Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand
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Jo Bailey NRO2 Design Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand Bailey, J., & Brown, A. (2016). Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand [Editors: Lacey, C. and Horrocks, I. Book internals, cover and visual content map]. Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press. Retrieved from http://vup.victoria.ac.nz/. Dust jacket and internal cover of the first print edition of Extraordinary Anywhere. 3 Dust jacket exterior 4 Dust jacket internals map 5 Dust jacket front and back 6 Contents map detail 7 Essay opening spreads 9 Section opening spread 10 Illustration selection 11 Book in situ in Unity Books 12 Second print edition 13 PANZ Book Design Awards 14 Postcard system 16 Full book: second edition printing NRO2 Jo Bailey Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM Extraordinary Anywhere Extraordinary Ashleigh Young / Sally Blundell / Cherie Lacey / EDITORS INGRID Tony Ballantyne / Lydia Wevers / Ingrid Horrocks / HORROCKS Alice Te Punga Somerville / Annabel Cooper / & C H E R I E LACEY Alex Calder / Jack Ross / Harry Ricketts / Lynn Jenner / Tina Makereti / Ian Wedde / Giovanni Tiso / Tim Corballis / Martin Edmond To investigate something properly we need all three: archives, dreams, memories . MARTIN EDMOND Extraordinary Anywhere Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand EXTRAORDINARY This collection of personalANYWHERE essays, a first CHERIE& LACEY HORROCKS INGRID EDITORS of its kind, re-imagines the idea of place for an emerging generation of readers and writers. It offers glimpses into where we are now and how that feels, and opens up the kinds of stories we can conceive of telling about living here. VUP NRO2 Jo Bailey Dust jacket externals (unfolded). Bottom left: selected illustration detail. An owl on Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand the Wellington War Memorial Carillon for Ingrid Horrocks and ‘a gathering place of eels’ for Alice Te Punga Somerville. From the first print edition. 3 0_ 1_ 2_ 3_ 4_ 5_ 6_ 7_ 8_ 9_ 10_ 11_ 12_ 13_ 14_ 15_ 16_ 17_ 18_ 19_ 20_ 21_ 22_ Speculative DESIGN COLOPHON Geographes Designing 9 UNDERWATER UNDERWATER REACH Place Jo Bailey and Anna Brown WRITING HERE WRITING 8 DIRT WRITING WRITING PUKEAHU: A YEAR MORE) (AND WALKING OF PLACE IN What is this process of design? How and where do you start? Tentatively, we illustrate some essays. We fossick through We start by leafing through maps, encyclopaedias and artists’ out-of-copyright images, searching for multiple ideas of place. books. We visit Unity Books to scope the topography of the The current swirls us in different directions — a psychogeographical New Zealand nonfiction table — a landscape of covers, broadly dérive. The process of collage offers a way to create a narrative two types: typographic (perhaps the simplest way to unify through bringing the ephemeral together. 7 HAUNTS CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD WRITING THE WRITING THE IMPERSONAL ESSAY, OR: GOOGLE WHERE KNOWS BEEN YOU’VE a multiplicity of voices); and image-based (tending towards By April we have been working on the book on and off for six illustrative rather than metaphorical). How, we wonder, to capture months. We show Ingrid and Cherie a dust jacket that unfolds and reconcile a profusion of place, 16 distinct voices? If, in the like a map to reveal a grid-based system, marked with emblems geographical field, ‘place’ is defined as ‘space which people have placed using coordinates based on the location of each essay in made meaningful’ 1 how will the design of this new space that is the book. It is unresolved, but it resonates with us as a unified the book be imbued with meaning? visual system that both creates and charts our new territory. 6 BY YOUR IN PLACE THE WORLD, I WILL KNOW WHO ARE YOU A REAL PIECE: AVAILABLE GLOBALLY POSTSHOP, VIA REAL AOTEAROA, 0800NZSTAMPS REOCCUPYING REOCCUPYING CHRISTCHURCH: ON DANCING THE EDGE OF DISASTER SUEY CHOP AND PATTIES HISTORIES OF PLACE WRITING MĀORI PLACE; IN IN WRITING MĀORI PLACE FINDING FINDING THE HERE IN ELSEWHERE THERE IS NO THERE UP, IS NO DOWN Our bearings set, we begin. We read the essays separately, then We embrace the tactile exercise of unfolding and refolding (the You take The explain to each other what they mean to us; a new journey each frustration of a map that won’t obey the creases), the wayfinding place with meshing time we talk. Jo gets her computer to read them to her and writes system, the bringing together of symbols for each essay. It gets you as you of thought down evocative phrases — accidental found poetry. Out of context, a lukewarm response. We try again. This time, a typographic go on and world the phonoaesthetics of the words deposit new strata of meaning. approach. Again the response is cordial but not excited. Aloud (especially in Alex-the-computer-voice’s metallic monotone), In frustration we try a completely new tack: photographic, with 5 CONTENTS they feel like the rhythmic clackety-clack of a train journey. new typefaces, retreating to the safe ground of the Unity table. We choose two typefaces by New Zealand typographic It is an appeasement, reactive, scraped out in leftover corners designer Kris Sowersby: Tiempos and Calibre. As designers we of time during a particularly hectic period. Positive noises come say it’s important that if the words are from here, the typefaces back, but instead of being a comfort, this actually makes it harder. should be too — but this is partly post-rationalisation. Tiempos, After heartfelt discussion we realise that we don’t want this our serif font, is based on a typeface for a Spanish newspaper.2 expedient option to be it. We have become embedded in this as 4 THE TE KŪITI THE KŪITI TE UNDERGROUND Calibre, our sans serif, is inspired by street signage,3 and though a process, involved and deep, that what we want is to render our Any place this wayfinding lineage feels pertinent, it is happenstance. We extraordinary, our journey. We have become territorial, protective. might be choose it because it is a consistent favourite of ours — like a This book-map is our visual territory. We realise, rationally, that this extraordinary typographic version of our own handwriting. It’s the other way isn’t our book. It isn’t about us. But it is, too. It’s about all of us, now. if only we with Tiempos; the chance to explore something familiar but We ask for one more attempt to get to a place that is both ours different. Later we add Domaine, also by Sowersby. It is elegantly and theirs, yours and mine. Another day of iterations — seven 3 knew it THE [TANIWHA] POPLAR OF AVENUE curvaceous, ‘Latin detailing on a Scotch skeleton’. 4 straight hours punctuated by a working lunch with covers spread We try different formats and grids, leafing through paper across a café table. One of our lunchtime iterations is a giant E mock-ups, seeing where our thumbs grip the page. The edges of with an owl in it. It makes the B pile. However it is capital letters the page become the edges of a map. The asymmetric column we come back to, fuelled by caffeine and adrenaline. Domaine, layout leads the eye along the top then down the side; the when used large, is beautiful, strong, and has a slight eccentricity. twisting of the page reminiscent of lining up a map to find north. We are intrigued by the way the flatness of the typography works 2 . (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 7. 2004), Publishing, Blackwell . (Oxford: We agree, this is a green book. We pick a selection: lush with the intricacy of the images. The images — some literal, others forest, earth and moss. We talk of an old and favourite cover of metaphorical — respond to the emotive and objective content The Hobbit, which features a single tone somewhere between inside each essay. This cover could only be about this book, greenstone and grass; British Ordnance Survey Pathfinder maps this place. The map, now on the inside of the cover, is a secret with green covers; of landscape. We try green layouts, but there key — a navigational tool. We send only this version. This is it. is a mismatch between intent and articulation. It comes across The responses come back positive. Relief. 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ON THE ROAD ON THE ROAD NOWHERE: TO REVISITING SAMUEL BUTLER’S EREWHON WHERE THE THE WHERE LEADS: ROAD PLACE & MELODRAMA Place: A Short Introduction hackneyed, too obvious; the ‘clean, green’ allusion heavy-handed. Through this choreographic process, this traversing of y We look through more vintage bookplates, finding old building boundaries between word and visual, author and designer, we blueprints — deep blue pages with intricate structural details. have created a place that allows for multitudes and pluralities. Tiempos Design Information. Klim Type Foundry, 2012. Accessed 17 May 2016. https://klim.co.nz/blog/tiempos-design-information/ 2012. 2016. 17 May Accessed Foundry, Tiempos Klim Type Design Information. http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/calibre/ 2016. 2012. 17 May Accessed Typographica, Calibre. https://klim.co.nz/blog/domaine-design-information/ 2016. 17 May Accessed 2013. Foundry, Domaine Klim Type Design Information. Cresswell, T. T. Cresswell, It becomes clear — it is not green, it is blue — rich, changeable, For us, this book represents an extraordinary journey, and for x + y =Pg. Notes on sources Notes 1 2 3 4 complex. We choose Pantone 315U blue. you, we hope, a space made meaningful. 0_ RESPONSE RESPONSE ESSAY: PLACETIME Master Cover.indd 6-10 8/06/16 3:23 pm FROM ASHLEIGH YOUNG’S FROM TONY BALLANTYNE’S FROM ANNABEL COOPER’S FROM LYNN JENNER’S ESSAY THE TE KŪITI ESSAY CHOP SUEY PATTIES ESSAY CHILDHOOD HAUNTS ESSAY THE [TANIWHA] UNDERGROUND AND HISTORIES OF PLACE OF POPLAR AVENUE I’d told myself stories before Caversham’s decline, the Keith enters the narrative In my time there had been and sometimes written slow unravelling that I had with abundant delight, puddles, pūkeko, swirls of recalling how an egalitarian mist on winter mornings, them down, before sending witnessed over three community of kids ranges ragged horses and bright them off to the editor of decades, made knots seem off over the reefs and around yellow gorse at this corner.