experience that an hour is a good length of time to really get into at least one of those topic areas. If someone has a really broad practice, there’s lots of different things that they’ll want to talk about, sometimes it’s good to give them the space to focus on one or two key points that will end up shaping into the interview.
By reading ‘Talking Through’, collaborating with other people in the practice seems to be quite important. Can you tell us about your experience with collaborating with other people during the making of the publication?
Ryley
Our experience collaborating with people on this publication or before this publication?
Anqi
Just during this publication.
Ryley
I suppose, it was sort of obvious. There were several collaborations here, one was obviously between Hope and myself, as sort of a primary collaboration. And then also, between us and partner Bobby, who had a little bit of overseeing position and proofreading, but then also the collaboration I suppose with participants, that was probably the best way to talk about this, would you agree? Hope?
Hope
Yeah, so I think in terms of how we approached it, we were very upfront with everybody at the beginning that we didn’t have any kind of money to pay them for their time. We sort of said: ‘Look, we can’t pay you for this. Hence, if you’re not able to do that’s completely fine.’ As a way of paying them, we gave them a copy of the book for free, and if they were in Melbourne, they could come and watch the launch for free. Still, we made sure that they had a spot and allowed them to do a bit of an exchange of labour, so if they needed help with something, we would be available to help them. So far, no one has taken us up on what they need to, but it was less of a transactional relationship and more of a collaborative relationship. That’s maybe one of the reasons it worked that way. And for some people, we worked very closely with them on the final text, some people were just sort of happy with the edit that we had done, or they changed one or two words. Whereas with other people we had quite a lot of additional conversations after the interview about shaping the panel text. Also, for the panel discussion that we had at the launch, we did have a bit of it that was quite collaborative with the panelists, so they were all people who we also interviewed in the book, but we did have conversations with them in the lead up to the panel, where we kind of discussed their texts and the other texts in the book. This kind of collaboratively shaped what that panel event would be as well. So, to us, it was really important to take on board all of their ideas, particularly for this book because it was kind of about their ideas in a way, and we respected their opinion.
Ryley
It’s probably worth kind of building on that and saying, I hope I mentioned the discussions we had before each interview. We spent just about as much time on the phone with everybody before the interview as we did in the interview and a lot of that was figuring out what to talk about together. We essentially designed each interview in conversation with everybody before we did the interview, with a sort of at least a week in between to send them a question. Yeah, they would have a bit of heads up as to what we were talking about, and all those familiar, rather than coming out of the blue.
Our experience collaborating with people on this publication or before this publication?
Anqi
Just during this publication.
Ryley
I suppose, it was sort of obvious. There were several collaborations here, one was obviously between Hope and myself, as sort of a primary collaboration. And then also, between us and partner Bobby, who had a little bit of overseeing position and proofreading, but then also the collaboration I suppose with participants, that was probably the best way to talk about this, would you agree? Hope?
Hope
Yeah, so I think in terms of how we approached it, we were very upfront with everybody at the beginning that we didn’t have any kind of money to pay them for their time. We sort of said: ‘Look, we can’t pay you for this. Hence, if you’re not able to do that’s completely fine.’ As a way of paying them, we gave them a copy of the book for free, and if they were in Melbourne, they could come and watch the launch for free. Still, we made sure that they had a spot and allowed them to do a bit of an exchange of labour, so if they needed help with something, we would be available to help them. So far, no one has taken us up on what they need to, but it was less of a transactional relationship and more of a collaborative relationship. That’s maybe one of the reasons it worked that way. And for some people, we worked very closely with them on the final text, some people were just sort of happy with the edit that we had done, or they changed one or two words. Whereas with other people we had quite a lot of additional conversations after the interview about shaping the panel text. Also, for the panel discussion that we had at the launch, we did have a bit of it that was quite collaborative with the panelists, so they were all people who we also interviewed in the book, but we did have conversations with them in the lead up to the panel, where we kind of discussed their texts and the other texts in the book. This kind of collaboratively shaped what that panel event would be as well. So, to us, it was really important to take on board all of their ideas, particularly for this book because it was kind of about their ideas in a way, and we respected their opinion.
Ryley
It’s probably worth kind of building on that and saying, I hope I mentioned the discussions we had before each interview. We spent just about as much time on the phone with everybody before the interview as we did in the interview and a lot of that was figuring out what to talk about together. We essentially designed each interview in conversation with everybody before we did the interview, with a sort of at least a week in between to send them a question. Yeah, they would have a bit of heads up as to what we were talking about, and all those familiar, rather than coming out of the blue.
Yeah, that sounds very interesting. Okay, next question, did you have a particular way of writing the interviewee answers into the publication?
Ryley
I suppose you’ve kind of partially addressed it already, in terms of the process that we used — the transcription service. It didn’t do very well with non-American accents, so nearly everybody. This is the third book that Hope and I have been involved in like this, a sort of interview with designers about their practices. The important thing is to find a story, mostly just one story in each interview, and figure out all of the different bits and pieces. You know, there might be only 5 or 10 minutes’ worth of stories there, but they’ve got an element of conversation so find all the bits that they talked about in the interview and fit the story. Sometimes those things don't happen in order, you have to recut the interview to make sense and make it sound like it flows. But I guess the important thing was to find the story and then find the bits that sort of uphold that story, which can be challenging because all of these people were fascinating, they all said exciting things for about an hour, so you know, one story was quite difficult, I don’t know if you want to add to that.
Hope
Yeah, I think that’s definitely the way we tried to approach it, which was to focus on just one or two key ideas. Whereas in the interview, you might explore 10 ideas so it’s about choosing the one that we feel kind of would be most useful for people to read about. The other thing that we try and do was kind of retain a sense of everybody’s voices, their kind of natural spoken voices, which was quite challenging to do when you’re writing, because the way that you write was obviously very different to the way that you speak, and then also the way that you speak was not always pleasurable. You know, from reading experience, because of all these little words we put into sentences, little things get quite annoying to read over and over again. But at the same time, we wanted each interview to feel very distinct from one another in terms of personality and tone of voice. We wanted to make sure that everybody sounded like themselves, I guess, which can be hard to remove, when you’re removing some of those words to kind of maintain that sense of who that person was.
I suppose you’ve kind of partially addressed it already, in terms of the process that we used — the transcription service. It didn’t do very well with non-American accents, so nearly everybody. This is the third book that Hope and I have been involved in like this, a sort of interview with designers about their practices. The important thing is to find a story, mostly just one story in each interview, and figure out all of the different bits and pieces. You know, there might be only 5 or 10 minutes’ worth of stories there, but they’ve got an element of conversation so find all the bits that they talked about in the interview and fit the story. Sometimes those things don't happen in order, you have to recut the interview to make sense and make it sound like it flows. But I guess the important thing was to find the story and then find the bits that sort of uphold that story, which can be challenging because all of these people were fascinating, they all said exciting things for about an hour, so you know, one story was quite difficult, I don’t know if you want to add to that.
Hope
Yeah, I think that’s definitely the way we tried to approach it, which was to focus on just one or two key ideas. Whereas in the interview, you might explore 10 ideas so it’s about choosing the one that we feel kind of would be most useful for people to read about. The other thing that we try and do was kind of retain a sense of everybody’s voices, their kind of natural spoken voices, which was quite challenging to do when you’re writing, because the way that you write was obviously very different to the way that you speak, and then also the way that you speak was not always pleasurable. You know, from reading experience, because of all these little words we put into sentences, little things get quite annoying to read over and over again. But at the same time, we wanted each interview to feel very distinct from one another in terms of personality and tone of voice. We wanted to make sure that everybody sounded like themselves, I guess, which can be hard to remove, when you’re removing some of those words to kind of maintain that sense of who that person was.
Yes, I think so too. Can I ask why did you only make a physical book, have you thought about providing a downloadable PDF to the audience? Was there any particular reason or advantages for printing the physical publication?
Ryley
I’d come back around to the earlier answer, we like books (Laughs). There’s something really nice about a book, especially when we put out Making Space, the first one— four years ago, I can actually see a copy that doesn’t belong to me around the bookshelf over there. It was really nice, that it was just kind of lying around. I think if it was a digital copy; I’m being really selfish here, I would have to go looking for it in terms of why we haven’t done that in the past, it’s just been a bit tricky, I think. Do we have a plan, are we going to put it online?
Hope
Because we didn’t pay anybody for their time, we’re also not going to make any profit from this book, so currently the plan is we’re selling the copies, therefore we can recoup the production costs and we’ve nearly done that. Then any profit that we make, we’re going to give to charity so that we’re not making any money from this project. After we’ve gotten rid of all the copies and there’s none left, we’ll put the PDF online, I think for people to kind of freely access it definitely. Part of the reason to put a price on it at all is kind of just to pay for me to get in a way, but I am interested in how, doing this kind of work does have a value, and unfortunately the way we ascribe value in society is through money. So, figuring out a way to do that, I guess, respect the work and pay for people’s time but also be accessible to people was the kind of thing that I’m interested in and I’m not sure if we quite got there. This time I was interested in looking at kind of digital only forms of publishing because it was more accessible to people, but at the same time I wanted to make sure that people can get paid for their time and for their work, so it’s hard to kind of balance those things because people are more likely to spend money on a physical book, I feel. But if they spend money on a PDF, which was just something you can attach in an email. Therefore, I don’t know if we really answered your question, we want to release it as a PDF, sort of at the end of the process. I would also echo Ryley’s sentiment that we just like making books and there’s something nice about the reading experience of a book as opposed to on the screen, especially with the past year and the pandemic and just being inside on our computers all the time.
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I’d come back around to the earlier answer, we like books (Laughs). There’s something really nice about a book, especially when we put out Making Space, the first one— four years ago, I can actually see a copy that doesn’t belong to me around the bookshelf over there. It was really nice, that it was just kind of lying around. I think if it was a digital copy; I’m being really selfish here, I would have to go looking for it in terms of why we haven’t done that in the past, it’s just been a bit tricky, I think. Do we have a plan, are we going to put it online?
Hope
Because we didn’t pay anybody for their time, we’re also not going to make any profit from this book, so currently the plan is we’re selling the copies, therefore we can recoup the production costs and we’ve nearly done that. Then any profit that we make, we’re going to give to charity so that we’re not making any money from this project. After we’ve gotten rid of all the copies and there’s none left, we’ll put the PDF online, I think for people to kind of freely access it definitely. Part of the reason to put a price on it at all is kind of just to pay for me to get in a way, but I am interested in how, doing this kind of work does have a value, and unfortunately the way we ascribe value in society is through money. So, figuring out a way to do that, I guess, respect the work and pay for people’s time but also be accessible to people was the kind of thing that I’m interested in and I’m not sure if we quite got there. This time I was interested in looking at kind of digital only forms of publishing because it was more accessible to people, but at the same time I wanted to make sure that people can get paid for their time and for their work, so it’s hard to kind of balance those things because people are more likely to spend money on a physical book, I feel. But if they spend money on a PDF, which was just something you can attach in an email. Therefore, I don’t know if we really answered your question, we want to release it as a PDF, sort of at the end of the process. I would also echo Ryley’s sentiment that we just like making books and there’s something nice about the reading experience of a book as opposed to on the screen, especially with the past year and the pandemic and just being inside on our computers all the time.
Yeah, that’s really great. By using a conversational form, do you think your publication was different to other traditional books or publications?
Hope
I don’t think so, I think there’s quite a few books that kind of have interviews in them or follow a similar format. I think in a way it’s almost a bit convenient for us to do interviews, it’s a bit faster to have a conversation. I don’t know, it feels lower effort, and much easier than writing an essay, perhaps that’s just me.
Ryley
I totally agree, but I would also say that, doing an interview and then transcribing it rather than asking somebody else to write an essay is a little bit more generous. Because you are the editor, you do most of the labor. Obviously, interviewees like the labour of speaking and also coming up with the ideas, articulating their ideas and stuff to sort of minimize the labour that goes into that conversation, then you do the editing. But because we are not in a position to pay anybody, and we were also not in a position to ask them to write for us. We kind of wanted to find a format, and interviews seem to be that a better middle ground in terms of sharing their stories but us doing a lot of the work.
Hope
Yes, that’s a great answer.
I don’t think so, I think there’s quite a few books that kind of have interviews in them or follow a similar format. I think in a way it’s almost a bit convenient for us to do interviews, it’s a bit faster to have a conversation. I don’t know, it feels lower effort, and much easier than writing an essay, perhaps that’s just me.
Ryley
I totally agree, but I would also say that, doing an interview and then transcribing it rather than asking somebody else to write an essay is a little bit more generous. Because you are the editor, you do most of the labor. Obviously, interviewees like the labour of speaking and also coming up with the ideas, articulating their ideas and stuff to sort of minimize the labour that goes into that conversation, then you do the editing. But because we are not in a position to pay anybody, and we were also not in a position to ask them to write for us. We kind of wanted to find a format, and interviews seem to be that a better middle ground in terms of sharing their stories but us doing a lot of the work.
Hope
Yes, that’s a great answer.
Do you think your publication activates engagement with the audience?
Hope
Oh, I don’t know, I hope so (Laughs).
Oh, I don’t know, I hope so (Laughs).
About the Feeling
Did you feel inspired during the process of interviewing people?
Hope
Yeah, definitely, definitely the conversations we had were really good conversations and they were quite inspiring to have and to talk to people who were really smart and, you know, have a lot of excellent ideas about how to do design work, so I was definitely inspired during those conversations.
Ryley
It gets a little bit uninspiring listening to yourself over and over again when you listen to the recordings, but absolutely the people we talk to have some fantastic ideas.
Anqi
Can you tell me how you were able to adjust your mentality by acting in multiple roles of interviewer, writer and editor during the process of making the book?
Ryley
I mean, I suppose I’ve always done all of them. In terms of, you know, past experience. What’s the question between interviewer, writer and editor? I don’t know if I have a good answer to that yet, but I could think of one. Hope, do you have an answer?
Hope
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s probably a good question because it’s not something we’re consciously thinking about too much, so it’s probably something we need to kind of investigate and reflect upon more, because definitely they are different ways of working, but at the same time, you know, so in editing is kind of a… they’re all creative processes but some of them require more, you know, different types of attention. So, you know, having the interview is very active in terms of listening and trying to follow and see if there are other opportunities to ask new questions and that kind of thing. Whereas editing is, you can kind of take your time with it, it’s a little bit less intense in that way. So, they’re all different, but at the same time, the thing that connects them all is that you’re trying to find the story or you’re trying to find the key point that is interesting about that conversation, and you kind of do that through the interviews, through editing, and through writing it up you are kind of trying to uncover the, the interesting part. So, I don’t think that really answers your question, though.
Yeah, definitely, definitely the conversations we had were really good conversations and they were quite inspiring to have and to talk to people who were really smart and, you know, have a lot of excellent ideas about how to do design work, so I was definitely inspired during those conversations.
Ryley
It gets a little bit uninspiring listening to yourself over and over again when you listen to the recordings, but absolutely the people we talk to have some fantastic ideas.
Anqi
Can you tell me how you were able to adjust your mentality by acting in multiple roles of interviewer, writer and editor during the process of making the book?
Ryley
I mean, I suppose I’ve always done all of them. In terms of, you know, past experience. What’s the question between interviewer, writer and editor? I don’t know if I have a good answer to that yet, but I could think of one. Hope, do you have an answer?
Hope
Yeah, I think it’s, it’s probably a good question because it’s not something we’re consciously thinking about too much, so it’s probably something we need to kind of investigate and reflect upon more, because definitely they are different ways of working, but at the same time, you know, so in editing is kind of a… they’re all creative processes but some of them require more, you know, different types of attention. So, you know, having the interview is very active in terms of listening and trying to follow and see if there are other opportunities to ask new questions and that kind of thing. Whereas editing is, you can kind of take your time with it, it’s a little bit less intense in that way. So, they’re all different, but at the same time, the thing that connects them all is that you’re trying to find the story or you’re trying to find the key point that is interesting about that conversation, and you kind of do that through the interviews, through editing, and through writing it up you are kind of trying to uncover the, the interesting part. So, I don’t think that really answers your question, though.
About the Design
I found that there were not many images in the publication, can you tell us why?
Hope
Well, we wanted to make sure that the publication was very economical in terms of the printing so we wanted to make sure we could print it in black and white. We were thinking of including some imagery early on. So, for example, Lina, one of the people that we interviewed has chickens, and in the interview, she was talking about her chickens and we thought that it would be a fun thing to include a photo of the chickens. But we didn’t kind of identify that for everybody and in the end, we just decided, it’s probably more effort than it’s worth to include imagery, I think, yeah, it probably would have been good in a way to include some imagery of people’s work, particularly the more visual design practitioners like the type designers and graphic designers so you could see examples of their work. But because quite a few of the practitioners also don’t have particularly visual practices. Yeah, it would be it would have taken a lot more time to kind of visualise their practice and find ways of showing their practice visually, I think if we’d had more time to work on the book, we probably would have ended up including something that does contextualize those conversations a little bit more. But it was sort of yeah, it was a matter of time, and the budget, because we didn’t want to print in colour. So, the only imagery that’s included was the illustrations obviously on the chapter pages which I did which were kind of interpretive illustrations of the conversations in a very loose sense, so for example, Kate Goodwin’s interview was about systems practice and kind of circular economies and so that’s sort of like a circular flower arrangement, the illustration for her chapter. So, yeah, but that’s as far as we go in terms of imagery.
Well, we wanted to make sure that the publication was very economical in terms of the printing so we wanted to make sure we could print it in black and white. We were thinking of including some imagery early on. So, for example, Lina, one of the people that we interviewed has chickens, and in the interview, she was talking about her chickens and we thought that it would be a fun thing to include a photo of the chickens. But we didn’t kind of identify that for everybody and in the end, we just decided, it’s probably more effort than it’s worth to include imagery, I think, yeah, it probably would have been good in a way to include some imagery of people’s work, particularly the more visual design practitioners like the type designers and graphic designers so you could see examples of their work. But because quite a few of the practitioners also don’t have particularly visual practices. Yeah, it would be it would have taken a lot more time to kind of visualise their practice and find ways of showing their practice visually, I think if we’d had more time to work on the book, we probably would have ended up including something that does contextualize those conversations a little bit more. But it was sort of yeah, it was a matter of time, and the budget, because we didn’t want to print in colour. So, the only imagery that’s included was the illustrations obviously on the chapter pages which I did which were kind of interpretive illustrations of the conversations in a very loose sense, so for example, Kate Goodwin’s interview was about systems practice and kind of circular economies and so that’s sort of like a circular flower arrangement, the illustration for her chapter. So, yeah, but that’s as far as we go in terms of imagery.
Why did you use yellow for the colour of the publication cover? Was there a particular design style you had in mind whilst creating the publication?
Ryley
We nearly had it on the back, we were going to put it on the back cover.
Hope
Yeah, I think originally, I wanted the publication… It’s just sometimes when I’m doing this kind of work, which is self-directed work, I just sort of tried to follow what interests me and inspires me and I try not to think too deeply about the visual side, so I just want to do something that’s kind of fun for me. And originally, I had this idea that the publication would be blue, red and white, but then the place we bought the paper from didn’t really have any good red or blue paper stocks. So, then we’d already worked with that grey one before that we quite liked. And then we just saw the yellow one and we thought that looks good with it. So, there wasn’t a strong choice but then I think it ended up being that the Pantone colours for this year were grey and yellow which was a bit embarrassing. We didn’t realise that those were the Pantone colours of the year.
We nearly had it on the back, we were going to put it on the back cover.
Hope
Yeah, I think originally, I wanted the publication… It’s just sometimes when I’m doing this kind of work, which is self-directed work, I just sort of tried to follow what interests me and inspires me and I try not to think too deeply about the visual side, so I just want to do something that’s kind of fun for me. And originally, I had this idea that the publication would be blue, red and white, but then the place we bought the paper from didn’t really have any good red or blue paper stocks. So, then we’d already worked with that grey one before that we quite liked. And then we just saw the yellow one and we thought that looks good with it. So, there wasn’t a strong choice but then I think it ended up being that the Pantone colours for this year were grey and yellow which was a bit embarrassing. We didn’t realise that those were the Pantone colours of the year.
Have you thought about your material and the printing process for the publication? Such as the types of paper and thickness?
Hope
Yeah, so again it comes down to the economy and trying to get the printing budget as small as possible so I think ultimately I’m actually not super happy with the paper stock that we chose for the internal pages because it’s quite grey, and it looks really similar to the grey chapter, so I didn’t kind of have the effect that I wanted it to have to be honest, but we ended up using enviroCare for most of the internal pages which is a pretty cheap kind of semi recycled stock, and we’ve used it before so we sort of knew how it felt, and we like the feeling to be a bit rough, and feel a bit like you wouldn’t be upset if you put it in your bag because you want to read it on the train and it gets a bit crinkled or something, you’re not going to be sad if that happens, whereas it’s really expensive paper you might feel a bit upset, and you might not want to read it.
Ryley
I really love the texture of enviroCare but I do totally agree that, and this, you can probably see it here or not see it there is almost no difference between the enviroCare and the grey. Yeah, we didn’t notice that or have a chance to see that until we picked up the printed proof, which was silly because we have used enviroCare, we’ve used that like cast cat, sparrow grey before and we could have compared them, but we didn’t. And so, it wasn’t like the book, like the paper was ordered and the book and everything was locked in that we saw that they were practically the same color.
Hope
Which was a bit disappointing, which was why you should always test print and, yeah, which we did was silly. Yeah, we also spiral bound it because spiral binding was cheap, but it also allows you to open the book all the way, whereas perfect binding in Australia, tends to use this glue which makes it really stiff and hard to open the book. So that’s why we did the coil binding, it looks a bit cheap, and it means you can’t have a spine but at the same time, it also makes it feel like a workbook or a sketchbook or something that is a little bit less precious and something you feel more comfortable like carrying around with you, if you’re reading it.
Ryley
I don’t like to take ourselves too seriously, either and you know, spiral bound book holds the pages together. It makes it a book and that’s kind of enough, I think.
Yeah, so again it comes down to the economy and trying to get the printing budget as small as possible so I think ultimately I’m actually not super happy with the paper stock that we chose for the internal pages because it’s quite grey, and it looks really similar to the grey chapter, so I didn’t kind of have the effect that I wanted it to have to be honest, but we ended up using enviroCare for most of the internal pages which is a pretty cheap kind of semi recycled stock, and we’ve used it before so we sort of knew how it felt, and we like the feeling to be a bit rough, and feel a bit like you wouldn’t be upset if you put it in your bag because you want to read it on the train and it gets a bit crinkled or something, you’re not going to be sad if that happens, whereas it’s really expensive paper you might feel a bit upset, and you might not want to read it.
Ryley
I really love the texture of enviroCare but I do totally agree that, and this, you can probably see it here or not see it there is almost no difference between the enviroCare and the grey. Yeah, we didn’t notice that or have a chance to see that until we picked up the printed proof, which was silly because we have used enviroCare, we’ve used that like cast cat, sparrow grey before and we could have compared them, but we didn’t. And so, it wasn’t like the book, like the paper was ordered and the book and everything was locked in that we saw that they were practically the same color.
Hope
Which was a bit disappointing, which was why you should always test print and, yeah, which we did was silly. Yeah, we also spiral bound it because spiral binding was cheap, but it also allows you to open the book all the way, whereas perfect binding in Australia, tends to use this glue which makes it really stiff and hard to open the book. So that’s why we did the coil binding, it looks a bit cheap, and it means you can’t have a spine but at the same time, it also makes it feel like a workbook or a sketchbook or something that is a little bit less precious and something you feel more comfortable like carrying around with you, if you’re reading it.
Ryley
I don’t like to take ourselves too seriously, either and you know, spiral bound book holds the pages together. It makes it a book and that’s kind of enough, I think.
About the Publication
What do you think of the need/ urgency of publishing today?
Hope
Oh, big question. I mean I think it’s always important to be, I guess, putting your ideas out there if you’re having ideas and if you’re having critical notions to kind of share them with other people so that other people can think about what you’ve put out there and respond either directly to you, or respond through their own reflections and I think it’s important to just, yeah, contribute to thinking about design and about all kinds of other issues. You know so that we can progress, the industry as a whole. And I think publishing feeds into that, along with all other forms of discourse including, you know, social media or whatever, I don’t really do that, but I know a lot of people do, you know, participating in conversations I think is important, because if you’re operating just by yourself and you're not reaching out there either by sharing things or reading other people’s work, then it’s hard to kind of progress on your own ideas, I think. So, I think it’s always important. Yeah. How about you Ryley? I didn’t know if I answered that very well.
Ryley
Yeah, I mean, I maybe can’t speak to publishing generally, but I think discussion about design is always important, because it has a history, you know, sort of like a modernist western history that in most other, like most publishing about design is continued, like the same stories are told over and over again. And those stories can be harmful and should be challenged and so any kind of conversation on the outsides of that or the edges of that I think is important and designs in a really interesting position because it’s, you know, we have all of the things available to self publish quite easily, I don’t have to engage anybody else. So why not make a book, even if it’s, you know that eight pages in. Get it out there.
Oh, big question. I mean I think it’s always important to be, I guess, putting your ideas out there if you’re having ideas and if you’re having critical notions to kind of share them with other people so that other people can think about what you’ve put out there and respond either directly to you, or respond through their own reflections and I think it’s important to just, yeah, contribute to thinking about design and about all kinds of other issues. You know so that we can progress, the industry as a whole. And I think publishing feeds into that, along with all other forms of discourse including, you know, social media or whatever, I don’t really do that, but I know a lot of people do, you know, participating in conversations I think is important, because if you’re operating just by yourself and you're not reaching out there either by sharing things or reading other people’s work, then it’s hard to kind of progress on your own ideas, I think. So, I think it’s always important. Yeah. How about you Ryley? I didn’t know if I answered that very well.
Ryley
Yeah, I mean, I maybe can’t speak to publishing generally, but I think discussion about design is always important, because it has a history, you know, sort of like a modernist western history that in most other, like most publishing about design is continued, like the same stories are told over and over again. And those stories can be harmful and should be challenged and so any kind of conversation on the outsides of that or the edges of that I think is important and designs in a really interesting position because it’s, you know, we have all of the things available to self publish quite easily, I don’t have to engage anybody else. So why not make a book, even if it’s, you know that eight pages in. Get it out there.
Can you tell us how you see the publication’s role in the future?
Hope
I think in general. I mean, I think it’s as you say, Ryley, if we were talking specifically about design publishing, you know, we have all the means available to do it ourselves and I think increasingly, with the internet and with social media, they’re kind of new forms of publishing, kind of digital publishing that are being explored increasingly, I think, with the pandemic and with so many online events, I think there’s more opportunities for people to share their ideas kind of across international borders and time zones as well. And you know I think one of the things that you were speaking to earlier Ryley about a lot of design publishing being very western, focused on modernism, you know, by publishing alternative stories to that. Not saying that they are alternative to saying that they are alternative to modernism and kind of Western design canon can kind of broaden the scope of what design can be and what design can do. So, I think that will just be an increasing thing in the future, I think. Yeah, new forms of publishing and more voices included.
Ryley
I think any kind of storytelling about design or publishing about design does have a direct impact on what design is and so what gets designed, and I think that cycle has been part of, has made itself in the past and made itself as a profession and will be part of how it makes itself as a profession in the future. I guess the question is, you know, in what directions is it going to go, and that yeah, I think it’s what publishing is important or any kind of idea sharing.
I think in general. I mean, I think it’s as you say, Ryley, if we were talking specifically about design publishing, you know, we have all the means available to do it ourselves and I think increasingly, with the internet and with social media, they’re kind of new forms of publishing, kind of digital publishing that are being explored increasingly, I think, with the pandemic and with so many online events, I think there’s more opportunities for people to share their ideas kind of across international borders and time zones as well. And you know I think one of the things that you were speaking to earlier Ryley about a lot of design publishing being very western, focused on modernism, you know, by publishing alternative stories to that. Not saying that they are alternative to saying that they are alternative to modernism and kind of Western design canon can kind of broaden the scope of what design can be and what design can do. So, I think that will just be an increasing thing in the future, I think. Yeah, new forms of publishing and more voices included.
Ryley
I think any kind of storytelling about design or publishing about design does have a direct impact on what design is and so what gets designed, and I think that cycle has been part of, has made itself in the past and made itself as a profession and will be part of how it makes itself as a profession in the future. I guess the question is, you know, in what directions is it going to go, and that yeah, I think it’s what publishing is important or any kind of idea sharing.
About Suggestions
We are going to design a publication for our exhibition, do you have any suggestions or advice for this?
Hope
Thinking of physical publication or online publication?
Anqi
More basically online publication.
Hope
Okay, yeah, I was going to say if it was physical, definitely print testing, giving yourself a lot of time. Yeah, I think the suggestions that I have is, in terms of writing, it can be hard to think from the perspective of a reader and what the reader would find interesting. So always trying to, in the same way that as a designer you think about the audience for your work, and you know the end user or the community that you are kind of designing for. You’re trying to understand their perspective and put yourself in their shoes a little bit, it’s the same thing with writing and making sure that you're writing something or sharing information that someone can understand but also that it’s engaging and that someone wants to read. I think the particularly challenging thing with interviews, is you had the conversation and you were there so it’s easy to forget the bits of context people need to understand what you’re talking about. And that just goes for writing in general is just thinking about the context people need to be able to understand and engage with what you’re writing. And also respecting the reader’s time and energy as well, and kind of, making it easy, easy to read, I think that’s probably my advice.
Ryley
Can I ask you a question before I give a suggestion. How many are you doing more than one interview for the publication?
Anqi
You mean the Interviewer or interviewee?
Ryley
What’s going to be the publication actually I’m not sure.
Anqi
Because it’s a website, and the publication is just one part over this. So, we are going to make a digital publication, and it’s for all of our RMIT students, including alumni and other designers in public. So that’s probably our audience.
Ryley
What are you including in the publication or is the publication the graduate material?
Anqi
Yeah. Most of them are graduation work.
Hope
I think the main thing would be if it’s graduating work, it’s just an easy way for people to kind of go through it and see everything. What’s hard is with so many people graduating is you don’t want people to skip over people, but at the same time you want work to be easy to find, I think that’s going to be the real challenge. So, I think, doing some testing with people to see how they actually interact with the publication and just see if they kind of scroll past things really fast or if they stop engaging with things and figuring out what it is that people find interesting and trying to build on that. That’s a very vague answer but yes.
Ryley
I think my suggestion kind of builds on what Hope was saying about providing context for the reader, particularly for like communication design work is providing context about that work. So, not only just in terms of what you write, but also make sure there’s enough context around the work and the significance of the work, like why that person who made it things important because I think that often falls out of a rationale is why you want to make it in the first place. I think that’s particularly insightful advice. I’ve never made a publication like that, so I’m probably not the right person to ask for it, but it sounds exciting.
Thinking of physical publication or online publication?
Anqi
More basically online publication.
Hope
Okay, yeah, I was going to say if it was physical, definitely print testing, giving yourself a lot of time. Yeah, I think the suggestions that I have is, in terms of writing, it can be hard to think from the perspective of a reader and what the reader would find interesting. So always trying to, in the same way that as a designer you think about the audience for your work, and you know the end user or the community that you are kind of designing for. You’re trying to understand their perspective and put yourself in their shoes a little bit, it’s the same thing with writing and making sure that you're writing something or sharing information that someone can understand but also that it’s engaging and that someone wants to read. I think the particularly challenging thing with interviews, is you had the conversation and you were there so it’s easy to forget the bits of context people need to understand what you’re talking about. And that just goes for writing in general is just thinking about the context people need to be able to understand and engage with what you’re writing. And also respecting the reader’s time and energy as well, and kind of, making it easy, easy to read, I think that’s probably my advice.
Ryley
Can I ask you a question before I give a suggestion. How many are you doing more than one interview for the publication?
Anqi
You mean the Interviewer or interviewee?
Ryley
What’s going to be the publication actually I’m not sure.
Anqi
Because it’s a website, and the publication is just one part over this. So, we are going to make a digital publication, and it’s for all of our RMIT students, including alumni and other designers in public. So that’s probably our audience.
Ryley
What are you including in the publication or is the publication the graduate material?
Anqi
Yeah. Most of them are graduation work.
Hope
I think the main thing would be if it’s graduating work, it’s just an easy way for people to kind of go through it and see everything. What’s hard is with so many people graduating is you don’t want people to skip over people, but at the same time you want work to be easy to find, I think that’s going to be the real challenge. So, I think, doing some testing with people to see how they actually interact with the publication and just see if they kind of scroll past things really fast or if they stop engaging with things and figuring out what it is that people find interesting and trying to build on that. That’s a very vague answer but yes.
Ryley
I think my suggestion kind of builds on what Hope was saying about providing context for the reader, particularly for like communication design work is providing context about that work. So, not only just in terms of what you write, but also make sure there’s enough context around the work and the significance of the work, like why that person who made it things important because I think that often falls out of a rationale is why you want to make it in the first place. I think that’s particularly insightful advice. I’ve never made a publication like that, so I’m probably not the right person to ask for it, but it sounds exciting.
So, if we were going to make a physical publication for our exhibition. Do you have any advice on that?
Hope
Yeah, I think the hardest thing with physical publication is just, yeah, the budget that you have available and figuring out what’s possible within the budget, and also figuring out, you know, the quantity of what you want to print, because you don’t want to have too little, but also you don’t want to end up printing 500 copies of something and then you’ve just got way too many spare books lying around that you can’t get rid of. And definitely giving yourself more time than you think you need. I think that’s the most important thing because things always go wrong. You always need to fix things at the last minute.
Ryley
Standard sizes of paper make things easier. So, doing something in A4 or A5 rather than a fancy size. To make things more economical but also just less, so much less to worry about in terms of any cut down. And also, I don’t know how you print it, but there are printers at RMIT, that if you ask nice enough, the right person nicely enough, you can use for free. I know kind of as students you have to pay for them but not everybody has to pay for it, find the people who don’t have to pay for it.
Hope
I think the other thing I just had a thought there about sizes is if you’re not printing it yourself and you’re getting a printer to do it, don’t be afraid to over communicate with them about what you want. So, even though if you send them a file, you also might send them like a low res proof, with just exported as spreads that shows them how it’s supposed to be, because sometimes they might not be able to understand what you actually want from the file. so, over communicating and being super clear with the printers is always good. They won’t be annoyed by it. I’ve literally sometimes sent videos of like mockups I’ve made to printers to explain what I want.
Yeah, I think the hardest thing with physical publication is just, yeah, the budget that you have available and figuring out what’s possible within the budget, and also figuring out, you know, the quantity of what you want to print, because you don’t want to have too little, but also you don’t want to end up printing 500 copies of something and then you’ve just got way too many spare books lying around that you can’t get rid of. And definitely giving yourself more time than you think you need. I think that’s the most important thing because things always go wrong. You always need to fix things at the last minute.
Ryley
Standard sizes of paper make things easier. So, doing something in A4 or A5 rather than a fancy size. To make things more economical but also just less, so much less to worry about in terms of any cut down. And also, I don’t know how you print it, but there are printers at RMIT, that if you ask nice enough, the right person nicely enough, you can use for free. I know kind of as students you have to pay for them but not everybody has to pay for it, find the people who don’t have to pay for it.
Hope
I think the other thing I just had a thought there about sizes is if you’re not printing it yourself and you’re getting a printer to do it, don’t be afraid to over communicate with them about what you want. So, even though if you send them a file, you also might send them like a low res proof, with just exported as spreads that shows them how it’s supposed to be, because sometimes they might not be able to understand what you actually want from the file. so, over communicating and being super clear with the printers is always good. They won’t be annoyed by it. I’ve literally sometimes sent videos of like mockups I’ve made to printers to explain what I want.
About the designers
Ryley Lawson is a design researcher and organiser whose work is centred around how communities imagine futures together. He has co-organised exhibitions, panels, workshops, and publications including Making Space, Making Sense, Communities of Care, and Service Design Melbourne’s Design and Ethics.
Hope Lumsden-Barry is a designer whose practice is concerned with design-led publishing, exhibition-making and collaborative making. Hope designs books, exhibitions, brands, workshops, and websites. Alongside her personal practice, she also works at Paper Giant and has taught semesters in RMIT’s Master of Communication Design program.