Bulletin 1 Note on Design
A Note on the design of this publication
The design of the H&D Bulletins is part of an ongoing collective exploration into unusual, non-proprietary, open-source, free and libre publishing tools and workflows. Such tools come with their own quirks and ask us to re-think our relationship to design tools. We hope these small publications contribute to a growing community of designers who consider it relevant to rethink their tool-ecologies. Building on the knowledge and practices of many designers and collectives that work with and contribute to open-source approaches to designing on and offline publications,[1] Hackers & Designers’ publishing experiments intersect computer programming, art, and design, and involve the building of self-made, hacked, and reappropriated tools and technical infrastructures, which sometimes results in books, such as the one you are holding now.
Following open-source principles, the tool ecosystem that evolved around the design of this publication is documented and published on the H&D website[2] and git repository [3] under the CC4r license,[4] providing the possibility of continuation in other contexts, studying, critiquing, and repurposing.
The design, production and dissemination of the H&D bulletins is part of an ongoing research into the ecology of small printing presses, more specifically in finding out how experimental, open source, DIY publishing tools (often made by repurposing web technologies) and the, at times, janky pdfs they produce, intersect with material realities of pre-press processes and different eco-conscious printing techniques.
The tools ecosystem includes: MediaWiki, Jinja templating, Pagedjs for the layout.
Publishing the H&D bulletins is furthermore an attempt to research into the ecology of small printing presses, more specifically in finding out how experimental, open source, DIY publishing tools (often made by repurposing web technologies) and the, at times, janky pdfs they produce, intersect with material realities of pre-press processes and different eco-conscious printing techniques.
All typefaces used in this publication are available at ‘Badass Libre Fonts By Womxn’,[5] a repository of open source and/or libre typefaces composed by Loraine Furter and Velvetyne Libre and Open Source Type Foundry.[6]
Accessibility note
Hopepunk also looks towards “disability justice” for sustainable systems of care. Many disabled lives are intertwined with the use of technology. For this bulletin we thought about reading aids for dyslexic folks. We used syllable-based highlighting to create a dyslexia-friendly reading experience. This method provides visual cues that break down words into manageable syllables, assisting individuals with dyslexia in word recognition and segmentation. By this doing this we hope to improve accessibility, enhance the reading experience, and promote better comprehension for readers with dyslexia. To strike a balance between accuracy and efficiency, we implemented a heuristic method for syllable detection. The algorithm approximates the position of syllable boundaries by leveraging patterns of vowels and consonants. While it may not be perfect, we hope that this approach is effective enough of our use case.
- ↑ Collectives that inspire us in our design experiments are Varia, Constant Association for Art and Media, Open Source Publishing, the practices and knowledge deriving from educational contexts such as the student-led interdepartmental initiative PUB at the Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam or XPUB—a master programme of Experimental Publishing at Piet Zwart Institute, the digital and hybrid publishing research groups of the Institute of Network Cultures. Concretely, the technical infrastructure and workflow used to create this publication (wiki-to-pdf) is building on the code repositories of Martino Morandi (Constant Association for Art and Media) developed for the publication ‘Infrastructural Interactions’ edited by TITiPI (Helen V Pritchard, Femke Snelting) (gitlab.constantvzw.org/titipi/wiki-to-pdf), and Manetta Berends (Varia Collective) developed for the publication Volumetric Regimes edited by Possible Bodies (Jara Rocha, Femke Snelting), published under the CC4r license (git.vvvvvvaria.org/mb/volumetric-regimes-book).
- ↑ hackersanddesigners.nl/s/Tools.
- ↑ github.com/hackersanddesigners.
- ↑ constantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html.
- ↑ design-research.be/by-womxn.
- ↑ https://velvetyne.fr/