Leonardo Magazine Volume 39 Number 4, 2006
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Creative Director: Jon Phillips
Managing Editor, Leonardo: Pamela Grant-Ryan
Leonardo Board Member: Greg Niemeyer
Photograph: Rachael Rakena, Fez Fa'anana, and Brian Fuata, Pacific Washup, video still from single-channel video, 2003-2004. (© Rachael Rakena, Fez Fa'anana, and Brian Fuata)
Cover Design: Zoey Rosaline
Typesetter: MIT Press
In the Fall of 2005 and Spring of 2006 I was fortunate to have an internship with Leonardo Magazine, A Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, in conjunction with The San Francisco Art Institute. Under the direction of Jon Phillips, a team of students were charged with the task of designing and producing a special issue DVD, article illustrations, and magazine cover. In connection with the 2006 Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) International Symposium on Electronic Art and ZeroOne in San Jose, The Leonardo Issue would cover a pre-ISEA2006 Pacific Rim New Media Summit Working Group Topics.
The first half of the internship was devoted to brainstorming and ideation, while the second half was dedicated to production and meeting technical specs. To start us off, we had brainstorming sessions with Jon and Greg Niemeyer. We discussed the issues surrounding ideas about The Pacific Rim freed from preconceived geographical connotations and mythologies. There’s the ocean which unites the landmasses, and the fact that the physical Pacific Rim was created from the break off of the original Pangea Continent. After doing some research I discovered that coral reefs were a sort of community. I wanted to propose using it as a metaphor for the PacRim working groups. The idea was to find a theme that was diverse enough to recognize the variety of cultures and ways of thinking that thrive along the Pacific Rim, yet also carry a strain of similarity that unifies them together. I also thought about the common denominator of our human bodies… how the billions of cells exist and work together to keep a person alive. Cells, tissues, and organs as microscopic communities much like the ocean. The coastal communities around The Pacific Rim depend on the life of the oceans. If the rivers are like human arteries, the ocean is the heart… Other ideas from the team included food, music, satellite map imageries, etc.
We also addressed the issue of DVD as a format itself. For example the environmental implications of DVDs: Do we want to further propagate the consumption of more plastics when perhaps the videos could instead be downloaded off a website? On the other hand there is something to the tangible nature of a physical object interacting with our audience, then perhaps instead a DVD, we could design an Art Happening that coincides with the release of the site or perhaps a mail-art gift to be sent along with the magazine? Jon had the idea of designing the magazine cover using special paper with seeds embedded: ideas as seeds! We had to check whether such a thing was legal to be sent via air mail, or for conference attendees to fly home on international flights with a magazine cover of seeds. The idea was too delicious! It was environmentally friendly and conceptually brilliant.
In the beginning the skies were the limits, and having no stated budget we were free to dream ideas for mail art gifts and fancy packaging concepts including a metallic box with die cut letters designed by Cigdem Kaya and a sleek DVD sleeve by Greg. I was assigned the task of putting together a presentation and contacting vendors for quotes. Reality set in around November that our designs would have to be much much simpler. So we scraped the first three months of work and started all over. Though I decided to stay, with the new semester in the Spring came a new team of students. DVD content and article images came in over the holiday, and it was crunch time to meet the May press deadline. Each team member was assigned a specific portion of the work in order to get everything done. I was set the task of designing the magazine cover.
We went through several designs incorporating various article images sent from the PacRim Working Groups. I specifically designed a range of covers from traditional to conceptual. Being aware of past Leonardo covers it was important to adhere to a similar look and feel while challenging what has been done before. Over the course of six weeks I met with Jon and Leonardo Managing Editor, Pamela Grant-Ryan to narrow down the choice of covers and finalize additional text. The last two weeks prior to deadline we were in contact nearly everyday, mostly working on-line over chat while I posted new design versions to a remote site. The final cover files were uploaded for MIT press on May 2, 2006.
2006 Team members:
- Ronaldo Barbachano - Post Production / SFAI Student DVD ROLE: Overall Design + Menu MediaExperiment.org ROLE: Director of Podcast
- Robert Fulton - Post Production / SFAI Student DVD ROLE: Menu/Production MediaExperiment.org ROLE: Production (and project)
- Kevin Johnson - Post Production / SFAI Student DVD ROLE: Editor/Producer (in charge of footage/content) MediaExperiment.org ROLE: Designer/Look and Feel
- Benjamin Mahoney - Post Production / SFAI Student DVD ROLE: Mastering and Transitions
- Zoey Rosaline - Creative Design / SFAI student DVD ROLE: Design and Packaging (External) + Cover Design MediaExperiment.org ROLE: Design
- Cigdem Kaya
- David Elliot
- Asaf Ben-Yehuda
- Zoey Rosaline