Editing is hard

I've spent my entire career as a designer / teacher believing there is no "right" or "wrong" way work. Certainly there are "better" ways to work, but interpreting that is hard with varying mixes of time, audience, budget, interests, and the general mix of things going on in life at once. We are trying to find our own "better" as we navigate the vast territory that is Meggs' History of Graphic Design (MHOGD) and tread new ground with the 7th edition.

A quick note about our proposal and process for writing the new edition...

We proposed restructuring MHOGD thematically—focusing on common motivations of why anyone would use design as tool for problem solving—instead of inserting new examples of graphic design work chronologically throughout history. By doing this, we are attempting to break the Eurocentric spine of history and focus on commonalities of why graphic design is made. This also allows the text to pose questions about the why, instead of presenting the what.

Histories are good at telling what happened and when. Providing context and interpretation for why this happened is what sets a history apart from an encyclopedia. But we rarely know exactly why something was done. And does the original context supersede all other interpretations?

We are asking why were items of graphic design made and why do they matter.

Why do they matter is the most difficult to quantify. Significance can be both objective and subjective. It is also contextual—who you are, what stage of life you are in, what is the political climate, what technological advancements are available, and myriad other factors all have impacts on what matters to persons, groups and generations.

By articulating a framework of common motivations for why graphic design is made, we want the work included in MHOGD7 to be more relatable, but also debatable. The combination of two or more items together is at the root of how graphic design communicates. This can be harmonious, discordant, or both. We acknowledge and hope by including certain works of graphic design in a category this will both build understanding, but also spark (or ignite!) debate as part of the lifelong process of interpreting history.

So what does this have to do with editing?

We remind ourselves regularly that we are not rewriting MHOGD, but creating a new edition. We are clarifying and supplementing a book that has been regularly updated for over 40 years. That means all 471 pages of text and figures could (should?) have a place in the 7th edition. There is so much great material! Our challenge is how do we adapt most of it to fit a different organizing structure: from chronological to thematic?

We've been working for months to recategorize the existing text and figures. As an outline, this has been fun to put together. But, the real challenges have been adjusting the text to form a cohesive structure and narrative that defines and illustrates the new chapters which are now based on motivations for graphic design. We are mostly preserving chronology in each chapter—they form their own mini-timeline. For example, the Writing chapter currently has the following sections:

1. Prehistoric visual communications
2. Early writing in Mesopotamia
3. Early writing in Mesoamerica
4. Egyptian hieroglyphs
5. Cretan pictographs
6. The North Semitic alphabet
7. African writing systems
8. The Aramaic alphabet and its descendants
9. The Greek alphabet
10. The Latin alphabet
11. The Korean alphabet
12. Chinese scripts
13. Cherokee syllabary

Moving from an entirely chronological structure to a thematic structure causes some other editing challenges.

• Awkward transitions and connections
  A different structure means the sequence of events is different. Existing text that was written to flow one way, is disjointed and lacks explanation when split into new thematic structure.
• Movements and individuals are now located in multiple chapters
  One of the exciting aspects of a significant movement in graphic design is that it was inspired by many different people and motivations. While we could distill De Stijl down to a single motivation, we like the richness of explaining it from different perspectives. How do we provide just enough explanation of a larger movement in each of those chapters to orient readers?
• Existing language is not oriented to new chapter theme
  We use the text and figures to define and illustrate the chapter theme. While some of the existing text does explain why a piece of graphic design was created, some do not. And further, we are using concise terms to categorize that may not be part of the previous edition.

To write something down makes it both concrete and also helps better articulate a thought. That's what I am trying to do with this post. We've been working on this project for 4 years and felt every level of confidence with our approach. It's hard to maintain purpose and perspective on long-term / large-scale projects. Making sense of the making sense of authoring is something that is easy to forget to do. Hoping posts like this orient and propel our work and yours.

M