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Beautiful books, and websites from Iraq

Sometimes, when I enter into a bookstore, a Barnes & Noble, a Borders, or some independent bookstore tucked away in an out-the-way historical part of a city (the shelves jammed, the floors at odd angles, cats wandering around), I stop and take a moment to breathe. Because I know I will spend the next two hours walking the aisles, touching the books, examining the covers, simply reveling in the fact that here, in this bookstore, is a wondrous and diverse range of books, waiting to be read; all have typography as their unifying language; all are examples of contemporary graphic design in tactile, 3-D, ready-to-cart-home form. My heart beats faster as I move through the bookstore. I read a little, but not a lot. I simply touch a lot of bookcovers. It's the cover and the overall package that interests me. If it gets my attention, I delve deeper. There's a quiet sort of reverence that settles on me even as I get excited. Don't try to get my attention for a while. Just let me wander.

Compare this to websites, to pixel-based, flat, untouchable, RGB websites, and their amazing interactivity and reach. Websites are immediate, ephemeral. Certain websites act as enormous, ever-evolving books, in a sense, changing moment to moment. Blogs have many authors creating content on-the-fly. You can practically hear their digital pages being ripped out and replaced minute-by-minute. There are websites that are continually in flux and address issues of social and political significance — Picture projects and their web-documentary-sites on the U.S. prison system, for example. A website that stays the same, that rests on its laurels, that does not shift and intrigue, is dead.

My personal site, daverichardsondesign.com, I update now and then, complete with typos that are corrected when I notice them later or when I get emails. Pictures and comments and ideas are posted, and sometimes are taken down the next day, in the editing process. The process is open, accessible. If I were to be overly concerned with the editing process, nothing would be posted.

A book is static, is done, is an artifact that you can hold in your hands and take to the beach or the woods or the couch, or that you can sell at a garage sale. You can and should caress it, check its skin, its feel. A website can, at its best, be an ever-evolving, organic, perhaps more personal and more democratic form of communication than any other form we have at our fingertips presently. Everyone can be a publisher.

I think of the websites that are detailing the day-to-day effects of the Iraq war, from the civilians' point of view. Baghdad Burning, for instance. An excerpt from the blog: "Now 9/11 is getting old. Now, 100,000+ Iraqi lives and 1700+ American lives later, it’s becoming difficult to summon up the same sort of sympathy as before. How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers somehow justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with the attack was Iraqi?"

Another longer post, from July 2005: "The cousin, his wife S. and their two daughters have been houseguests these last three days. They drove up to the house a couple of days ago with several bags of laundry. “There hasn’t been water in our area for three days…” The cousin's wife huffed as she dragged along a black plastic bag of dirty clothes. “The water came late last night and disappeared three hours later… what about you?” Our water had not been cut off completely, but it came and went during the day.

Water has been a big problem in many areas all over Baghdad. Houses without electric water pumps don’t always have access to water. Today it was the same situation in most of the areas. They say the water came for a couple of hours and then disappeared again. We’re filling up plastic containers and pots just to be on the safe side. It is not a good idea to be caught without water in the June heat in Iraq.

“I need to bathe the children and wash all these clothes,” S. called to me as the older of the little girls and I hauled out their overnight bag. “And the sheets — you know nothing has been washed since last weeks ajaja…” We call a dust storm an “ajaja” in Iraq. I don’t think there’s a proper translation for that word. Last week, a few large ajajas kept Baghdad in a sort of pale yellow haze. What happens when an ajaja settles on the city is that within a couple of hours, the air becomes heavy and thick with beige powdery sand. Visibility decreases during these dust storms and it often becomes difficult to drive or see out the window."

I do not get this perspective from the local, conservative newspaper. To be able to immediately access this perspective on the web, in the comfort of my own home, thousands of miles away— I think Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would have been excited. Discussion of real issues through individual, published voices. A vast and unending conversation.

We can all be editors and publishers now. Dave Eggers is a wonderful example of the author/designer/publisher, with his McSweeney's books and website. The walls have come down. Let your inclinations, your loves, your thoughts and uncertainties, show.

In summary, the book and the website have their own allure, their own shine and function and reach, their own presence. It would be folly for a serious graphic designer or design educator to ignore either as a vehicle of communication. —7.05



Fire

The skies have been smoke-filled from the fires burning all around us. The Blue Springs fire, the Plateau fire, the Westside Complex fire . . . thunderstorms come through, lightning sears the sky, lights the dry grass, and the fires spread with the winds. The town 20 miles south of us, New Harmony, had to be evacuated a few days ago. By day we watch the airplanes flying in and out of Cedar City, refueling and then dumping their fire-retardant red slurry on the fires. Officials say this might be one of the worst fire seasons in many years. For an update on the fires, jump to maps of active burns. —6.05


Store door in Panguitch, Utah, on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, most shops closed; 2005