Outside the Box • A Handwritten Review

BY BRETT RAWSON

I have my preferences and loyalties, but when it comes to certain moods or weather, the sirens of style can call like the crow's caw. Most often, this happens when I am rushing to a dinner party and have been tasked with "bring wine," a beverage I only know in passing. Pacing up and down the aisle in a panic, I curse my small wine-brain, and am left with no other option than to choose the bottle that speaks to me the most: meaning, the one with the best label, or name, or both for the win.

Though it plays an important role in my purchasing decisions, it is not something I had thought about at calm length. But some weeks back, I came across an object that contains enough energy for the imagination to implode: Outside the Box: Hand-Drawn Packaging from Around the World by New York-based designer, writer, and educator Gail Anderson. And for some unknown amount of time, I flipped through continents of creatives, as Anderson hand-picked forty individuals who sit in the front-seats of this growing industry of home-grown, artistic designs.

While this collection showcases a diverse portfolio of people, typography, and expressions, it simultaneously illuminates Anderson's own vast depth and eye for creative representation, as she weaves together interviews, images, brand origins, and routines of forty of our most prolific hand-artists today. Outside the Box peels back the label, uncovering what has gone into some of the most well-known brands. I'm not often one for book summaries, but this one leaves the door ajar:

In an age of slick, computer-generated type and Photoshopped perfection, hand-drawn packing is enjoying a global resurgence. As shorthand for something more authentic, homegrown, handmade, or crafted, hand-drawn packaging is found on everything from supermarket eggs to Chipotle drink cups. In this exhaustive and lavishly illustrated survey, organized by four types—DIY, art, craft, and artisanal—Gail Anderson pulls back the curtain on the working processes and inspirations of forty letterers, illustrators, and designers from all around the world through insightful interviews, process sketches, and her infectious love of the medium.

And since this site and platform is dedicated to process, let's promote the people responsible for publishing the beautiful pages: Princeton Architectural Press, who have eyes, hands, and hearts on this visual culture of ours. So, just what is inside Outside the Box? Below is a splash of the beauty in between these covers (click on the images to see them in full and then hover over the full-sized images to get a description of what they're about):

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The next time you're scanning the aisle, either in eagerness or ease, take a look at the difference between those items handwritten and otherwise. You'll see an air of energy around the handwritten and hand-drawn designs. Sure, it's the inside that you're going for, but don't forget to enjoy the outside. 

Purchase Outside the Box here

It's So Un-Special, It's Special • A Conversation with the Bill Keaggy on Artfulness, Sloppiness, and Interestingness

St. Louis-based Bill Keaggy is king of “generating content.” A wildly prolific artist and collector, he was an erstwhile magazine designer and photo editor at the St. Louis Dispatch before launching his self-proclaimed purposeless website of “visual indiscretions,” the eponymous www.keaggy.com.

His goal is to make things interesting by helping people appreciate what’s right in front of them—which he more than accomplished with projects such as Milk Eggs Vodka, a tome of anonymous and abandoned grocery lists he first uploaded to his site as a simple photo collection entitled “Grocery Lists,” before piquing a publisher’s interest and organizing them into snarky categories such as “Eating Wrong,” or “Bad Spellrs.”

By compiling such miscellaneous marginalia, Keaggy imbues the ephemeral both with an otherwise lost fixity, and a sort of imaginative narrative history. As he put it, “I considered my work to be ‘art’ in the lowercase form of the term. It’s so un-special, it’s special.” These special un-special projects have been featured in places like the New York Times, The L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, HOW Magazine, and even Jimmy Kimmel Live. Should you want a more concise and chronologically organized autobiography, his documentary impulse has produced a timeline of his entire life, including everything from his first sip of PBR in 1972 to his NY Times Magazine interview in 2004, here: http://keaggy.com/about-me/.

SARAH MADGES: Have you always been a collector, of marginalia or otherwise?

BILL KEAGGY: I think so. Not in a hoarder kind of way, but yes, I think I’ve always had an interest in collections of things. When I was 10 or so I had a pretty big key chain collection, although now I’m not sure why, but I soon realized that it was far more interesting to collect things that were never meant to be collected. Things that other people had lost interest in or saw as useless. 

MADGES: This project must have required incredible patience and dedication. At any point did you consider quitting? What convinced you to keep going, and to eventually get the collection published in a book?

KEAGGY: The grocery list collection started small and stayed small for a very long time. But I never approached it in a “Must. Add. Lists. Every. Day!” kind of way. I’m not naturally a patient person, but in this case I just let it grow naturally, adding a list every few weeks or so. Then around 2000 I put it online, and back then being a novelty online actually was novel, so it got linked around a lot and people started to ask how they could contribute. Since then, the collection has been fueled 99% by friends and strangers sending me lists. It sort of has a life of its own now and I update the site a few times a year at most. So, no, I never considered quitting because it was difficult. The collection has grown big in the same way people grow old — suddenly you’re not young anymore and you look back and wonder how the hell that happened.

I’d thought about how I might turn it into a book but never acted on it. The truth is that I had the luxury of the publisher contacting me to see if I wanted to make a book. Of course I did. It was a good way to breathe new life into the project, to think about the collection in a different way and give it depth, and help other people think about the lists in different ways.

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MADGES: In an increasingly tech- and text-based world, handwriting has lost some of its former relevance and ubiquity — cursive is no longer even required in U.S. school curricula, and thousands of people have never written or received a letter in their entire life. How important is the handwritten aspect of these grocery lists to you? Do you still write by hand?

KEAGGY: The handwritten lists usually are the best — they have more character, personality, quirks, artfulness, sloppiness, and interestingness to them. Not just because of the handwriting but also because of the writing material — you can’t run weird, repurposed scraps of paper or cardboard or magazine through a printer but you can tear a piece off of something and write on it. And I’m a designer so I have this innate interest in letterforms and layout and organization, and everyone brings their own approach to these things in handwritten lists.

That said, I obviously get more and more typed lists now, but fewer lists overall because so many people do keep their lists on their phones. I do, because like everyone else I always have my phone with me. I only occasionally write a grocery list out by hand but the truth is I don’t feel too nostalgic over this change. I still do a lot of writing, sketching, and designing on paper, so it’s still part of my daily life.

MADGES: Many people, editorial reviewers and regular folks (ie, Amazon.com customers) alike, have commented on Milk Egg Vodka's humor, which comes in part from the original content of the various grocery lists collected, but mostly from your insightful and playfully snarky commentary. There's also the obvious fact that the Library of Congress designated it as a "Humor" book. When you started collecting these lists, were you mostly compelled by the comic opportunities they provided? Or was it more about the voyeuristic element of finding discarded personal notes, the various examples of penmanship and spelling, their value as art objects, something you couldn't quite name? A more concise question: was humor the intended goal, or a natural and happy accident?

KEAGGY: Yes, the funny lists were what made the collection really interesting to me, and I think to most people. Aside from the fact that they’re an anonymous, unguarded peek into other people’s lives, and, truthfully, are mostly normal and boring, it was when you’d find that needle in the haystack — that weird, WTF list with odd combinations of items or really poor spelling or funny notes. It was those moments that made the project worthwhile and I realized early on that I should highlight them for people, so I made Top 10 lists, which became the backbone of the book. Finding funny lists wasn’t the original goal — I just thought it was interesting to pick up something someone else had thrown away — but the humor aspect was a funny bonus that only became apparent after sticking at it for a while. I don’t know which of the lists was the very first one I found, but I do know it wasn’t funny. It was typical.

The funny ones are few and far between, but do make it all worthwhile are are probably the main reason people find the collection weird and interesting.

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MADGES: Separate, but related question: how do you characterize your work? What are you hoping people will notice or take away from it?

KEAGGY: I don’t think I have a good answer to this question. I very purposely don’t tell people how to feel or what they should get out of looking at my various projects. I might explain how *I* feel about them, or why I did something, but I just put things out there and hope that they take *anything* away from it. I want their reactions to be legitimate and pure, whether it’s “Wow, I never thought about waste that way” or “This guy is an idiot." Telling people how to feel about these projects and art in general is like saying, “Get it? It’s funny because…” at the end of a joke. In the past I’ve characterized my work as being about “the life behind the things we leave behind,” and I think that’s enough for people to go on.

MADGES: After MEV, you published a similarly-minded book in 2008 called 50 Sad Chairs, which critiqued and poked fun at consumer culture while artfully cataloguing a bunch of forlorn furniture. What have you been up to since then? What projects are driving you right now, and how have your previous works prepared you for or led you to them?

KEAGGY: After “50 SAD CHAIRS” I did a lot of other “collecting with photography” projects. I’d stumble on a theme and make dozens or hundreds or thousands of photos that catalogued a particular idea. Trees growing out of old abandoned buildings. Basketball hoops in alleys. Rust stains. Curse words. Lots of decay porn, which has become a genre unto itself. Recently in my photo collections I’ve been leaning more toward seeing everyday things in other everyday things. In February I challenged myself to find the shapes of all 50 U.S. states in the world around me and in June I collected the letters of the alphabet from dead worms on the sidewalk. People really liked the states project and were really grossed out by the worms. But what I do more and more of now is actually *make* things from other things—working with found and repurposed objects instead of simply collecting them. After so many years of working digitally I really felt the need to go analog. But the idea of appreciating—or at least considering—and/or re-using “junk” and little, broken, forgotten, ugly, ignored things is what ties most of my projects together.

You Can Stop Cursing at Cursive Writing Now • A Handwritten Review

HANDLED BY HANDWRITTEN

Meet Linda Shrewsbury and Prisca LeCroy, the mother-daughter team who has changed the world of cursive writing. Literally and figuratively, they have reshaped the way children, and adults, learn cursive writing: not in alphabetical order, but by shape. And in less than one week, their second campaign comes to a close. Their first, a Kickstarter last year, was successfully funded and raised $33,000.

This helped bring CursiveLogic, the workbook you see below, into existence, and now, Shrewsbury and LeCroy are set on taking it into the classroom with their new campaign, Cursive2Class. 

What exactly is CursiveLogic's method? It reorders the alphabet into four shape-groups (oval, loop, swing, and mound), color-codes them with visual and audio cues, and fits into a single workbook that has — prepare yourself for this — regular paper and dry erase worksheets. Heaven, we know. Whereas old models required students to sit in place and etch the alphabet in order and silence onto recycled and photocopied sheets of paper, this four-lesson workbook takes students through each similarly-shaped group of letters, while at the same time teaching how to write full-length words. This model, workbook, and business is the absolute example of how, coupled with new technologies, we are finding more effective ways of teaching children the fundamental skills and knowledge necessary for cognitive development.

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This is the answer the core curriculum has been waiting for, not to mention Town Hall Meetings and online forums. Cursive writing has been disappearing from the classrooms, but that is because the way it was being taught had not changed with the ways in which students are learning, and expected to learn, in the twenty-first century. We are preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet because we are still inventing them. But the thing most people don't see is that when cursive handwriting goes, a lot of other things we cannot see or feel vanish with it as well, including reading comprehension, articulation, writing and sensory motor skills. 

The old model wasn't working. We live in a technological world, and one that is constantly changing, which means we have to change with it. And CursiveLogic is not just keeping up, but it is ahead of the curve: they have side-stepped the political impasse and built their own business, a patent-pending approach, in fact, and instead of arguing back and forth with adults, they were sitting down with students and watching them work. Ever since their model surfaced, they have been gaining support from handwriting experts, educators, politicians, psychologists, and scientists around the country. 

You might be thinking, this looks great, but not for me. We understand not everyone will want to relearn cursive writing, though we actually encourage you to do so (we have bought their workbooks and are going through it ourselves), but there is still something you can do: spread the word, sponsor a workbook, and help CursiveLogic make its way into the classroom. Join us and participate in their Indiegogo Campaign. We selected the "Get One and Give One" option, which we recommend, but if you want to Give Two, then do your thing.

The next time you hear someone up in arms about cursive writing, you can pat them on the shoulder, hold the cursive book you bring with you everywhere just in case you feel the urge to loop or swirl, and say, "You can stop cursing at cursive writing now." 

Follow the links below to help support the remaining days of their campaign (Cursive2Class) and help a kid. Spread the love by liking them on Facebook, and check out their story in their words.

Cursive2Class Campaign.

Facebook | CursiveLogic | Cursive2Class

We Might be the Last Generation of Letter Writers • A Conversation with Sociologist Michelle Janning

Sociologist and Professor, Michelle Janning

I never really know why I do it, but there I will be on various afternoons throughout the year, sitting on the wooden floor in front of my closet, peeling tape off a slightly battered box. On the top flap of this box is two words in uppercase letters and permanent pen: DEEP STORAGE. 

I've come across a lot of people who have the same — a box or ten of memories sitting on closet shelves — and people who do the same: thumb through this deep storage from time to time. The effects are not always the same, as the very reason for the impulse to sift through the past can vary, but there can often be a combination of emotions —nostalgia mixed with regret, or warmth mixed with emptiness. Albeit peripherally, I think it might have something to do with what Adam Phillips explores in Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, where there can be a strong sense of constant reflection: wondering what was, what could have been, and what could be. But I also think quickly to Joan Didion's "On Keeping a Notebook," which speaks to the importance of recording life and keeping a close proximity to the past. 

One item that many seem to hold onto are letters of past love. But why do we keep a hold of these romantic reminders, especially of ones long gone? We found an inkling of an answer in an article recently, "Why Love Letters Matter, Even After You Break Up." It features words by sociologist Michelle Janning, who happens to be a professor at the college I attended, Whitman College. A lot of her research has looked at concepts of "betweenness," and romantic correspondence surely qualifies as that. But she has also looked at another intersection: the differences between digital vs. handwritten romantic correspondence. When asked why we hold onto these records of our romantic past, Janning replies: "They represent who we were, which is part of who we are. They become our relationship counselors, reminding us of what to avoid in future relationships and what to rekindle."

We recently spoke with Janning about her research and work, but also about her own experience and relationship to her deep storages and handwriting. 

BRETT RAWSON: What led you to studying the divide between handwritten vs. digital correspondence in romantic relationships?

MICHELLE JANNING: I was cleaning out a closet and found the box of letters I'd stored from high school and college. After reading through them I talked with my husband, and we (college grads in the mid-90s just after email started and just before the internet) figured we might be the last generation of letter writers. Then lunch with friends of different generations (one who had a folder in her phone labeled "texts from cute boys") made me wonder further.  Full story in the publication attached. 

RAWSON: What did you find from your study that you didn't expect? Did anything surprise you, did new patterns emerge, did you find any contradictions between what people say and what they do? If you were to extend this research, what would be next?

JANNING: The most surprising thing I found was that, while women are more likely to save letters and mementos from relationships than men (and to save more of them), men tend to look at or "visit" their saved love letters more frequently than women. And men tend to store them in more accessible places (as opposed to closets, under the bed, or in storage).

Some of this may be because women tend to be tasked with household organization more, and spend more time than men on creating a storage location that is decorated or made special in some way. Right now I'm trying to figure out if it'd be worth studying the data to look at generational difference. The hard task here is that technologies change so fast that I'm not sure I can capture both age differences and technological change simultaneously (because change in one can falsely suggest change in the other).

My big project now is writing a book that uncovers how the objects and spaces in our homes tell us something about family relationships. Love letter storage will be part of the chapter on dating, sex, and paths to family formation. 

RAWSON: Between-ness seems central to your focus. Aside from technology, what else comes in between us and handwriting?

JANNING: Good question. For me, between-ness is about internal conversation when I find myself unable to agree with polarized claims. Relating this to handwriting means that I am neither a huge fan nor critic of handwriting. I can see the importance of keeping it in order to foster all the good things that can stem from it (like the aesthetic, the handcrafted, the thoughtfulness, the non-reliance on non-human technologies).

But I also shy away from romanticizing anything that hearkens back to a fictitious past when our present (privileged) perception is that it was somehow better then than now. This is true when I think of gender roles, intergenerational relations, religion, or even medicine.

RAWSON: What is your own experience with handwriting?

JANNING: My dad had a brain tumor after college but before I was born that rendered him physically disabled such that he lost hearing in one ear, had partial paralysis in his face, and had to switch hands for writing. He had grown up ambidextrous. I have vivid memories of watching him sign his name with the most bizarre pen strokes, which took an inordinately long time, but which never seemed to make me feel impatient.

This matters because I am an impatient person. I also have looked at his musical compositions from college (he was a music major), which were all handwritten. Since the pre-tumor writing was different from what I saw him do, I always thought about his life as having two segments. Only now do I think that maybe the visual representation of his handwriting may have had something to do with that perception. Add to this the fact that my mother has handwriting that is like a flawless art piece, and no wonder I'm intrigued. 

I learned calligraphy as a 10-year-old, and taught my son to do it when he was younger. I love examining how the aesthetic world can tell us something about human relations. I have always spent time shopping for interesting pens, inks, and papers, especially when we'd stay with cousins in Germany as a child. In high school and college, I would pride myself on the clever use of colored ink to help with anything from chemical compounds to calculus formulas, and from maps to poems. I recently was asked to write a book review for an academic journal, and I decided to hand-write both the notes and initial draft. I did this because I bought a new fountain pen in Germany this summer. The final draft (which was then crafted on the computer) went more quickly than anything I've ever written, and it was accepted without a single revision (complete with both a formal and informal note from the editors telling me how amazing it was).

RAWSON: Are you concerned that handwriting / cursive lessons are being eclipsed by keyboard proficiency lessons in the U.S. school system?

JANNING: Yes and no. I see the use of keyboarding as necessary for the work that my students do in college, and that it is most certainly an efficient way for me to do my own writing. (Again, I'm impatient). But because I find myself grateful that my son was on the cusp of cursive instruction (he received some in Denmark when we lived there, he did a little in 3rd grade just before the school moved to a greater focus on Chromebook instruction), I must think it's a good thing.

My bigger concern with the Chromebooks has more to do with the increase in standardized testing, which I presume may be exacerbated by virtue of the fact that students are getting quicker at keyboarding. This makes testing more efficient. What I liked about my son's teachers last year was that, especially in writing (Hooray for Mrs. Hartford!), the kids would draft things by hand, learn to navigate and edit on a computer, and be allowed lots of time for crafting stories. So, as far as the creative writing process goes, I think his teacher struck a good balance.

Other than the aesthetic coolness of nice handwriting, I am concerned that students will not be able to READ handwriting, which limits our ability to learn things from historical texts.

RAWSON: When you think of your own handwritten correspondences, what comes to mind?  

JANNING: How little I do this. I am not a letter writer. I think of little notes to my son, or drafting my writing by hand. That's funny I suppose.

RAWSON: Phenomenologists have argued that the self falls away when we are engaged in an intense activity, usually one that collapses the sense of the mind-body split by activating both elements. Do you think the writing implement of choice could act as a bodily extension, and that writing by hand helps combine subject and object in ways that promote intimacy with a text, whereas typing into a word document promotes separateness of subject and object?

JANNING: I am not sure, because I have felt precisely this way while crafting my writing on a computer screen. For my aging body, the times when I am most likely to feel the mind-body split is when I am in pain. For typing, it's in my shoulder and my eyes. For handwriting, it's in my wrist.  

Paul Laudiero's Shit Rough Drafts • A Handwritten Review

BY HANDWRITTEN

We recently came across Shit Rough Drafts by comedian Paul Laudiero. After reading through it in one sitting, we spent the next few days losing our marbles. Laudiero's humor is magnetic, often departing as quickly as it arrived, leaving us to enjoy his imaginary musings on the greatest works, shows, and plays of our times.

Chances are, you have experienced several of the 135 books, movies, and TV shows that appear within Shit Rough Drafts. While that'll enhance the experience, it doesn't exclude entertainment. You don't need to have read Eat, Pray, Love to deeply enjoy Laudiero's title-twists.

Shit Rough Drafts exposes process, and in the process, pokes fun at finished products. How do these "must-reads" make their way into the world, and did they ever take a different shape? Are those who we hoist high out of reach just as messy, confused, and lost as we are?

We spoke with Laudiero one early morning while he was strolling alongside Central Park, coffee cup in hand. It was eight in the morning. He was alert and awake, while we were on a porch shielding our eyes from the early morning sun. We told him about Handwritten, and how we wanted to keep the humor in handwriting. He said that was good, because a site like ours would bore people to death. We totally agreed.

Shit Rough Drafts is a new wave of coffee table books. In that, it isn't idle. The book is impossible to not pick up, and difficult to put down. It's not easy then to pick our favorites, but since we had to, here are three that kept us laughing well into a deep sleep:

Do yourself a favor and enjoy this book right now.

A Kaleidoscopic Force of Creative Decoration • Andrea Rehani

WORDS FOR WALLPAPER is a kaleidoscopic force of creative decoration by Chicago-based poet and creative, Andrea Rehani. It combines the beauty and brevity of poetic expression with an artistic and aesthetic simplicity that is at once reminiscent of the modern and the antique.

Beginning by hand, Rehani creates a poem based upon a particular color or theme and allows them to take horizontal and vertical shapes as she frames them for the wall, where they will eventually live. There is an odd distance of intimacy to Rehani's work. The poems themselves contain a layer that can feel like a memory, but zooming out, the object itself represents something of the "now here," not "nowhere;" in that, they carry with them the sense of place that surrounds them.

To see the exhibit, click here. 

I Don’t Keep a Journal the Way Most Journal Artists Do • A Conversation with Brian Singer of 1000 Journals Projects

Brian Singer is a San Francisco-based fine artist whose sobriquet “Someguy” downplays the enormously unique body of work he has produced in the last decade or so. I first discovered his work at age 15, when I stumbled across the 1000 Journals Project book in my sister’s bedroom.

An ongoing collaborative experiment, The 1000 Journals Project attempts to track 1000 originally empty journals through their travels across the globe, accumulating stories, sketches, and photographs as they pass between friends’ and strangers’ hands. In addition to larger scale projects such as this, he creates visual art pieces that explore the layers of signification of the printed word, crossing out and redacting text in a process of mixed media décollage.

SARAH MADGES: The extensive, anonymous shared artifact network you created with The 1000 Journals Project speaks volumes about individuals' desires to be creative, without fear of criticism. Did you expect to find so many untapped talents waiting to give expression to their thoughts? Did you initially conceive of this project as a way to make collaborative art or did it just kind of happen?

BRIAN "SOMEGUY" SINGER: I think everyone is creative, but society tends to have a narrow definition of the word. Some people are creative when they cook, or garden, others make art. In the book Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie talks about creativity—I’m paraphrasing here—he says that if you ask a room full of kindergarteners how many of them are artists, they’ll all raise their hands. Ask the same question of a bunch of 6th graders, and a few will raise their hands. Ask high school students, and you’ll be lucky to get a couple to raise their hands. So, what happens to us growing up? We begin to fear criticism and judgment of society. 

When the project was conceived, it was based on what people write on bathroom walls. Not quite collaborative art, but more like public conversations. That said, I love the works of Dan Eldon, and sort of imagined what would happened if people just layered and layered their contributions until you got a density similar to his journals. 

MADGES: In an increasingly tech- and text-based world, handwriting has lost some of its former relevance and ubiquity—cursive is no longer even required in U.S. school curricula and thousands of people have never written or received a letter in their entire life. How important is the handwritten aspect of these journal entries to you? How important is the written word to you as an artist?

SOMEGUY: The hand-crafted element is crucial to the journals. It’s almost like a signature, or hint of a person’s personality, beyond the words written. As an artist, for whatever reason, it has a little less meaning to me. Strange, now that I think about it. Perhaps because it’s so accessible and anyone can do it, it feels less precious or unique. Or maybe because I don’t incorporate handwriting into my art work — I’ve never really liked the look of my own handwriting. It’s more like chicken-scratch, which I blame my dad for.

MADGES: Do you keep a journal?

SOMEGUY: No. Yes. Sort of. I don’t keep a journal the way most journal artists do. When I was younger, I kept a journal which was more like a diary of sorts. Now, I have sketchbooks, which I use mostly for notes and ideas. Not really for freeform writing, or artwork, just lists and notes and sketches. 

MADGES: As far as I can tell, the 1000 Journals Project was last on exhibition in Scottsdale in 2013. Where is it now? What are your plans for the project? Do you consider yourself its curator anymore?

SOMEGUY: There aren’t any exhibition plans for 1000J right now. A couple years back, I approached a few venues, and while there’s some interest, nothing panned out. As for plans, again, I don’t have any current plans. This is mostly due to time constraints, it takes a lot of energy to keep things going. I do consider myself the curator of the project, but am mostly playing a waiting game.. waiting for journals that have been out in the world for almost 15 years to be rediscovered and sent home. I imagine most are sitting on bookshelves, forgotten over the years.

MADGES: What do you think is the relationship between visual arts and creative writing? Do you think of yourself as a poet or writer when you create your cross-out and printed word pieces? 

SOMEGUY: That’s a great question, because I haven’t given it much thought. I tend to gravitate towards certain types of works. These can be strictly visual in nature, or strictly written. I think the ability to combine the two opens up the best of both worlds when done well. They can live in harmony, or in contrast, and add value to each other, or amplify the artist’s intent. When I create my redacted works, I mostly consider myself an editor. I’m stripping away information and creating new meaning. I’d hesitate to call myself a poet or writer, which might be an insult to poets and writers, but there are some similarities in our goals to shape language and message.

MADGES: What have you been working on lately?

SOMEGUY: Lately, I’ve been working on building bodies of work around themes. So not really participatory, or journal based projects. One recent explorations was around visualizing number patterns (connect the dots) in unexpected ways. And the current exploration (no photos online yet), are process based works where I put a shape on every page of a book (imagine a circle or letter), and then cut the book up and reassemble the shape using the edges of the paper. 

No Other Place Publishes Process • The Origins of Handwritten

In early Spring of 2015, Sarah Madges set out on a project surrounding the Handwritten word and recalled Brett mentioning a project he had recently begun. She reached out to ask if the project was still alive. It was, barely. The exchange served to reignite the project and has since turned into this site, which Sarah is also to thank for, as she since came on board as a central curator for the project. Below is their initial exchange about the idea for the site you are seeing today, which is constantly evolving. 

SARAH MADGES: What inspired you to develop a publication/project surrounding the handwritten word? What is your own experience with handwriting?

BRETT RAWSON: I knew I wanted to start something last winter. I took a course at The New School that had us look at digital storytelling, and I found great calm mixed with wild energy in this embrace of and attitude toward technology - how can we use technology to promote our passions, digital or otherwise? On a morning in February, I was on the L train brainstorming for a separate project when the word Handwritten appeared from somewhere. I had my notebook in hand so I scribbled it down. I happened to be heading toward a workshop put on by PEN, so I wonder if that had something to do with the whole thought. At any rate, the word opened up the idea itself: a home for the handwritten word online. 

There is no place that publishes things other than finished products. I wanted to promote process. There's a bunch of theories and thoughts about handwriting, penmanship, and personalities. I do think about them, and I care about them, but I am not specifically concerned about them. I don't really care much about their outcomes or conclusions. For example, I find it interesting what people think my handwriting says about me, but I care more about saying things with and through my handwriting. What comes of it in the end is not really something I can consider while I am doing it. 

The idea is pretty simple—for people to express themselves with pen and paper, and be published for it. It's also to be a preserve of sorts—for letters written by those who have passed, for example. I am always writing by hand. I don't always write my stories by hand, though most things usually begin on paper—in a journal, on a napkin, or a legal pad. I do, however, write a lot of letters. It's how I ease myself into writing for the day. I can't jump into writing on the computer without starting by hand. I have to start somewhere free. In this sense, it's like stretching, doing yoga, starting out slow, or warming up. 

MADGES: What is the project's mission statement? 

RAWSON: A place in space for pen and paper. But I have been thinking about changing it to something a mentor of mine once said: writing is a physical activity. 

MADGES: Are you concerned that handwriting / cursive lessons are being eclipsed by keyboard proficiency lessons in U.S. elementary schools?

RAWSON: I'm not so sure I am that worried about cursive. But that's probably because mine is horrific. In fact, my regular handwriting sort of looks cursive. Or maybe it looks like it is cursing. It's hard to tell. Someone once said my handwriting looks like a string of wasted wingding characters, which is offensive, but true. But handwriting altogether, what a horrific waste of natural talent. The hand is how we gain access to our inner self. I really don't think the computer can access that wild, raw energy inside each of us. When using a computer, I get an external feeling (usually in the form of mild swells of panic), whereas when I write by hand, the noise from everywhere really quiets down, and I can finally hear my own voice.

The people making these policies, or mistakes, probably don't write by hand much. I imagine they see it as a waste of time, or something of the past, that we should get with the times and technology. This measurement feels imprecise. And it isn't a matter of sentimentality. It also isn't about one or the other. I wonder when people will wake up and coexist - to stop living in some world of ones. I write on the computer all the time. I have four twitter accounts, a Facebook profile, page, and group, five Instagram accounts, one tumblr, and three websites. You know? It's not like I don't get the beauty and power in the computer, let alone its efficiency, insanity, and amusement. I am a user, and I love using it. But what a fucking mistake to not teach kids how to write by hand. So I guess I am concerned.

MADGES: Do you notice a difference in the kinds of things you write when you use pen/pencil as opposed to a computer / word processor? How do you think the writing tool affects content/style/etc? How do you think it affects the editing process?

RAWSON: Absolutely. The medium affects everything. The effect is also bilateral. The reader adjusts his or her expectations based on the medium. A letter is sort of like dining out—there is an experience to it. An email is more like take-out, delivery, or TV dinner - it is often more quick, requires less from me, and can be done while doing something else. 

That being said, I don't see it as a matter of good or bad, better or worse. It is simply different. Writing by word processor is more about a product or outcome—a finished something—and so pieces composed there are usually toward that end. But with handwriting, it is more so a work of progress, or process. It is, inherently, more private and intimate. Computers are meant to connect, gather, and scatter. And the screen in between becomes a kind of reflection and projection, which can be a disorienting feeling that registers at a deeper level. Handwriting is about process on two levels -- one, it is about the process, but two, it is a way to process things. Not necessarily produce a product. 

MADGES: Phenomenologists have argued that the self falls away when we are engaged in an intense activity, usually one that collapses the sense of the mind-body split by activating both elements. Do you think the writing implement of choice could act as a bodily extension, and that writing by hand helps combine subject and object in ways that promote intimacy with a text, whereas typing into a word document promotes separateness of subject and object?

RAWSON: Fascinating. I imagine this has to be. There is a oneness when it comes to things like painting, the piano, or even running, and so it would make sense that it carries over to hand-writers. It makes me think of meditation for some reason, only I don't really know why. There is intense freedom within limitation, which might be why the computer is such an energy vampire. It pokes so many holes in our concentration containers that after a short period of time, we feel totally drained. Whereas with the handwritten word, I think of a dam and what happens when everything flows through a single thing—it harnesses a new kind of energy. Because with handwriting, you aren't concerned really with what you're writing. There is something hypnotic about the way in which the hands moves. 

MADGES: Anything else you would like to add?

RAWSON: Keep the beautiful pen busy!

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