A-Note-on-the-design

A Note on the design of this publication

The design of this publication accommodates non-linear reading. Cross-references indicate to connections across chapters, themes, methods and timelines.

The design of this book 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 this publication contributes 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.

The digital version of this book was built simultaneously with the content’s population and preparation for its journey to the printer. While Wiki was being fed with the contributions by the authors, and while the Pdf was stretching/shrinking its borders to accommodate them, the HTML was experimenting with switches between the two reading experiences: of the contributions and the scripts as their active companions. Although the layout of the digital publication prioritizes the reading of contributions first, it aims to unite them with their scripts as much as possible.

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 tools ecosystem includes: MediaWiki, Jinja templating, Pagedjs for the layout.

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]

Fonts used: Authentic, Louise, Sligoil, Noto Serif, Not-courier.

↑ 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/

[1] 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).

[2] rsanddesigners.nl/s/Tools.

[3] thub.com/hackersanddesigners.

[4] stantvzw.org/wefts/cc4r.en.html.

[5] sign-research.be/by-womxn.

[6] ttps://velvetyne.fr/

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