In conjunction with the starting point for Reimagining Objects, we wanted our publication to work in the same way with our second essays. What we found once we finished our second essays was a frustration of 'unfinished business', some outright hating the process of providing a historiography, enjoying the topic but never being able to respond the way that they wanted to. This became the purpose of the publication, as a way to express our topics differently.
In a wider committee, we chose our format and method of printing to start our structure for the brief. We knew that we wanted to collaborate with other courses at the RCA; HoD has had a history of being isolated from the arts school, which we feel is a real shame to expanding the opportunity for conversations between us. We immediately chose to have a simple format to make sure that the project would be able to work across the numbers: each essay was given a double-sided A3 page to work with. The one rule was that you couldn't use what was written in the essay. We decided to use the risograph process almost straight away - we knew that there was a printer somewhere in the RCA that we could use, and in hindsight, it was an ideal way to get more involved with the RCA. Each group was given two colours to work with, of which the combination would be decided later. The publication would be organised unbound, and thus could be taken apart and rearranged, reflecting the way that we wanted history to be seen, not as linear, but as parallel and intersecting all the time.
From there, we opened a call to Visual Communication students, of which we had several responses, and then it was all systems go! Everyone was given a month to work on their page, before some intense work with the Royal Duplication Centre, aka Studio Bergini, the risograph guys found on the second floor of the Stevens building in the Illustration lab (on Tuesdays and Fridays!). We put the colours to a vote, which ended up being burgundy and neon pink. After several days in the lab, 2x one hour Uber rides across London with around 4000 sheets of paper, introductions to a finishers in Hackney Wick, a giant chopping machine and a giant folding machine, plus several helpers on hand to collate everything, we ended up with 300 beautiful copies of Sooner, or later, V&A/RCA History of Design's first student-led publication.
Back in June we had our launch, with wine and beer, in which we wanted to discuss the process and what each of our pages meant to convey, and how the collaboration had worked out. We shared the launch with people from various courses, ranging from Architecture to Visual Communication, with a publication to take away at the end. We really enjoyed the whole process, from start to finish, and it became a really exciting way to test ourselves, and what we can do with our previous skills. While in hindsight, we can find a few ways that we would edit the way that it went, it was overall a really fantastic experience that I would love to do again (hint hint! More to come!).
The journey does not end here for Sooner, or later! A full online version of the publication will be available soon once we've relaunched our blog Unmaking Things (also another exciting endeavour!), so will keep you posted!
