TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR MEDIAGESCHIEDENIS - Vol 19, No 2 (2016) DOI: 10.18146/2213-7653.2016.263 Periodical Archaeology: Digital Production, Critical Discourse and Textual Communities in Emigre Emily McVarish ABSTRACT Published in 1989, Emigre magazine’s eleventh issue, faces, Emigre’s pages offered both demonstrations Ambition/Fear: Graphic Designers and the Macintosh of, and reflections on, the state of typographic Computer, contains vivid artifacts of a discipline’s first design. The textual community built and sustained encounter with digital tools. From the aesthetics of bit- by these pages — the venue that Emigre provided maps to the expressive interventions made possible for debate among practitioners — may have been by new access to typesetting controls, not to mention its greatest contribution to the advancement of the self-publishing venture of the magazine itself, this graphic design as a mode of thought and a body of issue combines modernist and postmodern agendas knowledge. As Emigre’s editor, designer and pub- in a model construction of text-based community. lisher, VanderLans clearly pursued his own inter- Looking closely at Emigre #11 and more passingly at ests and articulated his own views. However, since later issues, this article analyses the technical, critical, these views valued diversity, Emigre played host to and cultural production that would shape Emigre as a a range of perspectives and practices, elevating the medium for typographic demonstration and discus- positions not only of contributors, but also of guest sion among peers. editors, guest designers, students and readers to public notice.2 INTRODUCTION Debuting as a cultural review, distinguished by its Graphic design was the first creative industry to be border-crossing sensibility rather than by any par- transformed by the personal computer. What can ticular subject matter, Emigre began to focus we learn from an examination of graphic designers’ on design in its ninth and tenth issues. Entitled introduction to Macintosh workspaces? How did Ambition / Fear, Emigre #11 proposed the discussion the discipline’s ideology — its history, self-concep- of ‘Graphic Designers and the Macintosh Comput- tion and discourse — predispose it towards the po- er.’ The issue consists of fifteen interviews conduct- tential and significance of the technological changes ed by VanderLans with an international circle of its practices experienced in the 1980s? Did mod- his contemporaries.3 Each interview is labelled with ernist principles guide designers’ approaches to the name and location of its subject and the date it digital techniques? How might postmodern preoc- was conducted.4 Together, these exchanges com- cupations have shaped their perception of these new prise a time capsule containing vivid artefacts of tools? How do these initial perspectives map onto designers’ first encounters with the personal com- the evolution of a discipline’s relationship to new puter as a design platform. VanderLans asked new media from screen-based design for print to net- Mac users to describe its impact on their work- worked interaction? ing methods, analyse its aesthetics, and speculate Emigre magazine, founded in Berkeley, Cali- about its creative and practical potential. ‘Digital fornia, by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko in technology is a great big unknown,’ VanderLans 1984, was one of the first journals to be designed and Licko wrote in their introduction to the is- and produced on the Macintosh.1 Not only did sue.5 Their sense of a space to be explored, which is Emigre’s appearance call attention to its design, reflected in the blurred and shadowy abstraction of but its content tackled critical issues underlying the background imagery on the magazine’s cover, practical, technical and cultural developments in prompts an inquiry, the scope of which keeps the the field. It thus presents a privileged locus for the issue fresh today. study of digitisation’s impact on graphic design as a profession and as a cultural force. This critical space proves broader, and its exploration Emigre also set itself up as a digital foundry, delves deeper, than a cursory look at the issue might producing and distributing typefaces designed by conclude. Emigre #11’s attempts to take stock of the Licko and others. As sites for the display of these material and conceptual changes wrought by graphic 2 TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR MEDIAGESCHIEDENIS - Vol 19, No 2 (2016) – Emily McVarish Figure 1: Emigre #11 cover designed by Rudy VanderLans, 1989. Source: Rudy VanderLans. design’s incorporation of digital production capabil- of digital media to support open-ended, peer-to- ities led directly to aesthetic considerations, which peer discourse, it holds lessons for a fully deployed themselves were seen as having social implications. typographic design practice today. The history of this techno-aesthetic concern, as well as the context and effects of its surfacing at the time of Emigre #11’s publication, merit analysis. KEYS TO THE REALM OF PRODUCTION: This legacy involves design’s role as an interpreter INITIAL EFFECTS OF THE MACINTOSH and mediator of the social meaning of technolo- As Andrew Blauvelt noted in “Tool (Or, Post- gy — a theme to which Emigre directed attention Production for the Graphic Designer),” the arrival throughout its existence and which has retained its of digital tools in design studios ‘disrupted a field relevance. Moving beyond issue #11, this essay will that has always had a rather confused and conflict- survey the full run of the journal as a demonstra- ed relationship between the spheres of creation and tion of the social potential of new media and of ty- production.’ This disruption ‘eliminated the work pography’s part in the testing and representation of of various production artists, photomechanical this potential. Insofar as Emigre prefigured the use technicians, keyliners, paste-up artists, [and] type- TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR MEDIAGESCHIEDENIS - Vol 19, No 2 (2016) – Emily McVarish 3 setters (…),’ he wrote. Moreover, the software that mediary of the typesetter. encapsulated and, to varying degrees, automated Insofar as design begins where conception the work of these specialists brought its settings distinguishes itself from realisation, modern design and controls not just to graphic designers but also has by definition entailed the communication of to non-professionals. one’s idea to be translated by another.11 From hand- In Blauvelt’s analysis, this situation required and machine-setting for letterpress to phototype the profession to tell ‘a new story about the value of and electronic setting for offset, designers’ sketches design.’ Since the computer appeared to be a substi- and ‘mechanicals’, type specifications and other tute for practical skills, ‘the answer was to be found instructions were handed off to technicians to be not in production, but in the realm of conception set, proofed, and later ‘statted’.12 Process documents (…).’ 6 In fact, this ‘story’ was more of a sequel than it passing between designers and typesetters bridged was a new narrative. a technical gap that the Macintosh effectively As a profession, graphic design was partly closed (The skills- and knowledge-gap occasioned born of the specialisation that began to separate by this transfer would take more time to shrink, as layout from composition in print shops at the turn the experience of prepress operators was gained by of the twentieth century — that is, of a greater space digital practitioners). made for typographic planning as distinct from its execution by typesetting. Modern design in gene- Closure of this gap was a cause for celebration and ral emerged from this kind of separation, to which source of inspiration for several of those inter- industrial conditions gave rise and which tended to viewed in Emigre #11, whose design interests were divide traditionally integrated crafts into intellec- served by the new intimacy, power and freedom tual and manual labour.7 afforded by direct access to the settings that gener- By the middle of the twentieth century, ate type. Rick Valicenti, who was still learning to graphic design professionals had sold themselves as use his ‘machine’, said, ‘I would like to be able to sit conceptual consultants to businesses whose visual down and manipulate my type (…) and structure it identities, they argued, required systems-thinking in such a way that I can see it before it’s all played and programmatic design. Given its fundamental out.’ He describes noticing a book that seemed to relationship with the history and identity of the have been typeset by a designer using a Macintosh, field, it is not surprising that what Blauvelt called who apparently was able to monitor the text’s rags a ‘segregation… between hand skills and head skills’ ‘at the typographer’s level.’ Valicenti concluded should remain ‘at the heart of much professional from this example that the Macintosh would allow discourse and angst.’ 8 This division and the feelings him to ‘become a better typographer.’ surrounding it inflect the discussion that VanderLans Similarly, Jeffery Keedy explained that the initiated with his interviewees regarding how they Macintosh ‘gives me control over typography. I were coping with the ‘task of integrating this new can see it, set it and I don’t have to count on a technology into their daily practices.’ typesetter translating my specs.’ 13 Thanks to this This portion of the interviews begins with ver- assimilation, for Glenn Suokko, ‘Working with the sions of the question, ‘Will