Design Students Collaborate with Georgetown University Creative Writing Class

February 28, 2013

Helen Armstrong

This semester Miami graphic design students collaborated with graduate creative writing students from Professor Dave Ebenbach’s course at the Georgetown University. Together they created the first issue of a hypothetical new literary journal. Georgetown students first wrote an original body of work and then Miami students developed a journal around the content. The central theme for this new journal was the concept of “bad behavior.” In addition to publication design, Miami students also explored mass customization. Each student had to develop a pragmatic system for mass producing but also individualizing each copy.

From the project brief:

“Publications are traditionally mass produced. Each copy is exactly like the next. Added value comes into play only when an author signs a copy, thereby making it unique. Recently, designers have begun to produce publications which are both mass produced and custom one off pieces. For example, Daniel Eatock’s monograph includes an area on the spine for his fingerprint. Eatock went to the warehouse storing his book and applied the fingerprint to each copy himself. Each copy is therefore unique. Copies that were not fingerprinted could be brought to book signings so that Eatock could literally add his individual touch. Designer Luna Maurer designed a publication in which the page numbers were written in by hand in charcoal. Although the rest of the publication appeared to be a traditional mass produced book, the handwritten page numbers added an individual quality to each copy. In addition to the fact that they were written by hand, the charcoal smeared as the book was handled leading to more customization. In both cases, the human touch fought the anonymity of computer generated design.”

Georgetown students: Kate Brody, Erin Johnson, Anna Jolly, Chris Insana, Maciej Kietlinski, Amber Robinson , Alex Sanchez , Jacquelyn Stolos, Kaylee Walsh

A sample of the resulting journals: