mark <████████████████████ >
To: Josh Schwebel <privatejosh@gmail.com>
Cc: Farah Khan <█████████████████████ >, Alex Nawotka <████████████████████ >
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the meeting yesterday. Below you’ll find our meeting notes from March 28, 2023, along with the wireframe review and a recording of the meeting you can share with Lauren. As always, let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll be in touch soon to figure out our next meeting time.
All the best + more soon,
mark
Next steps
Visual design: start on inbox design
Dev: start building from wireframes
Alex to share Hito Steyerl references // Farah to share Ines Cox references
Josh to share meeting recording with Lauren to review art direction ideas
Agenda
Questions
Next steps
Questions
Categories
Thoughts?
Josh: The email categories… Love it! It’s so great! I like what is contained within the window of the computer. Organizationally, this makes a lot of sense.
Farah: If we stay true to the inbox format, a calendar format might be confusing. But when we move into the UI/design phase, I’d want to discuss it with Alex and Louis.
Farah: I did love the mapping ideas, but because the project is so big, this might work for me.
Josh: I think intuitively, the inbox idea might be the way to go. I think this is the way of supporting the narrative. It makes sense in terms of finding a structure for communicating the project through the emails. I love it.
Josh: Decide on categories later…
Alex: Agreed.
Josh: I think we should break it down between performance and publication.
Josh: Can there be subcategories?
Alex: We could, but it might get more tricky.
Alex: We will design so you have the option of having subcategories, maybe 1 level deep.
Josh: From a narrative point of view, it makes sense to have an ascending date.
Alex: We can do the ascending date by default.
About
Email panel or full page?
Josh: Maybe this is where we put links to the videos?
Alex: Do you want to embed or just links? Where are they hosted?
Josh: Right now, on Vimeo. There are 3. Each one is 3 hours long.
Alex: Then I might prefer a link with contextualization.
Josh: Canada Council logo. Forest City logo. Art Metropole.
Alex: Yes, we could link to the book as well.
Josh: Yes, in “About” it should be the whole project, not just the website.
Alex: I think there should be contact info for you as well.
Josh: Project credits (H9), Lauren…
Emails
Full page?
Individual links?
Josh: I like that you can scroll down through the whole thread. That’s perfect. I was worried about the constant back and forth to continue through a thread. So I’m loving that it can be vertically organized.
Discussion:
Alex: Is there anything you’re longing for that isn’t represented here?
Josh: No, I love this. I think it’s amazing. It’s everything that I want.
Josh: The one thing, maybe it’s my own unclarity… Because there’s my own email account and the Forest City email account… Can those both be incorporated into this?
Alex: Yes. The way it’s presenting, you’re not logging on as a specific user. The end user is like a ghost user who is observing.
Josh: That’s exactly right. They should have a voyeuristic feel. That makes a lot of sense that the user is just browning an inbox and their not implicated in a specific way.
Alex: Attachments… Is this the correct way to represent them?
Josh: Yes, this is exactly right. The aesthetics of the attachment, but I have no permission to reprint the content and I don’t really want to.
Josh: We should also consider that some of the emails coming are reminders from Google Calendars reminding me I have a meeting with H9. Or moments where I was working on shared Google Docs and I got a notification that someone was editing.
Alex: Yes, the way it will be exported, it will retain all the styling of the emails. And you’ll be able to redact as well.
Visual design discussion:
Farah: I don’t think we should try to replicate the Gmail inbox stylistically. It could look something like this, but visually a bit more personality.
Josh: I feel like my instinct is very insecure when it comes to aesthetics. So I gravitate to what looks minimal, but I’m very messy and not good at doing minimal things. Three years ago, I said I wanted it to look like minimal art. But now I want it to look a bit sexy, but not busy.
Farah: So maybe we can think about the art direction of the book. While Alex and Max start building, Louis and I can start thinking about the overall art direction.
Josh: I think that makes sense. Doesn’t need to be loud or splashy. But I also don’t want it to be insecure.
Farah: We can make it look very confident.
Farah: how do you want to proceed? Louis and I could send you a bunch of research. Are there things you are gravitating towards?
Josh: No.
Farah: Ok, we can do research, share it with you, and you can pick something from that.
Josh: I’m open to you pushing me.
Josh: I think Louis is very good with colour. I’m generally afraid of colour, because it doesn’t point towards conceptual art, which is generally monotone and mapping real conditions. Very indexical, very referential. And that’s why I feel insecure about using colour. I don’t want to make aesthetic decisions, but then I don’t end up liking what I end up producing as a strained product.
Farah: I think you’re reflecting something general… A sense that I have too. I love that hyper minimal, Swiss-style stuff. But there’s a point where you start looking at the projects, and all the projects that all start looking the same. Even parts of our own portfolio.
Josh: All of this kind of genre looks the same.
Josh: All the gmail stuff should still be there.
Alex: We can contain it and make a nice/distinct container for it, that feels as interesting as the work is.
Josh: We could do something different with the black redaction bars
Alex: Monkey emojis!
Josh: I want it to look elevated, precise, perfect… but I also don’t want it to look too controlled.
Josh: There’s all these screen grabs of application confirmations.
Josh: (on Douglas Coupland): I hate it. It’s too pop culture. I don’t want my book to look like this. I want something less cutesy and more bureaucratic. Less glitch art…
Farah: So what about the work I just showed you (WWWWW)?
Josh: There’s a thing about glitch art that’s a bit too “party drug.” I’m thinking of the pain of sitting on the phone with customer service for the rest of your life. Maybe playing with the textbook idea. I don’t want people to suffer through the design, but I also don’t want it to be fun.
Alex shared a book/publication with redaction in it (Radical Technologies) that felt fitting.
Farah shared an Ines Cox reference
Josh: This text is really nice. I love that (floaty overlay)
Farah: she creates these digital spaces that feel very analog.
Josh: This is perfect. It looks like a gallery catalogue. This is really close to what I’m thinking. Even that blueprint scan. It looks like it’s been photocopied. This is right. This is perfect.
Josh: The writing is not finished yet. And we’ll be having more essays.